The crazy one...

“I would add that if you don’t regularly feel utterly confused, if you don’t occasionally feel like you’re treading just above water, if you don’t ever feel misunderstood, then you probably aren’t living in life — you’re just observing it.” --- Ben Casnocha

Perhaps the past few months of agony, late nights, self-doubts are just part of living life, again. I need to be able to start "feeling" again.

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Think Different

(Apple Computer Ad Campaign)

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So maybe I'm just different. Times and again I've asked why can't I be "normal". Am I really different, or simply enjoy, and influence others to think I'm different? Is different simply a case of being the minority? And what if there are no longer "majorities", and instead, sprockets of minorities, would we then be "similarly different"?

To remember...

Your employer had not hired you to be yourself.

The important, urgent and nonsense

There are usually 3 kinds of work... the Important, the Urgent and the Nonsense. Too often, the focus is on the Urgent, which unfortunately comprise mainly the Nonsense. I am confident the reason my colleague is leaving is he is going for the Important.

There are usually only 3 reasons: The good, the bad, and the true. Most people are contented with the good.

My Mood

倔強
作詞：阿信　作曲：阿信　編曲：五月天　演唱：阿信

當　我和世界不一樣　那就讓我不一樣　堅持對我來說　就是以剛克剛
我　如果對自己妥協　如果對自己說謊　即使別人原諒　我也不能原諒

最美的願望　一定最瘋狂
我就是我自己的神　在我活的地方

＊我和我最後的倔強　握緊雙手絕對不放
　下一站是不是天堂　就算失望不能絕望
　我和我驕傲的倔強　我在風中大聲的唱
　這一次為自己瘋狂　就這一次　我和我的倔強

對　愛我的人別緊張　我的固執很善良　我的手越骯髒　眼神越是發光
你　不在乎我的過往　看到了我的翅膀　你說被火燒過　才能出現鳳凰

逆風的方向　更適合飛翔
我不怕千萬人阻擋　只怕自己投降

Repeat ＊　＊

就這一次　讓我大聲唱
啦啦啦... 就算失望　不能絕望
啦啦啦... 就這一次　我和我的倔強

中庸之道

难也!

Requests to public transport operators

For years, the Singapore public transport operators had made countless requests. Among which, the more memorable, frequent and recent would be passing on the increase of their operating costs to the consumer by means of increasing fares.

Perhaps it's time for the users to start making valid requests to these operators too, and I'll start by listing just a few.

1) Noise level
The reason to set the Ipod volume at 100 decibels and above? Just to hear what is being played while traveling in an environment that's already at 81 decibels. That is 4 decibels away getting hearing damage from long term exposure. And all along I believed that we're a conservative and cautious society who prefer to err on the safe side.

2) Acknowledge that they are monopolies in their respective mode of transport (Read: Comfortdelgro, SMRT)
Facts: From Comfordelgro, Annual Report 2006
a) Profit from Diesel sales - 4.1% of total profits or $14.6million.
What it means - Divided equally among all 15,000 Comfortdelgro taxis in Singapore, each cabbie will be about $973 richer in 2006.

b) Profit from taxi operations - $109 million
Revenue from taxi operations - $866.5 million
Profit margin from taxi operations - 12.6%
Group Operating profits - $305.4 million
Group Revenue - $2761.8 million
Group Profit margin - 11%
What it means - taxi operation is one of the more profitable business segments for the company, which brings us back to the question, who is more directly involved in affecting the cabbie's take-home pay? Who decides the cabbies' cost structure? Reducing the profit margin by 1.6% to 11% will save the cabbies $13.7million in 2006. That's $913 each. Including savings from the profit from diesel sales, that's $1886/cabbie. Sounds like a reasonable 13th month bonus.

c) Energy and fuel cost - $196 million
Staff cost - $862.9 million
Staff cost of top 6 Executives (taken at the lowest end of the renumeration band)
- $1,750,000 + $750,000 + $500,000 x 3 + $250,000 = $4.25 million
Operating Cost - $2487 million
Energy cost as a percentage of operating cost - 7.9%
Staff cost as a percentage of operating cost - 34.7%
What it means - 7.9% didn't seem as much a pressing concern or room for improvements compared to 34.7%. But increasing staff cost without increasing revenue will be hard to explain to shareholders. Increasing fares in a monopoly market to maintain/increase margins sits in better with shareholders and subsequently, performance-based renumeration. A monkey can run such an operation. The difference is you just need to pay the monkey peanuts.

Question at the end of the day: Why do you corporatize a national interest which happens to operate in a monopoly market, and then set up a Public Transport Council to oversee it? Politically sensitive strategy to enter overseas market? A fool will see through the cover with GLCs as the major shareholders.

3) Improve hygiene level
Is there a need for us to go through another SARS to keep our buses clean? It is hard-pressed to believe that a bus was cleansed frequently when you see the amount of grim accumulated on a 8am bus.

4) Be part of the new Clean & Green Singapore 2007
It continues to baffle me on the restriction of private vehicles to petrol-powered engines, while public transport continues their pollution with their diesel engines. Granted that new diesel engines might be cleaner than existing petrol engines but the majority of our buses and taxis hardly looks new. The state of our buses and taxis brings us back to point number 1 & 3. A quick & dirty Google search will yield this.

Anyone care to add any more to the list?

Are birds afraid of heights?

For those scientifically-inclined and critical minds, NO. Obviously those flightless birds are excluded to begin with. So think parrots, sparrows, and your usual birds that has the ability to shit on your head.

Boss not included.

Birds shouldn't be afraid of heights. It is as second nature to them as water is to fish. The air is their playground. High or low, they simply cannot be imagined to have fallen to their death; just as you can't drown the fish.

But I thought I had just seen a tinge of fear in my pet parrot, as its devilishly curious owner brought the unwitting furball up the stairs and set it alone on the railings looking 5m down to a silly grin and constant encouragement for it to make the jump.

5m? That's not too much of a height until we put things into perspective. The little furball is less than 10cm in height and 5m is 50 times its bodily height. Consider yourself at the top of a 28th storey building waiting to make the jump and tell me convincingly that death never crossed your mind.

For those in the know, yes, my bird had fallen off 11 stories from my window, by its own ingenuity and over-enthusiasm. But the conditions were different. There are space constrains. Try landing a Boeing 747 within a 50m runway.

Before the SPCAs decided to ask Google for my IP address, my pet parrot just had breakfast with me on my shoulder.

It jumped. And made a pompous landing on my dad's shoulder with lots of fowl language.

It is not the destination that frightens us, but the journey.