Thoughts's space

In a recent newspaper article here titled "Pork Floss Queen",  a local bakery chain owner Katherine Quek claimed "pork floss" buns were created by her.  Here is an extract of the article:

 

"The popular pork floss buns that made the, Breadtalk, bakery chain's reputation was not his idea. It was his wife of 23 years, Katherine Quek, who came up with the best-selling bun. Inspired by the pork floss porridge she ate as a child, she decided to pair the meat floss with sweet egg cream and soft white bread. When it was introduced in 2000, the bun sparked an immediate craze among diners and a copycat war among competitors." 

As all my Taiwanese friends knows, "pork floss" buns have been around since forever in Taiwan - so how can someone make this kind of outrageous claim! Further it was revealed in the article that the owners had lived in Taiwan for a certain number of years commencing in 1986, so it is obvious where she got the idea from. It riles me that someone should try to take credit for something that is so obviously not theirs for the taking. Notice the photo of the buns taken from the company's website - it has the audacity to claim "Flosss" originated by Breadtalk!

To my Taiwanese friends, you got supporters here in Singapore who quickly corrected the false claims - here are some comments sent to the paper:

 

Here's the response from Joyce Koh of Breadtalk to the comments:

"We would like to clarify that while Mrs Quek was instrumental in the creation of Breadtalk's Floss in Singapore, she does not claim to have been the first to come out with the concept". Is that so Joyce? Mind reading what was written in the newspaper again, it sure did not suggest that Mrs Quek was instrumental in only introducing the product to Singapore but more Mrs Quek invented the product -  "Inspired by the pork floss porridge she ate as a child, she decided to pair the meat floss with sweet egg cream and soft white bread." Also if the bakery is restating it's claim, then how about correcting the photo on its website which clearly states "Flosss originated by Breadtalk 2000".

 

In the world we work in, claiming ideas to be ours when it isn't is a common thing - happens in the work place all the time. However if one wants to claim unrightful ownership at least don't do it on something that is so obviously not yours! In this case it was an outright copy - so perhaps if one wants to claim ownership in this instance, perhaps just add some special ingredient to the bun or change the shape or something. But just to take the exact original idea and claim it is yours is most shameful.

Singaporean Chinese must be one of the few people on earth that do not speak/write competently in their mother tongue and what's worst resist learning it. No other race in Singapore and perhaps in this world do not speak their mother tongue. The resistance of Singaporean Chinese to master their mother tongue is so strong that the Education Ministry here had to relax their bilingual policies.

 

I am equally quilty of resisting learning my own language when I was young, and only learn to speak it comfortably when I lived and worked in Taiwan.

 

     Given the economic power shift to China, I find it incredulous that we Singaporean Chinese continue to resist the chinese language when even Westerners are attempting to master the language. I remember during the my first few years in Taiwan, whenever I visit the Finance Ministry, my Financial Controller Tom Vedelago, an American, will accompany me. The meetings were always conducted in Mandarin and I will be speaking English and Tom, the American, will be translating for me - isn't that shameful?

 

The reason normally given by Singaporean Chinese not to master their mother tongue is that it is too difficult to handle more than one language, this is probably not true:

- In Europe most of the people there, with perhaps the exception of the French, are competent in 2 or more languages.

- The Indians, Malays in Singapore are competent in English and their mother tongue. In fact it is not uncommon to see Malays and Indians speaking pretty competent Mandarin and Hokien

- The Japanese when they are assigned to work in a foreign country will learn the language of that country. And they learn it in their adulthood demonstrating age is not a barrier to language competency.

The only language the Singaporean Chinese is capable of is English but what's worse is that most of us do not even have good mastery of the language - we actually do "Singlish".

 

So to you younger Singaporean Chinese master your mother tongue when you still have the learning capacity - don't end up like me having a foreigner translating for you when a business dialogue is conducted in your mother tongue. I think it is a shame not to be literate in one's mother tongue, don't patronize your children make them do their Chinese!

