Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday it was reported that Dinesh Vasu, the current CEO of AIC, is stepping down and might be standing in the upcoming elections.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dinesh at a TRC event last year. We were both leaving the event at the same time and we bumped into each other at the car park.

I had only heard of Dinesh until then. I was told he had done a lot of good work at MOH during the Covid years and was in the forefront of the drive to efficiently ensure the vaccination of our people. He was formerly a BG as well. People spoke very highly of him.

So it was a pleasure to meet him in the flesh. He was humble and such a pleasant person to talk to. He had no airs about him and he struck me as a very friendly and approachable person.

I later invited him to sit at my table for the SM Indian Community Appreciation Dinner and he graciously accepted the invite.

I am glad he has been picked by the PM to stand. If he does stand and gets elected, I am sure both at the community level, for his residents, and at a policy and execution level, for the country,  he will do very well and do his best.

Last night was the appreciation dinner for the committee hosted by Mayor Alex Yam. This event is traditionally held after the dinner for all the Club 100 members to thank the committee.

It was at the East Treasure Chinese restaurant at Clark Quay. I didn’t know this place. The food was decent and their speciality is crocodile meat soup!

We talked about how we can do so much more if we had a dedicated staff to help the committee. We need someone to maintain our database, respond to queries, plan and send out newsletters, organize regular outreach sessions and talks and plan events. This way we hope to maintain the number of our current members and bring in more new members.

Apparently PA rules do not allow us to have a dedicated staff to do this. Even if this staff was fully funded by the committee. I suggested a full time volunteer who was prepared to do this for free and again this isn’t possible.

Strange how we tie ourselves up in knots with rules and regulations and forget that the real reason for our existence is to help others and not be bogged down with red tape.

I can now understand why in the US there is this huge push to cut rules and regulations and terminate unnecessary departments and staff who are just there administer these unwieldy regulations.

Perhaps this is another reason why our smart nation ambitions is going nowhere. We must set a clear end result and a time period to get it done and cut off unnecessary road blocks in the way to reach that objective.

Anyway I have tried my best….

Apparently this is a must eat place in Chengdu. It’s at Tai Ko Li and it is a 1 starred Michelin Sichuan restaurant.

I only found out about this restaurant on my last day here. I went there at about 1 pm, took a ticket and waited for about 30 minutes before I was escorted to my table. The queue moves fairly fast.

The restaurant was spread over 2 floors and when I was inside, I then realized why the queue moves fast. There are so many tables spread out over the 2 floors but they are well spaced out.

The food came fairly quickly and all the dishes I had were good! I ordered 7 dishes and it cost me about $80. This was the price for food at a 1 star Michelin restaurant in Chengdu. Now I can understand why the place is always packed.

I have to honestly say I had the best desserts in Chengdu. My reason for coming to this conclusion is the variety, quality, presentation and price of all the desserts here.

Every dessert shop is so beautifully decorated and its just so nice to sit and enjoy your coffee or tea and desserts .

Be it Chinese desserts or Western desserts, these are the best I have seen and had by a mile for a long time.

Yummy!

This morning i visited this old street. The place was delightfully done. They have preserved the old street feel without making it touristy.

There are a number of tea houses, dessert shops, restaurants and various other interesting shops, including a Popmart, which appeared to be very popular.

A very nice Honor telco shop which had many artworks on the walls and accessories.

There was a very nice dessert place here with tofu, grass jelly and aiyu jelly.

Well worth a half day here even if you are not dining here.

Apparently the place is even prettier in the night.

Just came across a Business Times article stating that retail shops and restaurants are shutting down in Singapore. This is not just limited to the smaller shops but also big brands like Haidilao, Burger and Lobster and Eggslut.

Is it any surprise? Higher prices are due to high rents charged by landlords. This results not just in higher prices but food with poorer quality and smaller food portions.  Singapore has become one of the worst places now to eat and shop. No value for money whatsoever.

