Fwd: Resting in peace

Diya

I'm sitting just outside Changi prison and museum. It was a very emotional journey darling. But first a bit of history as you like history. You're such an amazingly unique little girl. Most other girls are pining over ponies and dolls while my wonderful girl sits in the corner and quietly reads about history.

The Japanese invaded Malaysia and Singapore. There were a ton of British and commonwealth soldiers who slowly withdrew down the spine of Malaysia and then went into Singapore. The Japanese kept coming down and then defeated them. The British and allies then fought back in world war 2 and 4 years later after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki the Japanese surrendered.

During the war years, Changi prison was where all the commonwealth and allied soldiers were imprisoned, tortured and killed in their thousands. So when you get a chance sweetheart, do visit here. You will see evidence of how men can be cruel to each other. You can see evidence of how men can be brave and help each other. You can see how women saved their children despite being tortured. Very emotional and history coming alive.

But when I was just exiting the museum, I saw this poster. And that nearly made me cry. Had lumps in my throat.

Extracting economics from Roman marble quarries†

Singapore, for example like other countries, is urbanising extremely fast and is also needing building materials. There are countless stories about how there is a sand mafia, both in Singapore and in India, where rivers and sea shores and beaches are being literally ripped apart to collect sand which goes into the building of infrastructure and houses. Big issues.

Nothing new, see what Rome had to handle...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12375/abstract?campaign=wolearlyview

Urbanization across the Roman Empire created a demand for building materials on an unprecedented scale. Quarrying was largely conducted by municipalities, institutions, or landed aristocrats, who owned or inherited the valuable land from which stone was extracted. By using principles of economics as a guide, and with greater coordination between theory and written and archaeological sources, this article examines the decision-making processes involved in opening a quarry. Theories of economic rationality, resource economics, and statistical methods are helpful for understanding the prices for marble recorded in Diocletian's Edict, Roman jurists’ writings about exploitation on private land, and newly discovered quarries in the region of Aphrodisias, Turkey. Here it is argued that the exchange of local building stone took place in a competitive market where landowners actively tried to improve their financial situation, but did so at considerable risk. At Aphrodisias, examples of failed attempts exist alongside long-running and successful enterprises. Entrepreneurs there did not extract a homogeneous set of resources, but chose to target marbles with inconsistent physical properties at increasing distances from the city in response to greater demand and rising prices. Roman jurists, primarily interested in protecting property value, made landowners calculate whether potential profits earned from sales outweighed the degradation of land.

I found Papa Smurf's ancestor in Singapore

I was wandering around in Singapore's wonderful Asian Civilisations Museum and found this statue of a central Asian Warrior dating to 648 AD. This was recovered from the tomb of Doudan, a general in the Tang Army and a son in law of the Emperor Gsozu.

so now that i have got the history bit out, take a look at him

See? doesnt he remind you of Papa Smurf?

How Intermarriage Created One of the World's Most Delicious Foods

It's fascinating how things come together son. One of my favourite foods since I started working in Singapore is Laksa. It is a totally delicious concoction of noodles tofu chicken prawns beans spices and and and. Add and subtract according to taste and location. Bloody heavy but oh good Lord so bloody delicious. 
By the way the best laksa you can get in London is a tiny Malaysian / Singaporean restaurant off Euston. It's a very basic place. Hardly 20 feet by 8 feet. And they've stuffed few rickety tables and chairs in there. They cook the food in the side of the restaurant and it's so bloody popular that people queue up for hours to get in. Cheap and cheerful. I'll take you there son. 
But this story of laksa is also connected to the spice trade. I'll let you read this story and the map. The author talks about how Indians came to south east Asia and it was fascinating to read how a Malaysian dish in Penang got called as Assam Laksa. 
The last piece is what really got my attention. I've talked about the peranakan culture - the amazing mix of Chinese and south East Indian Malay and Indian cultures. There's a museum in Singapore relating to this culture and it's quite an emotional museum. You can see people from mainland China coming over and then marrying locally. You can see their food. Their clothes. Furniture. The pain and bloodshed during the wars. Absolutely fascinating. And spices ran through it all. 
Hope your first week back at Oxford is working out well son
Love
Baba