    Here is an article in a local magazine on the issue of women's demand for equality. I pretty much agree with the thoughts written by the author but never penned it as I would be accused of male chauvinism! What is interesting is that this article is written by a woman, Faye Mui and she basically makes the point that it she has come to the conclusion men and women will never truly be equal and that women should be comfortable with their feminine role.

 

Here is an extract from the article:

 

 

 

 

 

 

So all women, please think about this article - it is from a woman.

 

It is my view that women do not only want equality they want superiority and as such becomes the root cause of problems in relationships. Take this simple example, women expect men to be chivalrous and open the car door, but if women demand equality should they not also open the car door for men sometimes - otherwise we are not talking about equality but superiority!

 

Advice to women, embrace your feminity - don't believe in all those rubbish you have been taught about pursuing a successful career, not many make it including men - it is not worth it. Women have a choice not to work, if your men is doing well financially, exercise the choice - don't default to a career. In Faye's words "wishing I could be a Tai Tai".

 

Discover yourself and embrace your feminity, why do you want to be a man??! As Winnie Houston sang:

Here is the anthem of the feminist movement in the 60's

 

       

 

      I recently was given a presentation by a group of university undergraduates in the charity that I work in. It brought back lots of memories, however all bad.

 

In the 20 years that I have been presented to by management trainees and fresh graduates, I found most of them were just rubbish! After 20 years, these presentations are always:

- Filled with fancy and "sexy" charts that actually has no significant value to the theme of the presentation.

- The presentation delivery is full of "cliches" and convetional wisdoms, with not much original thought.

- The presenter builds his whole presentation based on the idea he is trying to sell and expects the audience to accept his suggestions without question! When challenged the presenter is commonly not prepared to defend his recommendations against other options.

- The presenter gets upset or fall apart when challenged! Amazing that a "junior" should have a belief that their presentation is superb and beyond challenged! They start taking comments unneccessarily personally.

- The presenters fail to take into account who they are presenting too, many a times these new managers present to very senior people in the same style as they present to their fellow university students. This just does not work!!

 

Presenting is not a difficult thing - it is simply just to put your ideas to the presentees in as concise manner as possible and be able to stand and defend your position from your presentees. That's all there is to it but it requires significant amount of work to be ready for any good presentation.

 

It is very common to see in the corporate world, bosses in trying to "encourage" freshies with compliments even for the worst presentation ever. This "encouraging" approach is wrong, when "good job" is said for poor presentations it reinforces weak behaviours. The owners of the poor presentations on hearing their bosses's compliments will conclude they have done a good job - so why will they better themselves in future?

 

As most of you know, I have never done that - when your presentation sucks I told you it sucked! If your presentation was poor, I will walked out of your presentation! You ought to thank me for being critical because had you took my criticism professionally you have now easier passages on your presentations to senior management. 

 

It is unfortunate that many managers did not have their presentations style, substance and approach corrected in their earlier years and as such remained poor presenters for the rest of their careers. In many cases, the lack of skill here has hampered their growth up the corporate ladder.

 

My high expectations of presentations is due to my earlier years workings with the soft drink company Pepsi. In Pepsi, presentations are serious matters - the ideas presented must be solid and withstand challenges from seniors, the seniors in Pepsi were not shy in challenging presenters and will not hesistate to haul abuse for poor presentations. In Pepsi, people got fired for poor presentations when the ideas and strategies being presented were not convincing to the seniors - one of the Regional Vice Presidents whom I worked for was fired instantly after a poor plan review meeting.

 

Here I will like to compliment Steve Chou and Cynthia Chen as the only Management Trainees who have successfully completed their Traineeship presentations without having a redo. Oh, by the way for those of you who may be thinking that I am biased to Steve as he was a singer in the Troublemakers - Steve passed his presentation even before I knew he could sing or had any interest in singing!

As all of you know, I don't eat much vegetables. Many have asked me if this was healthy, I don't know but here's someone who is still alive at 100 years old and share my same dislike for vegetables.

 

    Ruth Frith, 100 years old participated in the recent World Master's Game in Sydney and won the gold medal in the women's 100-104 age shot-putt competition. Actually she was the only competitor. Nevertheless she is a active 100 year old!

