Blog

WeCare Arts exhibition was launched this morning at the National Gallery by Min Edwin Tong and the 5 Mayors.

The idea of this project is to bring art to the various community organisations and beneficiaries.

The event started off with a speech by the Minister and performances by 3 beneficiary groups.

The actual exhibition was not that impressive.

The room was small and the configuration for exhibits was poor. I didn’t think the public would make it a point to come and visit this small room on the 4th floor of the National Gallery. But I am sure they have a plan to get people to come here. Anyway I had a good time chatting the Mayors. I also caught up with Mei Ling!

Today. I was invited to this event which was held at the Pan Pacific Hotel at Claymore.

This is the 3rd time I have been invited to their independence day celebrations. The previous 2 events were at the Sheraton Hotel. But this hotel has a outdoor area as well but as always it was packed with people.

There were the usual formalities and the singing of the national anthems. The Mexican Ambassador, in his usual inimitable style, made a very rousing speech.

MOS Alvin Tan, Poh Li San and Vikram Nair represented Singapore tonight.

I left early just after the speeches and didn’t have any dinner. Just too tired on a Monday.

Yesterday was the performance of Swan Lake by the Georgia State Ballet Company at MBS.

I have never been to a full ballet performance before and it was an interesting experience. The dancers are clearly talented and there was some very good dancing with pretty sets. But I am not sure how much more ballet I can watch. After a while, the steps all look the same to me. I guess it will be interesting for someone with some ballet training or knowledge.

Fortuntely the performance was just 2 hours. The music is by Tchaikovsky but it was piped music for this performance.

And they changed the ending to make it more palatable for the audience. The original ending is a tragic one but who wants to spend 2 hours watching a sad and tragic performance.

Bumped into U-Zyn and his family on the way out. I do hope their kids enjoyed the ballet!

PA had organized a thank you lunch yesterday for some of the CDC councillors who had received the National Day Awards this year.

It was only a small group of 6 and it was at the Shahi Maharani restaurant at Raffles City, a North Indian buffet restaurant.

I have been here before Covid when I was working in Raffles Place as it was a lot easier to get to then. Still it was well patronised and the food was decent.

We talked about some of the new projects that the CDCs would be doing in the future. Lots of ambitious plans. Let’s hope they bear fruit.

And a big thank you to PA for the lunch and the commemorative engraved cup.

Last night was the thank you dinner organised by San and myself to thank the CDC staff and councillors for our National Day Awards.

I managed to get a private room at the Conrad for our group and worked out a nice Chinese dinner menu. Initially we had about 29 people we invited but that number whitled down to 21.

Logistics wise, Conrad did a great job organising the room set up and the food was great.

A number of people we invited could not make it as it was school holidays and some were travelling. But what surprised me was that on the day itself, some people cancelled. And that was only told to me only after I sent out a gentle reminder of the dinner that night. Sigh..

Anyway we had a wonderful time with friends! I will organise another one with my other committees and the ones who could not make it this time.

Today we celebrated Virginia Wong’s birthday. The day after her actual birthday.

It was a lunch hosted by Kaling at Sushi Ryujiro. The food was nice and the company was, as always, great. We talked about many things, most of which were quite minor and inconsequential but with quite a bit of time devoted to autistic children.. a topic on which I had very little to share…But who cares… it is always nice to be able to find the time and opportunity to catch up with friends, especially as time catches up with all of us!

I always make it a point to read the Obituary section of my Economist first. So when I opened this week’s edition, the obituary was about this lady.

I have never heard of her but what a fascinating life she had.

She was one of 10,000 Jewish children who arrived in London in 1939 by train under the Kinder transport program to escape Nazi Germany. She was aged 5 then and was from Austria.

She was very good in mathematics and in 1959 after having worked in a then male dominated society and workforce, she decided to start a company doing software with only £6 as capital. She employed only university educated women who were at that time not wanted in the workforce, especially after getting married or having children. She gave them an opportunity to work from home with flexible hours enabling them to stay home and look after their children.

In 1990s that company which was then employing 8500 people, was listed and in 2000, it had a valuation of £3 billion.

She gave away her fortune to her employees and to charity when she retired and she was made a Dame and a Companion of Honour. A lot of her money was given to autism causes.

What a remarkable life. Arriving alone on a train at the age of 5, fleeing Nazism. She had been saved and she wanted to make sure that she lived a life that had been worth saving. Amazing person.

This was the second session I attended and it was conducted by my good friend Chua U-Zyn who is now also an adjunct lecturer at NUS ISS.

The session was well attended. The presentation was very interesting with a live demo. If I was a software developer or coder, this session would be indispensable. The session was about how one can use Agentic AIs to make a detailed plan and code the software to carry out the plan. In this case, the demo required the AI to create a web based leave system for a small company of 20 people.

It is truly amazing what’s out there now and I learnt a lot from this very good and clear presentation.

This was held this morning at ISS, which is located at a quaint little part of Singapore and parked at the other corner from NUS. I arrived here early and so parking was not an issue at all.

This entire festival is focused on AI and there are multiple sessions starting from 930 till 5pm. There must be at least 30 sessions and they all look interesting but many of them run simultaneously and I have to pick and choose. Sigh.

For the 930am session I settled on The AI Reorg.. How AI is Restructuring Companies Faster than Leaders can Adapt by Damian Cummings.

It was an informative session but it was not something that I didn’t know. If you follow the news regularly and read the Economist from cover to cover, then what the speaker said you would already know. The current impact of AI, potential and present job losses, the shifts happening in organisations, the jobs most at risk and how to take some preventive steps and future proof oneself.

But it is a message that everyone needs to hear and to take seriously.

I just finished reading this book on my Kindle. This is a recently released book about Prince Andrew and his ex wife Sarah Ferguson.

It is well written and the research is thorough. Clearly the author has put in lots of work into this book and spoken to many sources to be able to come up with this level of detail on both of them.

It is shocking to read how much of an entitled life these royals lead. Both of them have almost nothing in terms of brain power or education but were given power and position and were protected from any negative news despite all their shenanigans. Both of them were leading lavish lifestyles at the expense of the British taxpayers and lining their own pockets from their royal connections,

Both of them were also leading carefree lives with multiple sex partners and it is very clear from the book that Prince Andrew is a sex maniac constantly seeking women wherever he goes. His connections with Jeffrey Epstein are well documented.

So many people knew what Prince Andrew and his ex wife were doing and I found it particularly shocking that the Palace, and in particular Queen Elizabeth, was doing everything within her power to cover up any negative news, threaten with defamation anyone who spoke up and all the while supporting them thereby allowing them to continue their misdeeds and financial shenanigans.

After having read this book I am surprised the British still allow the royal family to continue to exist with all their privileges and perks. I know the book just came out but I look forward to seeing what steps are going to be taken in the UK by either Parliament or the press to address the very serious issues raised in this book.