Richard Branson

Live life to the fullest. He is inspiring.

This was the sentence that stuck in me after pouring through the captivating book by Richard Branson, 'Screw it, let's do it', in a way it also recall the Nike advertisement, 'Just do it'. It is such a powerful dictum for the young and fearless. As one aged, one begins to hold back from adventure and challenges. The aged gets to be stereotypical, physically easily tire and less energetic. Keeping young and constantly reinventing oneself becomes a relentlessly tiring process for many. Facing the unknown and unfamiliar becomes evermore difficult, as it is not only cerebrally taxing but also physically difficult. There would always be the question, when are you going to take a rest and enjoy yourself. The relentless would inebriate, "when was I ever not enjoying myself.” A lot of people think that doing nothing is enjoyment.
Branson had defied all the odds and reinvent himself in different areas, from Magazine to Music, from Airlines to train and space travel, from being a CEO to record breaking air-balloon traveler, and his recent involvement as a social and environmental crusader. It is a lot of accomplishment and wonderful experience. All these without a degree or diploma. He was a dyslexic and left school at 15. It seems to prove the believe that if you want to be rich get out of school early and have an early start. So much for people who believe that education is the only way out of poverty.

It is interesting to note that Richard was bad at study but he excels at life. What the school tested was only a certain aspect of life. The education system, then and even now does not appreciate the ability to connect with people, 'mind to mind' and 'soul to soul'. He has the rare power to motivate people to excel against all odd and rise above it. The creative entrepreneur and a creative solution is needed in this information society. The industrial society was a bygone for a lot of country; stereotype solution is not able to resolve the complex situation that we have.

Branson was made to walk 5 miles on his own when he was 4 years old to find his granny by his mum. It seems cruel by today's standard and his mum could be prosecuted. This made Branson to be fiercely independent. Overly protecting our children can only make them unable to stand on their own.
Children need to have courage to stand up to what they believe in. Courage doesn’t just show up, they need to be horned and developed. How many people for that matter can stand up for what they believe in, few. Most will bow down to social norm, the powerful, and the majority.

Word of mouth and direct sale was where the Student Magazine depended on when it was launched. Hard sell was the technique to get sponsors and advertisers. There was a lot of cold call. Success is always about 'keep going and never give up'

There would always be seasons and one must learn when to sow the seed and harvest the field. Timing and understanding nature is important. Going through an education system or examination system, there is a certain rhythm of when to relax and when to make that 100 meter dash. Who would start sprinting at the start of the marathon? The sprinter would experience a burn out. Here is an interesting quote from the book,

'He who work all day is miserable. He who plays all day doesn't pay his bills. The bowman hits the marks, as the sailor reaches land, by having different skills and knowing when to work and when to relax', Egyptian sage.

How to take calculated risk, as we always heard, 'No venture to gain'. So knowing that the world had changed so drastically why are the education methodology still remain the same since our days? Should not we teach our kids differently?

'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure', Mandela.

There is always a need to invest a little in order to make money, but really, not just money, immense time, and effort especially for work in new frontier or saturated market.

'What's money for, anyway? It's to make things happen.'

Branson Project

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPhY0rJJcDo

The Rock Star

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This is a fast killing machine. The bulk of the muscle and the hum thorax, the undulating gathering before the start of the limbs, the bulging femur tapering to the tarsus with long hooks, the sharp sturdy beak, the dark compound eyes, all make up this swift hunter in the air. It can immobilised another insect as large as him. His unkempt hair, symbolised that rawness and barbarism in him. He uses brute force on his prey, with a deadly jab in mid-air using his beak. Avoid him if you want to be alive. He is the dark force that kept proliferation of other species in check. There is no right or wrong in his mental, survival is his motivation, keeping alive is yours.

In fact as Homo Sapien, we call him our friend. He will nap other bacteria carrying flies, sentence them to death and suck them dried. He is built with this singular motivation.
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Education, the old days