 

When asked what's her secret to her long and active life, she passed on some unlikely advice. "Don't eat vegetables, because I never eat vegetables. I know people that like diets that will scream at me, (but) don't eat vegetables. I never have."  - My Hero!!!

I was reminiscing, looking at some of our old Annual Party videos, we sure had great parties those days. I had the good fortune of having great staff who both "worked hard and played hard". While everyone I felt really played, we had also great acheviements during those days in Taiwan:

- We build the Citibank Taiwan business into the largest card business for Citibank outside the U.S.

- We created a record in AIG, by perhaps being the only card business that makes a profit within the first 12 months of operations and with less that a hundred thousand cards issued!

- We turned around a consumer banking business that had been bleeding, losing over US$10 million per year into a profitable business earning in excess of US$10 million with a year.

So thank you all for your support over the years, here's some videos of the fun parties we had:

 

   

  

    The latest issue of Playboy magazine will have the cartoon character Marge Simpson gracing the magazine's cover, It is not yet known how much of Marge will be on show inside the issue, but "it's very, very racy," said editorial director James Jellinek.

 

Apparently the move to put Marge on the cover is an attempt to draw in a younger audience for the soft porn magazine. "We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd," said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey. ?????!!!! Wait a minute here, something is wrong! You telling me that men in the 20's now prefer to see nude drawings of a out-of-shape cartoon character instead of gorgeous naked women? I would have thought gorgeous naked women would always be the prefered choice - HELP! I must be out of touch with the world!

     President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. This must be the biggest joke of all times!!! This guy has been in office for only around 9 months and have no real outstanding acheivements, the U.S. is still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, so what makes him qualify to win this peace award??  My understanding of peace means there is no war.

 

One of the reasons given by the Committee for awarding the prize to Obama was: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Come on, give me a break - perhaps we should start giving performance bonuses in corporations base on "hopes" promised by managers instead of results acheived by the managers!!

 

I think President Obama should not accept the award, as I am sure he knows he has not acheived anything yet to be deserving of the Nobel Prize. Something slightly similar happened to me many years ago, no I was not nominated for a Nobel Prize but my boss wanted to give me a Mercedes Benz car when the credit card business I was then managing acheived over half a million cardholders. In those days 500,000 cardholders was alot for any card business. I turned down his generous offer of the Mercedes Benz because I thought it was unnecessary as I was just doing my job for which I have already been paid a salary and bonus and also already had a company car (a Chrysler!). Further, it was not fair to the other General Managers of the other businesses in the bank who may be working as hard but perhaps due to the circumstances affecting their business could not acheived as outstanding a result and as such not been "offered" a Mercedes car. So I told my boss I would not accept the award of the Mercedes Benz. Yes, I know that a Mercedes is not the same as a Nobel Prize but the same principle should apply - one should not accept extra "awards" unless it is a really outstanding acheievement way and above your normal call of duty. So Mr. Obama don't accept the award, I think you will be regarded more highly if you demonstrate this humility. By the way, what are you Mr. Obama going to do with the $1.5 million that comes with the award, haven't heard anything on this yet!

 

A previous Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire has criticised the decision to give Obama the award. Mrs Maguire said she was "very sad" to hear of the award. "President Obama has yet to prove that he will move seriously on the Middle East, that he will end the war in Afghanistan and many other issues," Mrs Maguire said. "The Nobel committee is not meeting the conditions of Alfred Nobel's will, because he stipulated that the award is to be given to people who end militarism and war and are for disarmament."

 

"So soon? This is too soon. He has not yet made a real input. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act." were the comments from former Polish President and Nobel Prize Winner Lech Walesa.

Here's a comment from a Journalist of the New York Times: "So what do you think of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? I'm nonplussed - I admire his efforts toward Middle East peace, but the prize still seems very premature. What has he done?... Shouldn't the Nobel Peace Prize have a higher bar than high expectations? Especially when there are so many people who have worked for years and years on the front lines, often in dangerous situations, to make a difference to the most voiceless people of the world?"

