The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why is Singapore Not Classified as a First World Nation?”
Singapore was not a First World nation
because it did not explicitly side with the US, NATO, and their allies, against
the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and their allies, the Second World; during the
Cold War. As a member of ASEAN, and the
Non-Aligned Movement, Singapore was Third World. Those terms are outdated since the Cold War is
over. Singapore is, however, a developed
country.
The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do I need life insurance?”
That really depends on how you understand life insurance and how it works. You cannot ascertain need until you have defined the subject matter. In summary, an insurance policy is an exercise to mitigate risk. In your case, you mitigate against the risk of loss of income for your beneficiaries, your family, in the event of your untimely death. Or, you mitigate against the loss of income and the cost of lifestyle maintenance in the event of critical illness or disability.
What the insurer does is take a premium, payable at a set interval, every month or year, from every person who seeks coverage, for whatever reason. At a macro-level, the premiums of these policies are consolidated to service them. In the event that there is a claim, it would be a percentage of all the premiums collected, which the insurer can afford to pay out. In the perspective of the individual policy holder, it is all or nothing. If there is no claim, at the end of the insured period, the policy lapses, or the insurer returns the premiums with or without some dividend. This is dependent on the nature of the policy contract. If there is a claim, the policy pays out.
Now, if you have no coverage, there is nothing to pay out in the event of loss. There is no risk mitigation. Whereas, if you had coverage, even in the event you never claim, you still had that coverage, and the right policy is a financial instrument in and off itself. In modern insurance, you never lose that premium paid. It either comes back at the end of the policy term, or as a claim, which may be many times the premium paid. The exception is a term plan, where there is no claim at the end, the policy simply lapses.
Unless you are certain to live to age 101,
a life policy has 100% claim for death. In
a developed country, because of the excellent healthcare, you are likely to
live long enough to get some form of critical illness. Claim rates for critical illness plans is over
50%. In light of that, I would say that
it is extremely foolish to not have some form of coverage.
There are
words we need to borrow from other languages.
From Turkish, that word of the day is “aşermek”. “Aşermek” is from the Ottoman Turkish یمك (yemek), meaning “to eat,
consume”, further derived from Proto-Turkic prefix, “jē-”, “to eat”. This word is used colloquially for pregnant
women to refer to the food cravings they experience.
The menstrual cycle is a natural part of being a woman. However, in many cultures, it is still
considered impolite to refer to it directly.
The following are some colloquial euphemisms for a woman’s period from
various languages and cultures.
Afrikaans
Granny is Stuck in Traffic
Granny is the Red Car.
Birthing a Blood Diamond
Arabic
The Monthly Habit.
Brazilian Portuguese
I am with Chico
Chilean Spanish
The Rabbit Has Been Stabbed.
Chinese
Regular Holiday.
Little Sister Has Come
The Old Friend Has Come.
Danish
Aunt Red is Here.
Painters are in the Stairway.
The Communists are in the Funhouse.
The Russians Have Arrived.
The Red Sea.
Dutch
Monthly Party.
The Egg Yolk Has Dropped to the Bottom.
English
Aunt Flo / Aunt Flow.
Bloody Mary
Carrie
Code Red.
Having the Painters In
Girl Flu
Lady Business.
Lady Time
Making Wine Tonight; No Stomping on the
Grapes
Monthly Visitor
Moon Time
Mother Nature’s Gift.
No Circus Tonight; the Monkey Has a Nose Bleed.
On the Rag
Red Army / Tide
Riding the Cotton pony
Shark Week.
Surfing the Crimson Tide / Wave
The Blob
The Oven is Being Cleaned
The Red Badge of Courage.
The Red baron
The Redcoats are Coming
Time of the Month
French
Cooking Black Pudding.
Crime Scene in My Panty.
Ketchup week.
Niagara Falls.
Strawberry Season.
Technical Control.
The British Army Have Landed in My Panty.
The Little Clown with a Nose Bleed.
The English Have Landed
VOO (Vaginally Out of Order).
Finnish
Japan is Attacking.
Mad Cow Disease.
German
Monthly Oil Change.
Smells Like Fish.
Strawberry Week.
The Cranberry Woman is Coming
The Red Army Has Arrived.
The Red Plague is Here.
Tomato Juice.
Greek
The Russians are in Town.
Irish
The Decorators are in.
The Painters are in the Hallway.
Italian
Guests / Relatives Have Come (to Visit).
I Have My Things.
Red Sea.
The Flood.
Portuguese
Benfica Plays (Portuguese football club with a red flag)
I am with Chico.
