I recently fell out with my primary school friend of 30 years. We used to hang out a bit after we started working but after a few years she “dropped” my friendship. Anyhow I was surprised when two years back she started calling again with an intention to reconnect. But this time round it was different. She began asking me for contacts, connections and if I or my company or any of my bosses could recommend business to her husband. The calls and requests became increasingly blatant and demanding as time went on. At the same time she began revealing her financial situation. Though she and her husband had professional qualifications, what could only be concluded as lack of financial planning form the on set had led to virtually no savings upon reaching middle age. What was worse the company she was presently working in was beginning to shifts departments overseas. Hence the cushy comfortable corporate job that she thought she could retire in did not seem such a certain bet. With very little skills to her credit, and being told that her existing skills were not relevant to the current job market, she came to the conclusion that it was only going to be through contacts that she could ever hope to find another job. Hence the calling up of every acquaintance and even people she had previously not wanted to be friends with for job openings. When I told her that, “Hey, in life we need to depend on ourselves, “ she readily replied ,” Yes we need to depend on ourselves, but surely we also can depend a little on our friends.”

Because she asked I told her a little of the industry I was working in. She knew of our stress and long working hours, and I told her she had to be prepared to work hard. However, she laughing brushed off my statements saying, “Oh, its just a matter of talking to your boss, you must have heart to heart talks.” She was telling me that in the corporate world where she came from, those who played the political grapevine and shouted the loudest were those who got ahead. Hard work, skills were not completely relevant factors. “Anyhow, after so long in this present job, I do not think I can or want to work hard or long hours and I have family responsibilities,” she replied. “And what about pride ? “ she once asked, “Well,” I replied, “In my line, the bosses do well, and are as successful as anybody in Singapore, but they are not proud. They are just like you and me. I always supposed it was because they depend on a continued stream of customers for their business, so they are not secure.” “Oh,” my friend replied, genuinely surprised,” that’s not the way in my company. My managers are proud and some look for security. They look down on people who they feel are below them, even though they themselves live in HDB flats.”

Anyhow, one day after being asked one too many times over for contacts and help, I told her, “You held yourself better than me in the past, and now you are always looking at what I have, who I know, and even the things my friends have and blatantly asking me for things, as if you have a right to them and making me feel instead it is my great honour to be giving you something . You are coveting. But if it was me that needed help, I know you will not help me. Please don't act as if the world is waiting to throw money at you, or that you will be doing us a favour if you accepted things from us.” Taken aback, she replied,  “So what’s wrong with that ? Isn’t everyone , people all looking and wanting what another person has ?” “Well,” I replied, “Sometimes we get things because we work hard or invest.” My friend kept silent.

My friend has caused me some stress but her situation were real. She confided that she feared her future. She was afraid she would end up with a job paying her less than half her current pay “ and who knows if your pay would rise from that low base?” With a lower pay, it ment the middle class lifestyle that was already a strain on the family would have to go. I could only guess having grown up in a middle class family, possessing a professional degree, marrying a professional, and having friends in very good jobs and whose lifestyle of branded goods, holidays one also aspired to over the years, one did not expect and certainly found it to be an anomaly to be suddenly in the ranks of the lower earning class - as she poignantly said, “One would think that as you went on in your career, your salary would go higher and higher, but mine is going lower and lower.” The solution she decided, apart from sourcing friends, was to hold on to what was still there and for as long as possible – perhaps a reluctance to acknowledge that the prosperous, comfortable, easy lifestyle of the 1990s was over whilst also feeling any proactive measures on her part would just be too troublesome. At the same time she declared, “I crave money.”  

It reminded me of a verse in Proverbs 21: “²⁵The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour. ²⁶He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.” I thought it curious and interestingly true that sloth and coveting/envy were sometimes related concepts and those that do not believe in working hard may also be people unwilling/ unable to help or give to others.