How Intermarriage Created One of the World's Most Delicious Foods
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-intermarriage-created-one-of-the-worlds-most-delicious-foods
(via Instapaper)

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Laksa is said to get its name from the Sanskrit word "lakh," which means 100,000. (Photo: InterContinental Hong Kong/Flickr)
A few things are definitive of an afternoon on the coasts of Southeast Asia: inescapable heat, the smell of the sea, and a steaming bowl of laksa. If you haven't been fortunate enough to sample laksa before, picture an addictively spicy noodle soup brimming with chillies, coconut milk, tamarind and fresh seafood. If you need additional convincing, laksa was ranked seventh on CNN's list of the World's 50 best foods in 2011.
There is nothing quite like laksa, and no two laksas are the same. The soup can be found in different iterations in four Southeast Asian countries, from the coasts of Thailand and Malaysia down to Singapore and Indonesia, but its origins are more elusive. Where did laksa really come from, and how did it spread through all the regions that now claim it as their own?
To begin tracing the laksa trail back through time, we need to plot its three modern variations—curry, Siamese, and Assam—on the map.

Curry laksa is spicy and likewise includes coconut milk. It is found in Malaysia's Malacca and Johor states, and pops up in Singapore as Katong laksa, and in Indonesia as Bogor, Cibinong and Betawi laksa, to name a few. Each region has added its own unique ingredients to the mix, such as kaffir lime leaves, shredded chicken, or even snakehead fish.

Curry laksa. (Photo: Alpha/Flickr)
Siamese laksa, found in Thailand, contains coconut milk and is informed by traditional Thai flavors such as red curry paste, while Assam laksa (which has tamarind but no coconut milk) is found in the Penang state of Malaysia.

Assam laksa. (Photo: Alpha/Flickr)
Because of all the different varieties, it's difficult to say whether laksa had a specific point of origin. The history of Southeast Asia has been one of trade, with the port cities of Singapore, Malacca and Penang being major stops along the spice route. As a result, laksa began popping up in multiple regions as the marriage of different cuisines brought over by traders.

A map showing the Silk Road in red and the spice trade routes in blue. On the right, the routes stretch from India down through the Strait of Malacca, past Singapore and Indonesia and up to China. (Photo: Public Domain/Wikipedia Commons)
Southeast Asia had an early period of intense interaction with China and India, which largely influenced the culture of the region, and therefore its cuisine. According to Professor Penny Van Esterik in Food Culture in Southeast Asia, Indian traders arrived in Southeast Asia as early as 200 BC, while the Chinese had settlements in Indonesia by the 16th century.
The descendants of these Chinese traders were called the Peranakans, and the tradition of laksa was born out of the Peranakan desire to marry Chinese food with existing Southeast Asian flavors like coconut milk, and those brought over by South Asian traders, like chillies. Often, the desire to marry cuisines resulted from literal marriages between Peranakans and locals. In Indonesia, for example, the origin story of laksa traces back to the Chinese coastal settlements. Chinese sailors set out to find local wives, and these women began incorporating chilli peppers and coconut milk into Chinese noodle soup. Similarly, the arrival of laksa in Malaysia can be traced back to marriages of Chinese traders to local women in Malacca in the early 19th century.

