Toa Payoh South TMC as Toastmaster of the Day, 13th November 2019

On the 10^th July, I visited Toa Payoh South CC Toastmasters Club, as Toastmaster of the Day.  This was my 115^th club visit, on the 135^th day of the Toastmaster Year.

The table topics master was Anthony Leong.  The timer was Emily Xin Qian.  The ah counter was Lye Rong Fang.

Anthony Leong explained the context of Thanksgiving, which is a form of harvest festival.  It is a commemoration of the previous year’s harvest, and to give thanks for the bounty.  In that same vein, it has been expanded in modern society to give thanks for the “harvest” of our social and professional lives in the previous year.

Yamuna gave an impassionate speech about the necessity for schools to prepare children for careers in a rapidly changing economy.  Considering the needs of he fourth industrial revolution, she feels that curriculum has not kept up with this rapid change.  It is one of the great challenges for all stakeholders in the education sector.  She gave a stark demonstration of education, and policy directives, and expounded on the limitations of the system.  She put forth possible solutions based on the experience in India.

Vasanthi Jagannathan Ravi roleplayed as a media representative of an investment bank, at a press conference.  The subject was the misconduct of an investment banker, and how the bank assured the public that it would be addressing this.  This was her take on an event that was in the news.

Joanne Sweti d’Souza attempted a humorous speech about her crushes.  She spoke about the men she fell for, the men who fell for her, and her courtship for her arranged marriage.

The evaluators were Gerald Ong Wen Shun, Sivanesan K. Murugayan, Paulus Gunadi, and Arinjay Bansal.

Best Speaker: Vasanthi Jagannathan Ravi;

Best Evaluator: Arinjay Bansal; and

Best Table Topics Speaker: Myself.

The Artist's Eye

I wrote this poem for my wife, Zafirah Jeffrey, six years ago, when we first got married.

It takes an Artist’s Eye to Draw some lines,

And Turn them into something treasured.

It takes a Master’s Touch to Turn those designs

Into something thus valued unmeasured.

To Shape it thus in that crucible of Love,

To Give it light with that Breath of Life,

To have a Plan Laid out from Above,

When time was ripe, you became my wife.

Your hope in my heart, an enchantment stirred

Of Divine Love and worldly leisure.

Your name on my tongue, the sweetest word,

A key to the Garden of annihilated Pleasure.

The choicest moments were in your arms,

Lost in the embrace of an ocean of ecstasy.

The hint of a smile, the surest of charms,

A remembered road to our destiny.

Imagined Then

This poem was originally written in 1997.  That was a challenging time, when I was younger, less certain, foolishly naive.  And then we live, we get stronger, harder, certain.

Have you ever imagined then?

Have you ever thought perhaps?

The world is just a lie upon

Which hopes wither away mayhaps;

Though given life, false life;

We only want to sleep forever.

Because it cuts deeper than a knife;

The pain of knowing never.

Though I breathe in the present;

I live only in the past.

Though I speak of the absent;

I am absent here alas.

If I could only sleep forever,

I seek this pain would be gone.

Perhaps the words seem so clever.

But the heart behind it is long gone.

And I would dream my lonely dream.

And say my impossible prayer.

And call forlornly though it seems

I forgot to cry so long, not a tear.

And why would it matter to think

That there is a future to hope for.

When it will all be dust in a blink,

There is no heaven at my door.

Only lies and images and a mirage;

Of what was, and was supposed to be.

A flower of hope fallen to the barrage

Of cold certainty from a stormy sea;

Of bitter tears and broken hearts,

And shattered dreams and fallen stars;

Of dark despair so dark in parts.

That there will never be once more

Another flower of hope to bloom again.

Another heart to burn once more.

Another self for another pain.

Andromache Queen

This poem was written in 2010, and is essentially unfinished.  It is about the fall of Troy, and Dardania to the Mykene Greeks, the story of Homer’s Iliad.  The survivors of Troy, led by Helikaon, the last prince of Troy, went on an epic journey west, the “islands” in the mists - Italy.  There, they founded the settlements of the seven hills, which eventually united to form the city of Rome.

Centuries later, it was the Roman empire that conquered the Hellenistic world, and ruled the lands they came from in legend, and the lands of the descendants of those who once sacked the land of their ancestors.  History is a circle.

Andromache Queen, Andromache Queen.

Helikaon speaks from lands unseen.

Troy had fallen, Dardadia dead.

Agamemnon killed, the Mykene unled.