I guess I’m wondering if  the cushy corporate years of jobs proliferation in the 1990s could have possibly created this narcissism of “you should be so grateful for me working for you” and “here’s to you accommodating my hissy fits and demands” that appears highly incompatible with the new competitive market environment. Alternatively, would pushing/ building for more entrepreneurship and/or an entrepreneurial mindset help us to move away from that ? For the most of us who cannot can be entrepreneurs, we can still adopt a more entrepreneurial mindset instead. You see the entrepreneur is the boss. He travels a harder road but he is the head. This could counteract the feeling that Sg are getting lower and lower or feeling like second class citizens. And entrepreneurs instinctively don’t destroy business because it was so hard for them to start one in the firs place, so there is an appreciation/ wanting instead of a taking for granted/ pushing away  of work/ business. They create opportunities, give jobs and build up teams/ relationships rather than ask for things or bully their colleagues.  Entrepreneurship also teaches us to be humble. As in the words of EDB, they are “beggars” and not secure against the volatile forces of the markets wherein failure is an everyday reality. And it forces people to see the big picture, work hard be self reliant and not talk rubbish or play games. And if you are the boss, or if you one day hope to see yourself as boss, you would most likely like foreign talent rather than oppose them. And since entrepreneurs face or are prepared to face so much hardship to set up their business, they would be less fazed by the competition of foreign talent. And even if they fail in their enterprise and go back to a regular job, there might be more appreciation and humility that there are still avenues to earn a confirmed regular income with relative ease, even if it ment retraining.

Once I had a China doctor who taught me Chinese. After the lesson we would talk about health. She also told me on coming to Singapore that she also tried her had at sales in Giordano. I realized that even though very highly educated and intelligent, these China people did not adopt an entitled attitude. For one, working in a company in China is sometimes was akined to sweat shop labour. Also no matter how smart you are, like if you had an IQ of 200 but were born in a rural village, you could still end up being a farmer. And since Singapore did not recognize her China medical qualifications, she was quite willing to work as a sale assistant. I know she often looked at me and wondered if I was born in China, would I even have been a graduate. The fact that we are who we are today and have our jobs is largely due to the development of our society. There is nothing so precious about ourselves except that circumstance and opportunity had come our way. And jobs being not so readily available, there was every incentive for the average citizen in China to consider setting up their own business. Perhaps it is because of this insecurity, the even the rich Chinese  save hard. Perhaps for them, given an unpredictable society, their wealth is their only strong fortress. As opposed to Singaporeans, perhaps our social framework is strong, our society stable, our rule of law established, jobs aplenty, we don’t save and see it nothing to take out mortgages, splurge our first income on branded goods or aspire to luxury. As such we may suddenly find ourselves in mid life with little saved for changes that might occur.

Man always started as an entrepreneur. That was also how Sg started out. The failure rate is very high, but say like the Youth entrepreneurship programme, if it only starts with a $5,000 grant, is that not more worth it to spend on than sending students to Universal Studios ? For those that succeed, like stated in the papers, more can always be given. But for the youths, even failure is not wasted. I was chatting with one of my mature tuition student who works in a printing shop. She was also remarking about the high turnover and attitudes of the young staff in her office. She said the office had to let some of them go. But what was interesting was after they were let go, they went around looking for jobs, and not being able to find any, or finding one that was worse, asked to come back to work. After they had come back, their attitudes changed and they became more humble and hardworking. We also experience a little of the same with one of our youth staff in our previous office. At first she was watching U-tube during working hours and refused to take on her fair share of work. That coupled with continual absenteeism and general rudeness to staff and colleagues, the office decided she had to go. A few moths later after sourcing around, she called to ask if she could come back to work. However  for that instance  the office decided not to take her back. Therefore, say if the young tried their hand at entrepreneurship, would not failure also be a valuable lesson for them ? We could then say, “Look here you tried. You were given some money, mentorship and well you didn’t make it or you only made this much. This is you balance sheet. You know when Sg started out, we had much less than what you have now, only 2 hands, no seed money, no mentor, you see Kepple, PSA, do you see their balance sheet ?  Do you think that’s amazing? Could you do that ? Is this precious ?” They could also share their experiences, failures/ success with their classmates/ friends.