 

An U.S. television Fox News journalist commented: "President Obama has broken new ground here. Nominations for potential winners of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ended on February 1. The president took office only 12 days earlier on January 20. Let's take a look at the president's first 12 days in the White House according to his public schedule to see what he did to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize: January 20: Went to a parade. Partied..."

A conservative commentator wrote: "Isn't it so fitting? From community organiser to Illinois state senator (present!) to US Senator for 143 days before moving into the White House, and now, the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize - not for anything he's actually done, but for the symbolism of what he might possibly accomplish sometime way off in the future."

             Singaporeans must have the "honor" of being the the only nation in the world that sing the national anthem without knowing the lyrics and the meaning, most of us just fake the words!! In a survey carried out by the local newspaper only 20% of the respondents got every word right, most of them could remember 80% of the lyrics whilse an astonhishing 12% of them only can recite the first line or less! The primarily reason for this is that the national anthem is in Malay, which is Singapore's national language, but unfortunately most Singaporeans are not conversant in Malay resulting in the problems with coming to grasp with the National Anthem.

 

In fact, in the recent F1 event, the singer for the national anthem messed up the words sung at the start of the event - and the singer was a Malay and as such was singing in his mother tongue!!!

 

The interesting thing about being able to adlib the national anthem has a similarity in the corporate world. Most companies have values, vision, mission, strategic intent, and many other cliches. Like the Singapore National anthem, employees of these corporations can recite these slogans without really embracing and understanding them. The reason for this is that most companies with such "statements" do not really live them, they are just there - take for example a Bank which I had worked for whose Strategic Intent is to be the "best international" bank. Despite this ambitious intent, it was almost impossible to get funding to improve technology, build brand, enhance service and so on.

 

The "slogans" are always talked not acted upon! Special events are held by companies to promote them and bosses are always pleased whenever a huge numbers of staff turn up for such events. These bosses are blind to the fact that most of the participants are not even listening to the speeches by seniors extolling the corporate virtues and worse most of the staff turn up only for the free food and free giveaways.  Further has it occured to these seniors that the huge attendence at these events were "forced"? When I was the CEO, I eliminated what we had known as Town Hall meetings for the above reasons, if we need to impart values and such we should do it every day by what we, the seniors say and do.

 

  I had such vision statements when I was a consumer banking head in a U.S. multinational - it is know as the 4 aspirations. I thought it worked very well because everyone must know them. To pass probation every person, irregardless of rank, in the organisation must be able to recite the 4 aspirations and will be tested on the meaning by the Service Director. We not only "talked" but was relentess in pursuing our aspirations, investing in service and technology, putting time and effort into building up the team and acheiving growth. We succeeded in building the Taiwan business into the largest card business for that bank, outside the U.S.! We made a song out of it, which I recalled we had a good time dancing to!

 

 

 

 

China recently celebrated its National Day, I was very impressed with the precision marching in their military contingents - a level which even the British, the Masters of Military ceremonies will find it hard to match!!

 

On the topic of China, it is interesting that most of us Chinese our attracted to Western Culture when we should be learning more about our own Chinese culture which I find there is so much more depth. I regret that I do not read Chinese and that my only way to learn more of the culture is through books on China published through the Western text. It is sad that not only the Chinese but most Asians do not spend enough time exploring their own culture but gravitates towards the allure of Western culture, which frankly does not have as much depth.

 

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a Japanese staff - I was recommending to her to read the Book of 5 Rings, a Japanese Book on the way of Samurai. On my next trip there, she told me she bought the book from Amazon and was reading it. I was surprised and asked her if she bought the English version from Amazon and she replied in the affirmative. I asked her why she did that when the Book of 5 Rings is a Japanese Text and she could probably have bought it from any Japanese book-store in the original text, she was surprised by my question as she never thought about it!! 

 

We Asians should be very proud of our History, Culture and Traditions. For those of you skilled in your native language do invest the time learning more about your roots then wasting your time appreciating other cultures, of course you may do that if you already have a very deep understanding of your own.