Raining in the Farm.
Red Traffic Light.
The Basin is Broken.
The Home Team is Playing (in Red Jerseys).
Punjabi
Untouchable.
Romanian
Bitten by a Rooster.
I Have Guests.
Russian
Business.
The Red Army.
The Red Day of the Calendar.
Spanish
Defrosting the Steak.
Like a Tomato.
Red Traffic Light.
The Rule.
“I’m with Andrew, the one that comes once a month.” Spanish: “Andrés, el que viene cada mes.”
Turkish
The Motherland is Bleeding.
My Aunt Has Come.
Someone anonymous said, “English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”
And this is why the language is challenging for non-native speakers.
In Portuguese, when you say “Bom dia”, it means “Good morning”. In Malay, when you say “Bom dia”, it literally
means, “Bomb him”.
Is there a word in English, that uses all the vowels, including “y”?
Unquestionably.
The following is the experience of AIA Toastmasters in running our recruitment programme. When we started the term 2019/2020, the base membership was 32. This was due to various challenges we faced, such as the pandemic lockdown. To date, the membership is 48, and will continue to grow in the next few months, with another recruitment programme planned towards the latter half of the term. That is a 50% increase on base. That number will grow by the end of the term. By the end of my term as president, we are targeting a membership that is close to 64, a 100% increase on base.
The following are some of the steps we did to address the situation. They are meant to be replicable by any other club that chooses to follow them.
Objection Handling
We must understand why people leave, or choose not to renew. There are a multitude of reasons, but in the last year, that reason is because of the transition to online meetings from physical meetings. This is easily addressed.
Toastmasters is an executive training programme, with an emphasis on self-pacing, professional growth, and effective communication. This must be emphasised because it has direct relevance to the real world, and not just the bubble of Toastmasters. There is no exercise of leadership, if there is no exercise of effective communication, not just words. In a post-pandemic world, clients, colleagues, and internal and external customers and stakeholders, are used to the convenience of online meetings. People are not going back to physical meetings unless there is a good reason for the commute. Toastmasters, particularly hybrid clubs, are an excellent place to practise both physical and virtual speaking. They are distinct proficiencies.
At AIA Toastmasters, one of the regular training sessions we do is objection handling, and how to turn a “no” into a “yes”. This includes roleplaying, this includes understanding the nature and reason for objections, and this includes discerning the primary motivation for people involved in the programme.
Anatomy of a Recruitment Programme
Most clubs treat speechcraft as a recruitment workshop. The problem here is that they assume people interested in the programme are invested in it. That investment must be earned. A recruitment programme is a recruitment programme. A speechcraft may be part of it, but it cannot be the entire programme. A holistic recruitment programme must have two objectives: they must pay the membership, and they must complete their ice breaker project. People who have done both are likely to be committed.
A recruitment seminar, not workshop, is a session with the sole intent of introducing Toastmasters, and ingraining, into the attendees, the relevance of the programme to their personal, professional, and career development. For such a programme, it is important to get speakers who are entertaining and credible first. There is no point in getting a Distinguished Toastmaster who will put the audience to sleep. There must be some levity, a lot of eloquence, and an overload of charisma.
During the session, teams must be assigned to follow-up on any interest generated. The window of interest is short, and can be from a few days to two weeks, depending on the impression gained. The purpose of the follow-up team is to ensure that they pay the membership, and that they commit to a speechcraft with their peers.
Once the membership is paid, there must be someone in charge of assigning the mentor to the new member. Mentorship assignment is crucial. It is important to understand the motivation, the stature, and the life experience of the new member, and assign a relevant mentor. If your new member is a director, it makes no sense to assign a fresh university graduate. There must be some compatibility, and growth in personal development. Clubs that lack mentors of calibre should ask the Area Councils for help, or go higher. This should be done quickly. Within three days of membership being confirmed, the mentor should have made contact with the protégé.
The next step is for the member to be prepped and motivated to give their first speech. This is where we have our speechcraft programme. This is done two weeks from the recruitment session, to give the follow-up and mentorship team time to settle membership and administration work. The purpose of the speechcraft workshop is to explain the importance of the first speech, and explain the elements of a good ice breaker speech. The ice breaker speech is the speech that we will use throughout our lives, when we introduce ourselves to different people.
The new members will then have a week to work on their ice breaker with their mentors, and present at the second half of the speechcraft, which is essentially a speech marathon. Since every member is doing their very first project, this reduces the stress and fear factor. This gives them the sense of graduating, and being part of something.
