Introspective

Just touch down from the airport and had taken a response to some of silly emails which some requests really irks me how stupid can their brain get, fancied asking me questions that are so fundamental and some of the questions were indeed covered in my training. Really an insult to my method of teaching. *hng

This Korea trip had brought me some insight on how potential their domestic market can be, picture the domestic opportunities and possible merger with North Korean in 10 years will kinda frighten you how massive their market is going to be. For example, the vehicles on the streets were all Korean's made, the electronic likewise became part of them accessories. North Korean also made their own products for domestic usage, but what so successful about the South Korean is their ability to bring their products outside. That came back to the ultimate question why Singapore unable to churn similar manufacturing capability. Population wise we were small, so car making is obviously not a lubcrative business. But we could build something other than cars? Insteads of allowing domestic SMBs to nurture themselves, our high rise rental coupled with salaries upheaveal in the 90's had triggered an ripple effects on the manufacturing sectors that we began to realise how "incompetitive" we were against our neighbour in particular China. Remedy by importing cheaper labor did not help but harm our job pool, while these Foreign Talents show extreme willingness to work with lesser wages than a
Singaporean. It a sight of bringing the "cost" down.

But the Korean's union were strong and swift to react for equal worker's rights when exploited by corporate's greed. While Singapore's worker union resembled a dog with muzzle did shown how much we bend to get investment from foreign MNC. Introspectively, there were couples of things we were pretty similar to. For example, the same amounts of red tapes and beaucracy in administration, the government linkage in some major industry likes Temasek in SG and SK in South Korea. The men on both ends were drafted to the armies to defend our borders. Korean defends against their North Korean cousin while Singapore defends against so called "muslim" countries (such inhumility). The similarity goes on....but one thing that Singaporean cannot bring forth is the pride of the being korean than being Singaporean.

I am for one is a prime example of a misfit child in single political serving nation [taken from Fight club, single serving meal] haha, the more i fly, the more i hate this island. Sorry folks...i confessed today because i watch a really darn good movie last night after packing my pack not knowing if i could get a flight back to boring SG as i took Korea Air (1 flight per day) All flights were full and i had to force myself to wake up early to call the Korea Airline to see if i got allocated to a seat. Its was my lucky day i guessed, with the help a nice korean gal in the business center.

Let's digress to the movie part. Actually i had brought this DVD movie from the electronic shopping center that Min Sun brought me along, i found "The Motorcycle Diaries" at a media shop selling at 15,000 won. It was a "soon to be pop sub cult" movie that got some raved reviews which i just barely knew that it was just a movie depicting the journey of Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado in their battered Norton bike trekking from Argentina and way up to Peru to explore their south American world. A beautifully crafted movie which had historical showed how the two young Argentines who began with a journey in mind and went parallel ways after the trip. Granado devoted his medical work in Chile while Ernesto Guevara who was the man who wanted to bring equity in mankind and hope to find cure in leprosy in America had later went on to became Che Guevara, a revolution hero in Cuba while fighting along side with Fidel Castro. The movie was vividly created with the assistance of senor Granado and guessed who on board on this production? Robert Redford was executive producer for this entire making. If u like deep movie with intelligent thoughts, then this is a must have collection.

While taking my flight home, i was seat between a senior korean couple and a young pretty korean mom with her kid [hey her finger had no ring! haha] Anyway, i assisted them on the entry card filling as Singapore were all english based, then i realised the birth date of the beautiful korean mom...8 august 1973..kaka so shameless. She was so tender with her 2 yrs old boy....such motherly love. And the old couple thanked me sincerely for helping them filling the entry forms and too bad i dun have too much of a korean to respond. But one thing strike me was the old couple start to discard LOTTE chewing gums...i explained to them that bringing chewing gum is fine but you cannot sell them, thats all.. feeling unconvinced, they insist on discarding the gums.... which lead to think what kind of images Singapore had portrayed itself in the international fabric? Its such a shame that foreigners had to harbor such fears when they visit Singapore. I already seen thru the rots when i was in Polytechnic and now my hatred just grew deeper as days past.

Maybe, one day i will have my own version of my motorcycle diaries across various continentals... except mine will be a BMW bike....instead. :P