Will something be done? It’s like watching a meteor slowly coming towards you to crash your party and the people below just staring at it and not doing anything and perhaps hoping it won’t crash on them.

It is going to crash and the warning signs are going off strongly. I do hope this government does something real soon and not keep repeating the refrain that it’s because of market forces. That argument is not going to help anyone but the landlords. We need to stop burying our heads in the sand.

On the way back to Singapore I look back on my short trip to Chengdu and what my impressions are about the country and its people.

I was blessed with beautiful sunny cool weather while I was here.

Chengdu is a tier 2 city and it is bustling with people, cars and activities. The city is slightly congested in the city center but has lots of parks and open spaces and I saw well trimmed trees and flowers everywhere.

I didn’t see many foreigners here and that may be because it’s not a tier 1 city and so it doesn’t come up on tourist lists.

Smoking appears to be still a problem. I saw people smoking everywhere. Even in toilets in shopping centers you can smell the smoke. Some people are so addicted to smoking that even when the train stops for just 1 minute between stations, they will run out for a short smoke. I would have thought that for health reasons alone, the government would have discouraged smoking and taken greater steps to enforce smoking bans in shopping centers and trains.

Their transport network both within the city and intercity is good. Metro, buses connect within the city. Ride hailing is a breeze and because they have embraced electric vehicles, I got the sense that the streets were quieter and there was less pollution from vehicle emissions. I was really impressed with the ride hailing service when you called for a 6 seater. All brand new cars, fully electric and the drivers were all suited. Seat belts even for rear passengers is a must.

The city and its outskirts appear well planned with lots of parks, open spaces and greenery. There were flowering trees and plants everywhere. Wide roads and didn’t get stuck in any traffic jams whilst I was here.

The people were friendly and helpful at all the shops and restaurants I visited. With very few exceptions, the people generally do not understand or speak English. And because so few foreigners come here to Chengdu, there is no compelling reason for their service staff, with a few exceptions at the hotel, to learn to speak English. I do not think they watch or listen to English movies or songs here either. Is that a good thing when you are cut off from the lingua franca of the rest of the world I wonder? But in China, without Google and Facebook and other apps we are used to on the outside, I guess even if you knew English it wouldn’t help much because what would you read and listen to anyway?

I could see that the people are hardworking. When I entered any shop, they tried very hard to encourage you to try things. Even for restaurants, they would stand outside encouraging you to look at their menu and try their food. I would be happy to have employees like them!

Their local telco shops are everywhere. I can understand why. They have a full range of phones catering to every segment of the market with the top tiers as good as or even better than the Apples and Samsungs. The government also provides a discount for Chinese citizens to buy phones and laptops. It could be to get them to become digitally savvy whilst boosting the economy at the same time.

Toilets in the hotels and top shopping centers are clean and have tissues and paper towels. Not sure how they are outside of these central places. I understand that there are still squatting toilets in use, which Singaporeans won’t be used to at all.

The young people I saw were well dressed but always looking at their phones whilst being on one app or the other. Not sure why the government hasn’t addressed this. Perhaps it feels its best to leave young people alone for now and not antagonize them?

Food everywhere was good and inexpensive. I thought the prices were even cheaper than in KL. I had some very good food here and I would come here again if for nothing else but for the food.

Ultimately, the key function of any government must be to ensure that their people have decent jobs, decent income, a decent standard of living and decent health care and with the opportunity for anyone who is prepared to study and work hard to move up the socioeconomic ladder. Security and housing is vital. People outside China say there is a lack of freedom in China. I can understand that view. But isn’t everything a tradeoff? Are people better with absolute freedom but with no jobs or housing? Is it better to have freedom even if it means they are living in fear of gangs or being robbed?

When I saw people here going about their daily lives, I couldn’t tell that they were oppressed or living in fear. I understand that in the US and UK shoplifting is now so common that police no longer respond to it or investigate it. Pickpocketing and house breaking are common in both the US and Europe and one has to be always on guard when walking around the streets there.