Its very true that in schools, the young now have a different sense of self. I remember during the show Blog TV, one youth was interviewed, and he said “ Our youths today are so educated, so well traveled, exposed and different from the previous generation who did not have our opportunities” ( or something like that). In the past our parents/ teachers told us “If you don’t study hard you will be a road sweeper”. I mean, can you say that to students in school now a days ? You risked being accused of being insulting towards students and demeaning towards road sweepers. Once, one tuition kid told me she was going to lodge a complaint against her teacher. “Why?” I asked, “ Because she called my class “You monkeys”.” I told her “ But in my time teachers also called us monkeys and cows which could chew but could not think. Sometime when our handwriting was bad, our exercise books got thrown out of the window and we would have to fish it from the drain”. My kid was so surprised because you could not imagine this happening in our schools today. In 1997 when I relief taught, there was one student who did not study and every day he would come to school in his Burl Cream hair and Versace glasses. The head of department looked at him one day and said, “Ok young man you may look very handsome today with your hair and expensive glasses, but if you don’t study hard and don’t get a good job and cannot support your family in the future, which girl will want to marry you?” The seemed to have the desired effect, looking crest fallen he quickly buckled down to work. Thing is can you imagine this being said to our students now without some howl of protest ? In our time even though we were scolded we never felt abused or so badly insulted, (perhaps then the we had a strong underlying values system), and ultimately we knew our teachers meant well. But now it seems everything has to be sugar coated and expressions carefully worded to avoid damaging the very fragile sense of self - “Our youths know they have to work hard”. Our MM cannot even make one very obvious and important comment in the interest of the students without some protest – I mean like that it will be hard to progress not to mention the sense of self that our youth today are so very elite and so educated may be nothing more than an illusion.

In the course of my job we were required to deliver a document to HDB. Anyhow the documents were released late by the bank and so we told the HDB frontline officer that it could only reach them by 5.30 p.m. The attending officer loudly demanded that as her work day ended at 5 p.m, and for her to consider our request, she wanted to know who is the head of the banking department and let  the head of department of the bank put in writing the reasons why the document would be release late, stating the internal events that had occurred along the way as well as the step by step banking procedures relating to such a release so that she could access the reasonableness of the request to push back her going home time. I told her that as part of our fees came from the bank it was difficult for us to accede to her request. Furthermore, 5.30p.m was not by any stretch an out of office hour. Thirdly, the sheer audacity of a small frontline staff to expect the head of department of  a major bank to “kow tow” to her,  the demand of which also over stepped boundaries between internal and external protocol between two separate bodies, and for the sole purpose of accessing whether her going back time can be pushed back by a further half hour was stunning, wherein personal preference appeared to be compromised with professional duties. Further, the concept of fairness or equity used was also strange - in her words, “If the head of department did not act reasonably in ensuring the timely release of the document, why should I stay back ?”- and frankly just  not how the way the world works.   

In another instance we urgently required a document from CPF to complete a transaction. The officer told us that the document was ready but according to their internal procedure it had to be manually picked up. As it was an urgent matter involving a couple of hundred thousand dollars, we asked if the officer could make an exception and fax the document, to which the officer adamantly replied, “ I cannot fax. I do not have a support staff to fax for me so you would just have to come down an collect it.” We were all stunned. All the previous bosses that I had worked for and who were as successful as anyone in Singapore had one time or another if the staff was not around and the matter urgent done their own faxing so as not to hold up customer. It seemed remarkable that a small frontline staff  thought faxing was too beneath her a job to do even when the matter was urgent and involved large sums of money and that she needed an assistant to do the faxing for her.