A Peranakan wedding takes place in Penang, Malaysia in May 1941. (Photo: Public Domain/Wikipedia Commons)
In Singapore, laksa arrived in the town of Katong when the Peranakans travelled down to the island from the Malaysian peninsula. Southeast Asian food expert Dr. Jean Duruz followed a laksa trail in Singapore to uncover that Peranakan laksa evolved with interaction with local Singaporeans. This happened via "[t]raditions of working for, or 'marrying into,' Peranakan families" as well as "rituals of exchange of festive foods and recipes between neighbors," writes Duruz in The Taste of Retro: Nostalgia, Sensory Landscapes and Cosmopolitanism in Singapore.
Of all the food that the Peranakans brought with them, it was laksa that spread most rapidly and extensively through trade channels in Southeast Asia. Why? Laksa's wide popularity is largely due to its adaptability, which makes it an appealing meal across many cultures and contexts. Even the name itself metaphorically empowers laksa's cultural flexibility. The word "laksa" originates from the Sanskrit word for one hundred thousand, and refers to the large variety of ingredients used in making the dish. Local women were able to manipulate the noodle soup brought over by their Chinese trader husbands to include their own plethora of existing ingredients. Because laksa was so easily adaptable into new varieties, it was able to serve as a bridge between cultures when traders and locals began intermarrying.
"The successful story of Laksa challenges the idea that people always like to eat familiar food," writes Veronica Mak Sau Wa in Southeast Asian Chinese Food in Hong Kong. There is nothing quite like laksa, and no two laksas are the same. Its unique adaptability is why it was able to build bridges between traders and locals on the Southeast Asian spice routes and continues to cross new borders today.

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History of Singapore

Kids

Here's a short history of Singapore. I will be going there again this year and may well have you join me when I'm there. 

It's a lovely place. Bit humid and far too planned but nice place. Very good food. Very good indeed. Lovely place to walk around and see people, the zoo and the architecture. 

But to know a people you need to know the country's history kids. Singapore is one of the places where a strongly technocratic meritocratic government and society had taken root with a dose of authoritarism. And in return for giving up some of their freedoms, the Singaporeans have managed to have a very good economy. But societal divisions still happen. Recently there were riots in little India. The Malays don't speak to the ruling Chinese. Not that much anyway. Not that there's much to talk about eh? :) 

Interesting times. And good places. 

Love

Baba

History of Singapore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Singapore

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This article's introduction section may not adequatelysummarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider modifying the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. (discuss).(December 2013)

Part of a series on the

History of

Early history of Singapore (pre-1819)

Founding of modern Singapore (1819–26)

Straits Settlements (1826–67)

Crown colony (1867–1942)

Battle of Singapore (1942)

Japanese Occupation (1942–45)

• Sook Ching massacre (1942)

Post-war period (1945–55)

• First Legislative Council (1948–51)
• Maria Hertogh riots (1950)
• Second Legislative Council (1951–55)
• Anti-National Service Riots (1954)

Internal self-government (1955–62)

• Hock Lee bus riots (1955)

Merger with Malaysia (1962–65)

• Merger referendum (1962)
• Operation Coldstore (1963)
• Race riots in Singapore (1964)
• MacDonald House bombing (1965)

Republic of Singapore (1965–present)

• 1969 race riots of Singapore (1969)
• Operation Spectrum (1987)
• East Asian financial crisis (1997)
• Embassies attack plot (2001)
• SARS outbreak (2003)
• 2013 Little India riot (2013)

Timeline
Riots

Singapore portal

• v
• t
• e

The history of Singapore dates to the 11th century. The island rose in importance during the 14th century under the rule of Srivijayan prince Parameswaraand became a port until it was destroyed by Acehnese raiders in 1613

A tale of sales

Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans (Lenape Tribe) in exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders, roughly $1000 in today’s money in 1626 AD.

In 1668 AD, not so far off, the British East India Company got hold of Mumbai for a cost of £10 per year from the British State (who inherited it as part of a dowry of a Portuguese Princess, who won it from the Gujarat Sultanate who won it from the Delhi Sultanate who won it from King Bhimdev and and and you get the idea).

Sultan Hussein Mohammad Shah sold Singapore as a trading place to Sir Stamford Raffles of the British EIC in 1819 for and I quote:

Sultan Hussein Mohamed Shah - To receive 5,000 Spanish Dollars annually
Temenggong Abdul Rahman - To receive 3,000 Spanish Dollars annually

Spanish Dollars, also famously known as pieces of eight. Did you know USA used this as legal tender till 1857? So Sultan would have got about $120,000 per year and a bit less for Abdul Rahman. Pricey, eh?

Nothing common other than these little places were sold for peanuts and now are worth and generating billions and trillions of dollars. Interesting random linkages…

Freeloaders versus good citizens around the world

A question that is so frequently asked in the third world countries relates to the comparison between Singapore and Country XXX about litter. See here for an example. In other words, when you would not dream of littering in a country like Singapore, why would you do so in India, Nigeria or what have you?.