Actually is absolute freedom and rights all that it is made out to be? Where should one draw the line I wonder?

I visited this place today. It’s a massive building complex. Its said to be the world’s largest free standing structure.

It’s about 30 minutes from the old city center. The city center is packed with smaller roads and side lanes and buildings of all sizes and vintages. This area is well planned with newer buildings, lots of open spaces and well laid out gardens and roads. I saw quite a few new hotels on the way there. I can imagine this to be a good place for hosting huge events.

It was built in 2014. Part hotel, offices, shopping, convention center, Olympic sized ice skating rink, cinema, garden with lots of places for children’s entertainment and with a huge car park.

I didn’t spend much time there. It’s a pity the shops were mostly local brands. Not many exciting food options like the other places I visited either. There were a few Chinese tea shops and I drank tea but it wasn’t a very satisfying experience.

The design of the building might be ok for a convention center but not ideal for a shopping mall. Quite a number of units were not occupied. There was a huge escalator from the 1st to the 4th floor. That was impressive.

Spent the whole day here. Amazing how they have designed an entire complex of low rise buildings with many different shops centered around a temple.

They have high end designer brands, high street brands and many restaurants and cafes.

I started the day with a 2013 lincang raw puer at Wang De Chuan Fine Chinese Tea. Lovely sit down place serving only tea. It’s from Taiwan and the place was well patronized. I sat down for a while sipping tea and reading the Economist.

After walking around the shops there I discovered a wonderful Chinese dessert place called Very Chinese Pastry. They had such wonderful Chinese desserts. All freshly made. The sesame pastry was wonderful! Must try this place again.

Then I had red bean soup at RuXu. Lovely pastries and Chinese desserts. I only managed to try the red bean soup and am hoping to try some of the other desserts before I leave.

Came across Zara. This was one of the few selected Zara stores in China that carries special collections. I picked up so many items but in the end I narrowed it to only 4. The new collection was a collaboration with Anderson Bell. The shop assistants were very helpful in showing me the new things and patiently waiting for me to try.

An entire section of the complex was decorated with LV Murakami items. So beautiful!

I also came across Abercrombie and Hollister, both of which were mega crowd pullers about 15 years back but both these brands have since disappeared in most places. Chengdu had both of them and it was good to see them well patronized here.

Finally rounded of the day with an early dinner at a Michelin starred Fujian restaurant YanYu Fujian. I was really impressed with the high quality of the food and service and the items were all so reasonably priced.

This is a must visit place in Chengdu.

Sometimes I wonder why Chinese come to Singapore to spend their money. I can understand if it is to sightsee or visit the casino.Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.

I had coffee today at M Stand. It’s a coffee chain with different varieties of coffee and tea from Shanghai. The coffee was good and cost $4.20. Cheaper than what you would pay in Singapore.

Lunch at a good Chinese restaurant in the shopping center. I had 5 dim sums, radish cake, tofu and tea. It was $52 all in.

I started the day with red bean soup and yogurt at a food court. Both from specialty shops. Good.

Bought some t shirts from Urban Revivo. It’s a local Chinese brand but high quality stuff. True Religion was having a 50% sale on all their items.

Then I came across several local designer brands from Shanghai. I was surprised with the quality and price point. These are not brands seen outside China.

Their shopping center even for a Fri night wasn’t crowded. Not sure if it’s always like that or a current phase because of the present state of the economy.

Every Didi ride I’ve had here is a brand new electric 6 seater. So quiet and comfortable. Feel like royalty when traveling in these new cars.

I thought Malaysia was cheaper and better. Now I can say that Chengdu is also cheaper and better.

Singapore seriously needs to think about what it can offer the world. At some point in time, if the quality and prices are not competitive, tourists will not come, except for very limited and specific purposes and even Singaporeans will decide to spend their hard earned money elsewhere.