Reflecting, I supposed that our sense of self, boundaries and our understanding of hierarchy has become a little misplaced. Could it also be perhaps due to office bullying that sometimes very menial jobs are pushed to someone to do that is not part of the person’s rank or job scope ? As a result some jobs are shunned as people fear if they take it on they demean themselves or they allow themselves to be ordered or pushed around ? Therefore as good management practice people should be allocated the correct job scope for their rank and position. This will ensure proper discipline. However if a situation calls for you to do something out of the job scope/ rank, one should not push it away if there is no one around to do – its just plain common sense. 

Perhaps the lack of initiative in our students could be traced to the understanding and application of rules (?). In training teachers in pedagogy, my friend told me some years back that teachers are told they will be assessed on how they applied these pedagogical “rules” in class. Perhaps of significance is what the recent top graduate from NIE said in the newspapers, that at the end of the day, these pedagogy are but guidelines and do not replace common sense. Some might apply in classroom and some might not and it is up to the teacher to be able to use/ modify pedagogy effectively/ appropriately. These guidelines should not be applied unthinkingly on a die die must follow what is in NIE text book irrespective of the outcomes. Such an approach would lead to disconnect wherein the teacher just runs on a particular pre-prepared track and the students just sit back and listen. On another level, one also wonders what are rules, their origins and purpose ? Broadly defined, rules are basically for maintaining discipline and social order. However, by say making teaching the following/ implementation of a set of pedagogy “rules” and the harsh punishment of not following these rules (‘mistakes”), the objective would be to create a very efficient/ well oiled  “teaching machinery” and not the maintaining of social order  Put in another way, by turning guidelines and procedure into rules, these rules were thus created not for sake of social discipline or order, but for efficiency, speed, neatness of process etc. But then we need to ask ourselves, by attaining efficiency in such manner, have we not compromise other important “human”  ingredients like instinct, spontaneity, initiative and curiosity ? And for all the mechanical rules created, effective social discipline still has been neglected. For the creation of rules for social discipline, surely it cannot be an ever longer set of detailed instruction of what you can do or not eg. 20 things not to do in a laboratory which students leaders have been made to memorize. I think human beings cannot be disciplined by being programmed with a set of detailed dos and don’ts that only change/ govern the exterior actions . The making  (and underpinning) of social rules involves wisdom as it involves human beings.

It is interesting that under the 1^st chapter of Proverbs, the first advice of the King to his son was to guard against greed :

¹⁰My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.

 ¹¹If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:

 ¹²Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:

 ¹³We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:

 ¹⁴Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:

 ¹⁵My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:

 ¹⁶For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

 ¹⁷Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

 ¹⁸And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.

 ¹⁹So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.

From the above we see that greed brings about unethical/ illegal actions that brings trouble and destruction to a person. It is also linked to bribes. Reading through Proverbs, greed is also linked to sloth, envy and covetousness. We have only to see the effect of the current financial crisis to see the truth of it - one could loose up to everything with greed (“taketh away the life of the owners”). It also states that gain made through greed is “in vain” – as vain as spreading the net in the sight of birds ie. you cannot hope to catch anything. If that be true, then in the same way, one cannot hope to earn anything or build an organisation/ business through greed –instead it will destroy you. It doesn’t promote charity, a strong work ethics or even service. Instead in Proverbs 3, it states that the way to wealth is through wisdom.

¹⁴For the merchandise of it (wisdom) is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

 ¹⁵She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.

 ¹⁶Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.

Hence the actions taken by the MOH to curb greed is a good first step. But  perhaps we should continue as Dr. Arthur Lim said to carefully consider the changes. Discipline is a wisdom and not a simple thing, and in rebuilding/ restoring discipline, I feel we should endeavor to understand correctly what and why it is being done and/or should be done. People should understand these changes were not made lightly or frivolously and harsh punishment is not just meted out arbitrarily or indiscriminately on a wimp or a fancy. Discounting the complicated cases where the hearing is also of social and scientific interest, to be honest if some of the “mistakes” made are so incomprehensible such that your average secretary working in Tuas (not medically trained) will not make, then one must question why it is being done at all.

Remaking, refreshing, reform or  rebuilding/ restoration – no ?

Forgive the rambling or any missteps of tone – my 2 cents worth.