But I am still not sure that littering is avoided in Singapore because their citizens are very heavily brought into the civic sense and have a sense of community or is it the threat of draconian corporal punishment if you spit or litter. My feeling is that it is a mixture with a bit more of the latter than the former, but I am happy to be corrected.

In other countries, public goods are not considered to belong to one self, they do not identify with civic society and thus are very happy to go about littering or spitting. I remember Mish, one of girls I worked with at Solly's, she went to Nepal to teach English to orphans, I spoke to her and she said in an outraged indignant tone after praising them to high heaven, but they all spit so much. As it so happens and what I found out, one does not spit in Brazil, I am afraid. But I digress. Anyway, these people who do not believe in civic society and exhibit littering behaviour are called as free loaders.

For example, if you were not involved or engaged in local government or society, then you would have no hesitation in chucking a stone at the local electronic traffic information board or destroy a bus shelter or throw litter on the ground. Leaving aside the issue of upbringing or culture or what have you, the assumption is that it is somebody else's problem and somebody else will handle it. In other words, free loaders.

But these freeloaders are punished by the law, such as in Singapore, and their behaviour changes. But one interesting question is, what is the reaction of the freeloaders to this punishment and would they retaliate against them? I read about this in the FT recently. I quote:

Students in 16 cities around the world played a "public goods" game, in which everyone is given monetary tokens. They could either keep the tokens for themselves, or put them into a common pot that yields extra interest to be shared between all the players, whether or not they contributed to the pot. After one round, everyone's contribution is revealed and players can "punish" each other by taking tokens away.

Now this was the interesting part where the national differences came through (beware of generalisations, I hate Paris but I love France, I love France but hate them frogs... :)). In countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey and South Korea where you have strong authoritarian institutions (either on the governmental or patriarchal society level), the freeloaders took revenge and hit back at their punishers with the sad outcome that the overall pot was reduced for everybody.

In countries of Western Europe, US, Australia and surprisingly China, there was much less freeloading and more social behaviour, less punishment was observed and the earnings actually increased over time. I think its worthwhile to quote the full conclusion by the study leader:

"The findings suggest that in societies where public co-operation is ingrained and people trust their law enforcement institutions, revenge is generally shunned. But in societies where the modern ethic of co-operation with unrelated strangers is less familiar and the rule of law is weak, revenge is more common."

Curious, no? specially the anomaly around China? But more broadly, trust in the law is crucial for civic society and that will require less authoritarianism, less patriachal behaviour and more individual freedom. For the society to be trusting, you have to trust the individual, to trust the individual, you have to have respect for individual rights. But as long as you have this idea that the government knows best or some weird religion knows best, you will end up with a bunch of anti-social freeloaders who drag down the entire society. But this, this was just an experiment and the results have to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Autocracy,Democracy,Legal System,Liberalism,Singapore

Freeloaders versus good citizens around the world

A question that is so frequently asked in the third world countries relates to the comparison between Singapore and Country XXX about litter. See here for an example. In other words, when you would not dream of littering in a country like Singapore, why would you do so in India, Nigeria or what have you?.

But I am still not sure that littering is avoided in Singapore because their citizens are very heavily brought into the civic sense and have a sense of community or is it the threat of draconian corporal punishment if you spit or litter. My feeling is that it is a mixture with a bit more of the latter than the former, but I am happy to be corrected.

In other countries, public goods are not considered to belong to one self, they do not identify with civic society and thus are very happy to go about littering or spitting. I remember Mish, one of girls I worked with at Solly's, she went to Nepal to teach English to orphans, I spoke to her and she said in an outraged indignant tone after praising them to high heaven, but they all spit so much. As it so happens and what I found out, one does not spit in Brazil, I am afraid. But I digress. Anyway, these people who do not believe in civic society and exhibit littering behaviour are called as free loaders.

