Today’s Reads (Mar 15)

• One Subject Schools Should Teach

  from Stressed Teacher

• Questions for Oral Answer: 27 February 2007

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Supplemental Question: 27 February 2007

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Life sciences achievements in Singapore

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• Never Let School Interfere with your Education in…

  from Simple is the Reason of My Heart

• Singapore, Start Your Engines

  from SingaporeSurf

• On Life, Work & Study

  from Mr Wang Says So

• If you choose to leave…..

  from Diary of A Singaporean Mind

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The Grey Man In A Black & White World.

Have you noticed how people these days are increasingly perceiving the world only in terms of black & white? The trend is every where these days, in newspapers, magazines, TV, blogs and even in ordinary day to day conversations. It’s a litany that typically gets played out too often. Even our minds are resigned to it, filtering it out automatically, hardly even registering its existence. Like the imperceptible hum of our computers, finger nails growing or even the fire extinguisher, one doesn’t really notice it. Till now of course, because I am going to ask you to tune in to what I am talking about, the black & white world.

If you are wondering what the babble is. It’s called post realist speak. Which tells us all, we are either plugged in or out, connected or offline, hip or square, globalizing or dinosauring, progressing or regressing, competitive or vegetating, enriching or disabling, enlightened or dimmed, successful or failed, right or wrong, moral or immoral, with us or against us.

Crazy Horses! For Courses in Public Administration 101.

A peachy derriere, long legs, flaxen mane and a winning smile definitely sets the hearts racing. Evidently this wasn’t enough for the crazy horse show to succeed in Singapore. By now you have probably heard, they have packed up like a traveling circus and galloped off to greener pastures. It’s left me quite speechless. I even feel a bit hoarse (no pun intended). What went wrong?

Well its quiet simple actually. They just couldn’t cut the circuit – that in showbiz talk simply means they didn’t manage to break a leg. In book sense, they didn’t manage to turn in a healthy balance sheet. So their local partners Eng Wah Group decided to rein the show and call off the race.

Was it a surprise? After all we know horses can’t dance for nuts. They have two left legs, not to mention those long faces they don’t even need to pull. So maybe it’s just a case of plain old miscalculation. The wrong fit so to speak. Or was it really? Besides what’s the big deal? Thousands of businesses open and close every year in Singapore. This is just one of many; a drop in the proverbial ocean. Hardly even a reflection on our ineptitude as a glorious efficient and corrupt free capitalist cosmopolitan city state. That’s only true if you believe we don’t need to consider the Crazy horse show in the larger context of the scheme of things, such as the planned integrated resorts project (IR) that in the pipeline. Can we really afford not to take a deeper look into the anatomy why the Crazy horses show failed?