Dying is bliss,

The living is hell

For what we miss,

The dead cannot tell

When hope is lost,

Just come across.

And once you enter,

The pain does not matter

Not anymore.

Not ever more.

We all have a time appointed.

We all have a role anointed.

We are all led to believe eventually;

The pain will stop, physically, emotionally.

But it does not. It could not.

It is a faithless lie.

No soul is given greater than it can bear,

Such a burden, the bottom of the stair.

That when you fall, it will not be to Tartarus.

That fates measure hope against utterers

Of patience and faith and sinners and saints.

But Epiales whispers, and despair taints.

The days are bleak, the nights insane.

One day you are Arkilles, one day Hektor.

One day a saint, one day a sinner.

And every day, faith becomes fainter.

A distant memory.

We have decided after much thought,

For too long the battle has been fought.

That every time one starts to believe and hope,

The sun has risen, they start to cope.

The dawn has broken, the birds about.

The Night is theirs; the stars shine out.

It was all false, it was a mirage.

That in the end, merely a facade.

It was all a faithless lie.

Esquiline tired, Palatine cannot go on.

Aventine wants to sleep forever gone.

And never wake up in earthly bounds.

Capitoline not arise when Remus sounds.

Quirinal tried hard; Viminal can attest.

But in the end, even Caelian Hill failed the Test.

But sleep, and wait and await,

When centuries past, and a new fate,

Those seven hills arose as Rome,

And empire, an imperial throne.

That did go east, to Epirus,

And Makedon, and Thebes,

And take the lands of the Mykene,

So, history repeats, unbeknownst, Mykene.

Separated by a Common Language

One of the strangest phenomena in the magical world of social media, are random Americans from Trump country having issues with my English.  How it hurts my feelings, and devastates my self-esteem, knowing I will never be able to spell as well as these fine creatures from the dark side of redneck reality.  How it diminishes me, and emasculates me, that I will never have the eloquence and mastery of language, as these intimate lovers of their sisters and mother.

I have been told it is “program”, not “programme”; that it is “kilogram”, and not “kilogramme”; and that it is “monogram”, not “monogramme”.

I have advised that words like “sanitise”, “evangelise”, and “romanticise” should be spelt “sanitize”, “evangelize”, and “romanticize”.

I have been harangued on how “colour”, “humour”, and “neighbour” should be “color”, “humor”, and “neighbor”.

I have been lectured on how, “analyse”, “paralyse”, and “catalyse” should be “analyze”, “paralyze”, and “catalyze”.

I have been reprimanded that it is “apologize”, not “apologise”; “organize”, not “organise”, and “recognize”, not “recognise”.

I have been rebuked on how it should be “defense”, not “defence”; “license”, not “licence”; and “offense”, not “offence”.

I have been reproached on the evils of “analogue”, “catalogue”, and “dialogue”; instead of “analog”, “catalog”, and “dialog”.

I have been corrected that it is “leukemia”, instead of “leukaemia”; that it is “maneuver”, instead of “manoeuvre  “; that it is “estrogen”, instead of “oestrogen”; that it is “pedophilia”, instead of “paedophilia”; that it is “diarrhea”, instead of “diarrhoea”; and so many, many, many more.

It is attributed to George Bernard Shaw, that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language.  For this, I must squarely blame Noah Webster Jr., and his jihad against “English” English, and for a distinctly American spelling.  Of course, I fully deserve this for taking miseducated English lessons from people who can scarce tell the difference between “their”, “they’re”, and “there”.  I am amazed at people who know only one language, and yet cannot speak it well.

Quora Answer: Under Singapore Law, is It an Offence to Criticise Foreign Politicians?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Under Singapore law, is it an offence for a person to criticise, or slander, foreign politicians, and heads of states, such as Queen Elizabeth II?” 

No.  Singapore has no such legislation, covering lese majeste, for either external or internal dignitaries.  In the case of a foreign dignitary, there is the Defamation Act, Cap. 75.  However, any such legal proceedings much take place in Singapore, and filed in country.  I seriously doubt someone truly important and powerful would want to fly in simply to sue an ordinary citizen, and undergo the legal process here. 

Defamation and slander is often difficult to prove and even more difficult to quantify in terms of damages.  If the slander is serious enough to impact a foreign head of state, then there has to be some basis of truth or a malicious campaign that would entail the use of laws other than defamation. 

