Snap

A few days ago I asked my editor if I'm going to learn anything new (translation: Please give me something new!) and I think she detected the poorly masked desperation in my voice, because the next day she arranged a two-day tour at the photodesk for me.

Will write about it some other day.

Maybe we can, maybe we can't

"[Temasek and GIC] are in fact well-positioned to buy good quality assets at prices that are attractive from a long-term perspective."
- Senior Minister of State for Finance Lim Hwee Hua

Let's look at their "good quality assets":

1. Merrill Lynch had been taken over by Bank of America, BofA had to be bailed out by the US Government.
2. UBS just posted the worst loss in Swiss corporate history.
3. Citigroup is splitting in two.
4. Barclays wrote down 8 billion pounds in 2008.

And I personally believe that their loss is actually much more than being reported, for several reasons:

1. The S$58 billion loss was only recorded between March and November last year, meaning that it has not even taken into account losses from December onwards.
2. It has not taken into account losses made by the GIC, another sovereign wealth fund that probably handles even more money than does Temasek.
3. They keep comparing their performance with the MSCI Singapore and Asia ex-Japan indexes because they said 60 percent of Temasek’s assets are in Singapore or Asia. Why are they comparing it with those indexes when their losses were concentrated in the US and Europe? If 40 percent already translates to S$58 billion loss, I dare not imagine what it’ll be like for the remaining 60 percent. Asian stocks generally track the US stocks, which are generally in bad shape, so that doesn't bode well to their "long-term investment".

The Straits Times, The Business Times and Channel News Asia all downplayed the loss, like it's perfectly normal to lose S$58 billion in 8 months. And they don't answer the most basic question of all: How did these really smart people lose so much within so short a time frame? What happened to accountability?

A netizen commented on The Online Citizen that Temasek and GIC should peg their performance to the top 10 percent best performing stocks in the indexes, instead of the average performing stocks, because after all their pay is pegged to the top 10 percent highest earners in the private sector. Singaporeans don't pay ministers millions of dollars a year for them to deliver an average performance.

Is change possible?

Read and don't blink

I went through an entire day's worth of hospital check-ups on Monday and was finally diagnosed with bladder inflammation. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it. I was sedated for one of the check-ups, but I suspect they really used horse tranquilizer because I was knocked out cold within 15 seconds. Anyway I should be fine after eating some medicine for a few weeks.

I think I've gotten past the steep part of the learning curve in my internship, and it's kind of plateuing now. The good thing is that it means I've gotten the hang of things. The bad thing is that I'm getting slightly bored because I like routines as much as I like getting bladder inflammation. I am the first intern from NTU in Reuters Asia, so there's noone to compare notes with. I'm essentially my own bell curve. It's like being thrown into the deep sea and you have to swim or drown, but while you swim you look back and realize there's noone else in the sea. So you swim and swim and swim, till you have no idea how far you've gone. But after getting over the high tide you can't get used to the serene waters, and you can't help but miss the frantic swimming because you're just one huge masochistic freak. Well, I'll probably try to ask my editor to teach me more stuff tomorrow.

Anyway I'm at a point where I wonder if I'm reading way too much news. Every morning before I start work I scan through Financial Times (free copies at work), then I spend pretty much the whole day reading Reuters news, then during breaks I read the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times, for socio-political news and to check the previous day's Asian market wrap-up (IHT has a Business Asia with Reuters section and they publish the Asian market wrap-up every day), and finally on Sunday I catch up with one week's worth of The Straits Times. And still I feel like I'm missing out something because I'm no longer reading the New York Times online, which has excellent multi-media offerings, for lack of mental space.

Think less, do more

Today I slept and slept and slept. I woke up intermittently, sometimes to pee, sometimes to wonder what the hell was I doing sleeping like that, and then I slept again. And while I slept, I dreamed, though I can't remember what it was I dreamed of.

I have been tagged a couple of times on the insidiously viral '25 things about you' on Facebook, but somehow I don't think I'll ever get down to doing it because:

1. I can't even bring myself to read my friends' entire lists (I lost interest after about four to five things, with the exception of two people whose lists I read till the end) and I can't imagine that anyone will be interested enough to read mine.