The timeline, from execution to speech marathon, is around 6 weeks. The planning beforehand takes around 4 weeks. This includes time set aside for the dry run of the recruitment session, and all the workshops. We need this to be done as professionally as possible.
Successful execution of programmes like this require a dedicated team,
and sound planning. It is important that
we plan as if we are going to war, because in a sense, we are. Not all clubs may have the depth of
membership, and the institutional values to carry this off at the first
time. It is important to look at club
development as a gradual process and build capabilities, and bank institutional
knowledge. This can be hastened by
combining with other clubs, or getting experienced external Toastmasters
involved.
The word “male” is from the Latin “masculus”, which was then shortened in Old French to “masle”. Old French eventually dropped the “s”, and it finally became “male”, in Modern French. “Masle” became “male” around 14th century, after a long use side by side with “male”. It was then ported to English with the Norman invasion of England, and that is how we use it to refer to a male of the species.
The word “female”
also has its origin in Latin, and comes from the Latin, “femella”, or
the diminutive “femina”, meaning “woman”. “Femella” then came to English as “female”
through French, “femelle”. “Female”
never had any etymological connection with “male”, and “fe-“ is not a prefix.
The word “woman” is actually unrelated to “man”; they have different origins. The term “man” is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root “man”, and there is a story to it. In Hindu mythology, as found in the Matsya Purana, from the latter part of the 1st millennium BC, Manu is the name of the progenitor of humankind, who survived a great flood, in a boat, pulled by a horned fish to safety. He lands on a mountain, restarts civilisation, and gives mankind laws. The Sumerian flood myth dates from 1,800 BC. This is the likely origin of the story of Noah (a.s.), which shares many of the same elements.
The term “man”, and words derived from it, can designate any, or even all of the human race regardless of their gender or age. In traditional usage, “man”, without an article, itself refers to the species or to humanity, mankind, as a whole.
On the other hand, in Old English, the words “wer” and “wif”, were used to refer to “a man” and “a woman” respectively, while the Proto-Germanic “mann” had the primary meaning of “adult male human”, but could also be used as gender neutral, as is the case with Modern German “man”, corresponding to the pronoun in the English utterance “one does what one must”. It is from “wif”, that we get “wifman”, which is the origin of the modern “woman”.
As such, the etymologies of the two words
are distinct, and their modern co-relationship is a massive coincidence, and a
form of convergent evolution of philology.
The word “woman” is not derived from “man”, and any recent charges of
sexism are born of ignorance, and greatly mistaken.
The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Can parents take out life insurance policies on their children without them knowing?”
If the child is below the age of majority, their consent is not required to take out a policy on them, as long as insurable interest is proven. Parents have insurable interest on their children until they start working.
Once the child is considered legally an
adult, which may vary from 18 years to 21 years of age, depending on where you
are, their consent is required for such a policy, and they will, as the life
insured, know about the policy.
The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why does Singapore not send back all the foreign workers, and take in Rohingyas for construction? Singapore can earn more since we do not have to pay them. We just have to give them food and shelter.”
Are you suggesting that Singapore take in refugees, and turn them into slaves? This is not 1000 BC, and we are not building monuments to the god kings. This is the 21st century, and we are building modern infrastructure, using modern technology. We need semi-educated and educated people to operate machinery. That is why the work permit system emphasises skilled labour through the different costs of the foreign worker levy.
Aside from the fact that this is clearly against international law, and a violation of human rights, this means taking in hundreds of thousands of people with no related skills, of a different culture, and entirely disenfranchised from the community. Do you know which society was built on that level of slave labour? Ancient Sparta. It meant an over-militarised society that needed to put down frequent revolts. Sparta faded away, and became a sort of theme attraction during the time of the Roman Empire.
Slave labour is a disincentive to innovation and technological development. That is the opposite of Singapore’s values. Slaves need to be fed, with little return on investment, since educated slaves will revolt, and create disorder. Either way, the cost benefit analysis is not attractive. In a modern capitalist world, slavery does not work, and that is why it really died. During the American Civil War, the slave-holding South was always going to lose to the industrialised North. Slavery was a disincentive to industrialisation. This would guarantee Singapore eventually fails.
Singapore is an
exercise of social engineering on an industrial scale. It would not make sense for us to undermine
that by taking in an entirely new group of people, from a source of labour we
have little interaction with, and destabilise our social contract. Foreign workers come here for a better life,
acquire skills, and bring it back home.
The absolute best and brightest stay and apply for citizenship. Refugees, especially refugee slave labour,
are here to stay. If they are
problematic, they cannot be repatriated anywhere. There is no work permit to cancel.