On a related note, the Head of State of Singapore has very stringent laws protecting the dignity of the office.  As per the Penal Code, Section 121A: 

121A. Whoever compasses, imagines, invents, devises, or intends the death of or hurt to or imprisonment or restraint of the President, shall be punished with death, or with imprisonment for life and shall, if he is not sentenced to death, also be liable to fine. 

Essentially, merely fantasising a violent BDSM tickle-fest of the President’s person could carry the death penalty.  And if they have not hanged you, but merely incarcerated you for life, you will be fined. Such an indignity.

Quora Answer: Will Singapore Invade West Malaysia in the Future?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Will Singapore invade and occupy West Malaysia in the future to stay relevant?”

What has occupying Malaysia got to do with staying relevant?  This is the geopolitical equivalent of asking whether a man should burn down his neighbour’s house to feel better about his own garden.  War is seldom the economically viable option, and this particular war is not even a close call.  Militarily, Singapore would likely win every battle, because it fields a vastly superior military.  We would then proceed to lose the war anyway, because occupation would drain every resource we have, and resistance would kill more people than the battles ever did.

“Winning the War” is Not the Same as Winning

The United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in weeks in 2003, a conventional military victory as complete as any in modern history.  The occupation that followed ran for years, costing an estimated 4,431 American military deaths, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, and a total bill exceeding US$2 trillion.  The insurgency killed vastly more people than the invasion itself ever managed.  Anyone imagining Singapore rolling into West Malaysia and simply staying there has skipped straight past this lesson, apparently on the assumption that Malaysians would greet an occupying Singaporean army with flowers rather than the resistance every occupied population in recorded history has offered its occupier.  Why would we want to become the Israel of Asia?  They seem to be making friends all over the world, perpetrating a genocide.

Such an act would isolate Singapore internationally, dissolve every ounce of political goodwill built over sixty years, disintegrate ASEAN outright, and cost us a major trading partner in the bargain.  Malaysia was Singapore’s third-largest trading partner in 2023, with bilateral trade reaching S$123.6 billion.  Singapore was Malaysia’s second-largest partner in return.  Many Singaporeans have friends and family across the Causeway, which rules this fantasy out as a national unity exercise before it even starts.  The realistic outcome is governmental collapse at home and punitive international sanctions from every direction, aimed at a country whose entire economic model depends on being trusted, not feared.  Singapore is a trade hub.  Without trade, this country does not decline gracefully.  It collapses, quickly, and the people proposing this idea would be the first ones asking why the shelves are empty.

The Economic Reality

The continued growth of the region benefits Singapore directly.  When Malaysia prospers, Singapore prospers.  A larger, wealthier neighbouring market buys more of our goods and services, and Malaysia’s hinterland becomes useful when Singapore’s financial expertise invests in it, rather than marches into it with rifles.

Singapore and Malaysia signed the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone agreement on 7 January 2025, at the 11^th Malaysia-Singapore Leaders’ Retreat, signed by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong and Malaysia’s Minister of Economy Mohammed Rafizi Ramli, witnessed by both Prime Ministers, Anwar Ibrahim and Lawrence Wong Shyun Tsai.  The agreement improves cross-border goods connectivity, frees the movement of people, and strengthens the shared business ecosystem.  The Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System, targeted for operation by December 2026, will move commuters and business between both countries daily, permanently, without a single shot fired.  That is how Singapore stays relevant.  Not through tanks and an occupying garrison, but through the kind of economic integration a trillion-dollar occupation in Iraq proved, conclusively, cannot be purchased at gunpoint no matter how badly the invader wants it to work.  We are not the Americans or the Israelis.  We do not solve our problems by bombing people into the Stone Age.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code

Being Retirement Ready

The average Singaporean has not prepared adequately for retirement.  Most people do not fully consider that their standard of living may drop, with reduced income; or that their lifestyle choices will be constrained by their lack of planning.  Retirement planning is, thus, one of the major areas we should look at.

Diamonds are Not “Forever”; They were Never Even Rare

Diamonds are not as rare as people believe.  They rank as the most common of the traditional precious stones.  Rubies, sapphires, and emeralds are rarer, especially at high quality, and gem experts have said so for decades.  The price of diamonds was raised by a monopoly, and by an advertising campaign that convinced people this arrangement was tradition.

The Campaign That Invented a Tradition

De Beers controlled 80 to 90 per cent of global diamond supply from 1888 into the late 1990s, the longest-running monopoly of the modern era.  By 1938, the Great Depression had gutted demand.  Diamond sales were collapsing.  De Beers hired N.W. Ayer & Son, an American advertising agency, with one brief: make diamonds essential to love itself.