2. There's something both narcissistic and voyeuristic about posting it on Facebook, because we're talking Facebook here. Your friend's friend's friend can find out that you used to dig out your boogers and have a lunch out of them (hypothetically), and honestly do you really want that?

My ex-roomie said that I tend to give the impression that I am very open to people (which can be true, I do like to get to know more people), and yet I am in fact more closed than most others. Like stretching out your hands yet keeping the most important parts to yourself, because if you give them to others you'll be completely vulnerable and naked in all your weaknesses. I guess that's part of the reason why I'm pretty scared of children. I'm scared that they can see through me and realize how boring I really am.

Just a thought: I can't stand those who whine on and on about everything in their lives, including their internship. Whenever someone complains about how bad their work is, I always think, so what are you doing about it? I think many people see complaining as a right, but it's not true. Complaining is an earned privilege. I honestly believe that you only have the right to complain about something once you've tried your best and still failed.

Don't have enough things to do? Ask your supervisor for more work then.
Don't understand something? Ask your supervisor or colleagues then.
Don't have enough friends at work? Make the first step then.

They all seem like a no-brainer, really, but I know applying them in real life is a different matter altogether. My friend said once that "when we try too hard, it always shows." It's one of the sad little paradoxes in life. When you really want something, you have to give the impression that you don't want it all that much. Not that I'm saying we all should be great pretenders, but I think we should take ourselves less seriously and learn to let go. In fact, the past few months have made me realize that the less I expect, the more I receive.

Brain bubble bluff

As I looked through yet another profit warning report, yet another billion-dollar company loss, yet another horror report of GDP/export data/manufacturing output/business confidence/home sales/consumer sentiments, I can't help but think that finance is one gigantic bubble of bluff.

It has recently been scientifically proven that our brains are wired to bubbles. Our brains are not programmed to internalize the concept of 'satisfaction'. This scientist likened risk-taking to responding to a light stimulus. At first, the light seemed really bright, but after a while our eyes adjusted to it and it'll take even brighter light to bring about a change in our action.

And I can't help but think that certain professions are high-price-low-value (as seen on an Aberdeen advertisement on MRTs:"Price is what you pay, value is what you get"). People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a degree, and then they go into fields like investment banking and squander off billions of dollars. Professor Nouriel Rubini of the New York University said that finance is a system where "profits are privatized and losses socialized." When you measure the benefits that finance brings to society, you'll realize that they are very concentrated to the point that the larger society doesn't benefit at all, and in fact is made to foot the tab when things go wrong. We have retirees who end up with complex securities in their balance sheet when all they wanted was a low-risk investment instrument. Somebody somewhere will inevitably ask: "Who screwed up?".

To be fair, not all the fault lies with the banks or the investment institutions. After all nobody pointed a gun at somebody to get home loans to buy a house that is five times their annual income, or to buy investments that they hardly understand. The age-old defense comes up to mind: When there is no demand, there won't be any supply. Well basically people can argue on and on and still fail to reach a conclusion. Fact is that there is no conclusion.

At times like this I do think that the road sweepers, the cleaners at food courts, the toilet cleaners, the security guards and so on are actually doing much more for the society. The benefits are direct and tangible: if not for them, the roads and the food court tables and the toilets would have been covered by filth, and some robber might have broken into your office building and gotten away with the photocopy machine.

Someday I'm going to read this and wonder

1. I got mistaken for a teacher twice, a doctor once and recently an accountant. Teacher is still all right, and I've once harboured dreams of becoming a doctor, but accountant is really taking the cake. Which part of me looks like an accountant, I ask you? Do I look like I have an affinity with numbers? So far no one has guessed correctly that I'm going to be a journalist, which probably doesn't bode well for my future profession.

2. I don't like kids. I don't like noise + kids make noise = I don't like kids. Rachel Prevette once asked me why I'm not a teacher, and this is the reason why.

3. Today I discovered that my friend is my closet soul-mate. We're both ENTJs, sometimes ENFJs, on the Myers-Briggs Test. But the one that sealed it was when I found out that her MSN address is "coldice86". Mine is "solid_ice07" (we both got our MSNs when we were going through that dark period of identity crisis called being a teenager).