I had always viewed education as a very fun activity, although my schooling started with the strictest eastern educational system with most of the lessons conducted in English. It was an exasperating time when Singapore was going through the first 10 years of gaining independence and industrialization, fighting for our survival as a very small country state. We had English speaking campaign. The country deemed it necessary as a communicating vehicle to attract MNCs (Multinational Companies) to set up manufacturing facilities in our country.
In my memory, the furniture in the classes were organized in straight rows, each student was seated with a table in front, and the bags were laid on the floor beside the chair. Everything was aligned neatly. When teachers were conducting classes, no one was supposed to talk or even ask question. It was a very solemn process. I was a very obedient boy, almost motionless when attending classes, did not even dare to look elsewhere except fixated on the teacher conducting the class. If I could, I would not even dare blink my eyes. We were taught to respect the teachers; their words were treated as gospel. Parents were very grateful to the teachers and treated them with utmost respect.
I did well in my PSLE (Primary School Leaving Exam) and was admitted to Raffles Institution. To my horror, this school was very different, students were smart, some of their parents were rich and powerful, teachers were very relaxed in discipline. It was the Wild West compared to where I came from. Where I came from a place that was regimental, strict, austere, revere, and teachers carry canes to discipline students. For the first few days of school, for my small size and loud laughter, a much bigger kid choked me; I was stunted and did not know what to do. Luckily, I sat beside a regular fighter from the same primary school. He was puzzled why I did not react to the boy that was choking me, he probably saw my face turning red, and he started hitting this bigger boy's hand with his fist. The bigger boy released his hands and I went straight to the teacher to launch a complaint about him. I had another shock, he was just verbally warned. From then on, I realized I had to avoid these kids and kept myself out of trouble, because teacher’s responsibility was teaching and students' discipline was not their matters. Learning was very difficult. We seldom had discussion. However, there were a lot of test, especially English lessons, every lesson was a test, otherwise it was the reminiscence of his glorious day of rugby and swimming 20 laps. We learned to be very independent. We did our own research and gathering of information. For geography, we visited embassies to collect phamlets and literature about their countries. We swarmed the library to do research. We were acquainted with the cataloguing system of the libraries. Some even knew where to hide referrence book so that they can have the same book the next day when the libraries reopened. Classes only lasted half a day. We had the rest of the days doing our own games or hobbies. We had more time to ourselves, exploring things outside the classrooms. I was active, playing table tennis, badminton, and street soccer. I took up photography too at the age or 15, went on to win prizes in Photography Salon competition, gave photographic lessons to other students and I was in-charge of the Darkroom. For the digital age, the Darkroom may sound like an application, but it is not. The Darkroom, as the name implicates, is a room that is very dark which is used to process films and printing images on papers, which are coated with light sensitive chemicals. Having a lot of time to ourselves made us learned to organize our own time and extra-curriculum activities. We time ourselves when to mug hard for exam and when to play hard for our games. RI loves rugby. The whole school will throng the rugby field when RI meets the Saint. It was a challenge not only over Rugby but cheering. It was fun. We never worried too much over study, we planned, and we did our research. We developed ways of learning and understood how to answer exam question. One very important thing to remember in exam was to write my serial numbers legibly on the exam paper.

Those were the days. Now things had changed, there were more emails, sms, mobile calsl and world wide web than letter writing. So understanding the intricacies of email writing and leaving text in Social Networking site. A fundamentals of subject has to change.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahTKdEUAPk

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M_336pDWoM

The World is Flat

The World is Flat

Our generation had been able to enjoy a much higher Per capita in Singapore compared to the surrounding countries in Asia. Fresh Graduates in China are paid only about SGD$400, though those from well known university like Fudan can fetch as much as SGD$1000. They are as intelligent if not more intelligent than the graduate produced in Singapore. With information society that is where we are now, geography and place had become a lesser factor as communication technology had overcome a distance. A call center in India answer calls from passengers in Texas Airport seeking for direction. Indian accountants fill up American Income Tax Return within 24 hours. American upload his information and goes to sleep, while the Indian on the other side of the globe to pick it up and fill it up, the American woke up and the Tax Return is done. American lost IT jobs in the thousands to Indian and Chinese. This is not manufacturing jobs. Singapore has lost manufacturing jobs to China and we had not been able to replace those manufacturing jobs, although we had moved up the ladder with high-tech manufacturing jobs, biotechnology, etc. However, the labor demand is such that, the Graduates from Medicine are just “test-tube washer”. That is reality.

Therefore, as parents, we do realize that there is certain inadequacy in the educational system. We should not expect the same system that revolutionized the social structure of the 80s and raised the standard of living for the majority of Singaporean and Malaysian continue to perform perfectly. Such immense system builds up over the years will take years to change, but the world, working places, working methods and working tools had changed tremendously. Emailing is the number one communication medium in working and social environment. Schools do not teach how to write email. As parents I teach them emailing and blogging. As working adults, we spend our time in front of the terminal. How is it that we always discourage children to use computers? We use a mobile and sophisticate PDA. They are banned in school.
The next big relocation of employment is information intensive jobs. They are the sweatshops of information technology. Graduates from India, China, East Asia will compete for them. Our children will compete with them. So the big question is how are we preparing and equipping our children to compete with them? A traditional method of education is inadequate for such task.

We need to be revolutionary parents; we need to see beyond our own history of success and our past experience. Our parents are revolutionary as they see the worthiness of a good education, although most of our parents do not have the opportunity for such an education and they are not as educated as us. As educated parents, what are we doing to our children? Are we only good for following the same age-old method of sitting down study, which they are still doing in school? These are some tough question to answer. One thing, I am sure, the old method of education cannot cope with the changes of the Industrial society to the information society.