Ayer did not advertise a product.  It built a social norm from nothing.  Diamonds appeared on the fingers of Hollywood stars.  Lecturers visited American high schools to teach students that a diamond ring belonged in every engagement.  Magazines ran romantic diamond storylines planted by the agency.  In 1947, copywriter Frances Gerety wrote four words that closed the loop: “A Diamond is Forever.”  Advertising Age later named it the greatest advertising slogan of the twentieth century.

The financial result speaks for itself.  Annual US diamond sales sat at US$23 million in 1939.  By 1979, that figure reached US$2.1 billion.

The “Salary Rule” was Never a Tradition

De Beers introduced a benchmark: a man should spend one month’s salary on a ring.  Sales stagnated.  In the 1980s, the benchmark doubled to two months’ salary, a figure with no basis in custom, invented entirely by ad copy.  In Japan, where De Beers ran a parallel campaign from 1968, the local benchmark reached three months’ salary.  Different countries received different numbers, tuned to what each market would bear.  None of it traced back further than an advertising brief.

The slogan also served a second purpose, rarely stated aloud.  “Forever” discouraged resale.  A diamond meant to last a lifetime is a diamond that never re-enters the market to compete with new stock.  De Beers protected its own pricing power by convincing buyers that selling a diamond back was close to sacrilege.

The Collapse Now Under Way

The empire built on that campaign is coming apart.  De Beers reported an underlying EBITDA loss of US$511 million for 2025, against a US$25 million loss the year before.  Parent company Anglo American has written down De Beers’ value by US$6.8 billion across three consecutive years: US$1.6 billion in 2023, US$2.9 billion in 2024, and US$2.3 billion in 2025, cutting its carrying value from over US$4 billion to US$2.3 billion.  Anglo American’s group net loss reached US$3.7 billion for 2025, driven by that impairment.  Anglo American Chief Executive Officer Duncan Graham Wanblad confirmed the company is in advanced talks to sell or spin off De Beers entirely.

The cause is structural, not cyclical.  Laboratory-grown diamonds, chemically and optically identical to mined stones, now account for more than 45 per cent of US engagement ring purchases, up from 5.2 per cent in 2019.  Lab-grown prices fell 74 per cent between 2020 and 2024 as production capacity expanded by over three hundred per cent.  De Beers’ own realised price per carat fell 7 per cent in headline terms in 2025, and 25 per cent once inventory rebalancing is included.  Pandora, one of the world’s largest jewellery brands, dropped natural diamonds from its collection entirely and grew sales after the switch.

An industry built on manufactured scarcity is now watching real scarcity disappear from underneath its own marketing.  A stone that was never rare, sold at a price justified by a slogan written in 1947, is losing to a laboratory-grown version nobody can tell apart with the naked eye, at a fraction of the cost.  The three months’ salary rule was never a tradition worth honouring.  It was an invoice, written by an advertising agency, and the industry that sent it is now the one going broke.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code

Keep Calm & Brexit

The near-term outlook of Brexit is grim for the UK economy.  There has been capital flight, a drop in productivity, and reduced foreign direct investment.  The thing is, none of the major parties truly give investors confidence.  Any sort of investment in this market has to be long term, and part of an overall diversification strategy.

Quora Answer: How Do Companies Invest in Each Other?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How do companies invest in each other?”

There are several way that a company may invest in another.  The simplest way is to take an outright equity stake in the other company by buying shares in the other company.  By buying a certain number of shares, the investing company can gain a seat of the board of the company invested in.  Such a purchase can either take place over the counter where a company builds its position gradually, or it can be via a direct deal between the boards of both companies. Such a deal involves the transfer of funds or equity instruments such as special share placements.  A company can also take equity in another if the latter is in debt to the former.  The creditor company takes an equity stake in lieu of debt.  But this is only likely if the debtor company is projected to provide a decent return on investment, and the creditor company is taking advantage of the situation.  In such a scenario, funds may not change ownership.

Sometimes, to secure a business proposal, two companies will take equity positions in each other.  This may involve issuing new shares, diluting existing holdings, swapping equity, or variations along these options.  Such a scenario does not typically involve fund transfer.  Another common scenario is when a company, by design, takes a majority stake in a company that is a major shareholder of another company.  This is an indirect way of gaining control of a potential strategic partner or competitor.

As can be seen, in the vast majority of scenarios or their variations, actual funds seldom change hands.  Nobody writes a proverbial cheque.