For example, if you were not involved or engaged in local government or society, then you would have no hesitation in chucking a stone at the local electronic traffic information board or destroy a bus shelter or throw litter on the ground. Leaving aside the issue of upbringing or culture or what have you, the assumption is that it is somebody else's problem and somebody else will handle it. In other words, free loaders.

But these freeloaders are punished by the law, such as in Singapore, and their behaviour changes. But one interesting question is, what is the reaction of the freeloaders to this punishment and would they retaliate against them? I read about this in the FT recently. I quote:

Students in 16 cities around the world played a "public goods" game, in which everyone is given monetary tokens. They could either keep the tokens for themselves, or put them into a common pot that yields extra interest to be shared between all the players, whether or not they contributed to the pot. After one round, everyone's contribution is revealed and players can "punish" each other by taking tokens away.

Now this was the interesting part where the national differences came through (beware of generalisations, I hate Paris but I love France, I love France but hate them frogs... :)). In countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey and South Korea where you have strong authoritarian institutions (either on the governmental or patriarchal society level), the freeloaders took revenge and hit back at their punishers with the sad outcome that the overall pot was reduced for everybody.

In countries of Western Europe, US, Australia and surprisingly China, there was much less freeloading and more social behaviour, less punishment was observed and the earnings actually increased over time. I think its worthwhile to quote the full conclusion by the study leader:

"The findings suggest that in societies where public co-operation is ingrained and people trust their law enforcement institutions, revenge is generally shunned. But in societies where the modern ethic of co-operation with unrelated strangers is less familiar and the rule of law is weak, revenge is more common."

Curious, no? specially the anomaly around China? But more broadly, trust in the law is crucial for civic society and that will require less authoritarianism, less patriachal behaviour and more individual freedom. For the society to be trusting, you have to trust the individual, to trust the individual, you have to have respect for individual rights. But as long as you have this idea that the government knows best or some weird religion knows best, you will end up with a bunch of anti-social freeloaders who drag down the entire society. But this, this was just an experiment and the results have to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Autocracy,Democracy,Legal System,Liberalism,Singapore

Japan does its first Islamic Finance Real Estate deal

Its catching fire, I tell you. I talked about stuff happening in South Korea and Japan but now I read that

On Monday, the first real estate transaction compliant with Islamic law was struck in Japan, with the asset manager Atlas Partners Japan partnering with Kuwait’s Boubyan Bank to buy three office buildings in Tokyo for 4.38 billion yen ($40 million).
The transaction follows a decision in September by the country’s central bank, the Bank of Japan, to deepen its knowledge about Islamic finance by joining the Islamic Financial Services Board, an international standard-setting body, as an observer. Another government agency, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, also sits on the board as an observer.
he buildings that Atlas and Boubyan bought on Monday were vetted thoroughly according to the standards of Islamic finance, which bars tenants such as interest-taking financial institutions, restaurants that serve alcohol or pork, hotels, cinemas and record companies, and businesses that deal with arms, animal genetic engineering or pornography.
The deal was designed to avoid loans involving interest payments, which are forbidden under Islamic law, or Sharia.
At the end of last year, Japan’s largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ, forged an alliance with Malaysia's CIMB Group to provide Islamic financial investment banking services, such as issuing Islamic bonds to Japanese companies operating in Malaysia.
Daiwa, Japan’s second-largest securities broker announced in August that it would list a Sharia-compliant exchange-traded fund in Singapore based on an index benchmarked to the equities of the 100 largest Japanese companies by market capitalization.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Why are Finland, Singapore.. so good in their education systems?

The Economist has written a big article on how countries such as Finland, Singapore, Canada, Japan and South Korea always come up tops in the PISA surveys. This is taken from a McKinsey & Co survey.

Some shameful commentary:

The British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. “The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions”—you name it, it's been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn't changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.

Simple counter-intuitive analysis. Read very carefully

Now, an organisation from outside the teaching fold—McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments—has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. That may not sound exactly “first-of-its-kind” (which is how Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, describes McKinsey's approach): schools surely do all this already? Actually, they don't. If these ideas were really taken seriously, they would change education radically.

Technorati Tags: South Korea , Japan , Canada , United Kingdom , Finland , Schooling , Education