Chasing The Flame

The Story of Low Wei Jie.

Aug 11, 2010

Who's that boy?

Low Wei Jie keeping up with torchbearer Kwa Chin Lum, 28, as the Youth Olympic Flame passed through the north-east district yesterday. The 12-year-old followed the relay for 21/2 hours, running for 15km in his flip-flops and snapping pictures. (original photo link broken. This is a replacement photo.)


THERE were two constants during yesterday's morning session of the Youth Olympic Flame torch relay.

One was the flame itself, as it weaved its way through Sengkang, Punggol and Hougang. The other was schoolboy Low Wei Jie, 12.

Dressed in an orange T-shirt, blue bermudas and flip-flops, he clutched his digital camera and stuck with the relay.

He ran. And ran. And ran. Over 21/2 hours, he covered almost 15km, undeterred by a heavy downpour along the way.

'When I read in the newspapers that the flame was coming here, I just wanted to see it for myself, and follow it,' explained the drenched Compassvale Primary School pupil afterwards. 'I might never see it again.'

His day had started bright and early at Greendale Secondary School in Punggol, where Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean had passed the torch to Greendale student Yogesh Kumar, whose tag '3001' meant he was the first torchbearer of the third day of the relay.

At first, nobody paid any attention to the boy in the orange T-shirt. An hour later, however, the mystery runner started to get noticed.

'Wasn't that boy present at the start?' asked a cameraman.

The boy would disappear from sight, only to reappear from among supporters lining the streets to snap pictures as torchbearers handed the flame from one to the other.

'I can't believe it, that boy is back again!' exclaimed someone in the relay entourage.

He kept pace right up until the 122nd torchbearer jogged into Hougang Stadium, where the relay paused for a 15-minute break.

It was at the stadium carpark that Wei Jie soon found himself the centre of attention as reporters, officials and Youth Olympic Games volunteers made a beeline for him.

'None of this was planned,' said the Primary 6 pupil. 'I didn't know I was going to run all this way.'

He said he wanted pictures for his scrapbook, and his favourites were shots of two schoolmates who were torchbearers. 'I'm sure they'll like the photos,' he said.

His morning's adventure was not without some pain. His flip-flops may have held up, but his feet hurt, and there were bloodied scratches on his right ankle.

Then he discovered to great consternation that the camera he had borrowed from his parents was not waterproof and had jammed.

'There are other pictures in it that my mother wanted to keep,' he said. 'I hope she doesn't scold me!'

An only child, Wei Jie lives with his parents in Rivervale. They had given him permission to follow the relay, but were surprised to learn how his morning turned out.

His mother Cindy, 45, an operator in a logistics company, said she got worried when she called home and he did not answer the telephone. 'He had said he was just going to run as far as Sengkang and I thought he forgot to take his house key,' she said.

As for the camera, she said: 'Never mind if it's broken. We can always replace it. I'm just happy he's okay.'

At Hougang Stadium, Wei Jie was doing much better than okay.

As word of his solo trek spread, strangers came up to tell him they thought he was something special.

The six support runners who had followed the flame posed for pictures with him, and handed him a spare torch to hold. It was the first time he had touched the symbol of the Youth Olympic Games.

Even the Traffic Police officers who had accompanied the relay got off their motorcycles when they spotted him and came over to do some back-slapping.

'They called me a star,' said Wei Jie.---------

Aug 12, 2010

Wei Jie's now a torch bearer

12-year-old's quest to keep pace with flame impresses many people
By Jonathan Wong

TWO days ago, Low Wei Jie was just another 12-year-old schoolboy. Yesterday, he woke up something of a celebrity.

Yesterday's report in The Straits Times about how he ran almost 15km over 2-1/2 hours trailing the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) torch through Sengkang, Punggol and Hougang moved many readers.

He had run in flip flops, got drenched in rain, and ended up being cheered by YOG officials, volunteers and traffic policemen who had noticed his dogged determination to keep pace with the flame.

Yesterday, the boy from Compassvale Primary School received several pieces of good news.

Best of all: Tomorrow, he will be running again, as an official torch bearer as the flame relay goes through Singapore's Central district.

'I'm quite nervous about the whole thing,' he admitted. 'I hope I don't drop it.'

He was the star attraction when he arrived in school yesterday and was invited by principal Chua Choon Guan to stand before the morning assembly.

According to Wei Jie, Mr Chua praised him as a source of inspiration for the entire school.

Then came news that the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee had decided that he should be given the honour of being a torch bearer.

But that was not all.

Wei Jie, his parents and sister will also receive four tickets to Saturday's YOG opening ceremony, courtesy of their MP for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC, Mr Michael Palmer.

Mr Palmer said reading in The Straits Times about Wei Jie's feat had touched him so much that he bought the tickets as a gift.

'I was truly moved by the courage, determination and passion that Wei Jie has for the YOG. I just wanted to do something for him and his family as a reward,' said Mr Palmer.

'Maybe we should have him in our YOG team!'

Praise kept flowing in from everywhere.

Security manager R. V. Nathan, 60, said: 'I was very impressed with this boy's spirit, that he never gave up. He is a great example for other young children.'

Classmate Heng Jing An, 12, said: 'Wei Jie is a really unique and special person. It's very rare for someone to be so fully committed and passionate about something.'

The school canteen operators offered congratulations. Some classmates chided him for not taking them along.

'They all wanted to know how I did it,' said Wei Jie.

The principal wanted to see all the pictures he took of the torch bearers, 'but I had to tell him the camera was jammed'.

His parents' camera was damaged in the rain, but the memory card that stored the pictures was preserved and by evening, he was able to show off his spoils on a computer.

Both Panasonic and Canon hope to get in touch with Wei Jie, to replace the camera.

Wei Jie's parents, Cindy and Wilson, both 45, said their son's adventure kept them busy too, yesterday.

'Our handphones have not stopped ringing since morning,' said Mr Low, a property agent.

'It's not just our relatives who are calling. Everyone seems to want to talk to him. I'm very proud of him and what he accomplished yesterday. He showed great perseverance.'

Last night, the couple took their son shopping in Hougang for a new pair of running shoes, in preparation for tomorrow's relay run.

Because of work, they will not be able to attend the relay. Instead, daughter Jing Wen, 14, will play photographer.

Asked about being on the other side of the camera, Wei Jie said: 'I think I prefer chasing the flame. But carrying the torch will be a great experience too.'

Aug 13, 2010

Wei Jie can click away again

Young Low Wei Jie may have damaged his mother's camera when he chased after the Youth Olympic Flame torch relay and took pictures in the rain on Tuesday, but he now has a new one.
Panasonic yesterday handed a brand-new Lumix DMC-FT2 camera to his school principal Chua Choon Guan, who then presented it to Wei Jie during an evening assembly at Compassvale Primary School.
It is also water-proof.

Aug 12, 2010

That's the spirit, young man

YESTERDAY'S front-page report ('Who's that boy?') about the spontaneous feat by Primary 6 pupil Low Wei Jie, who followed the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) torch relay for 21/2 hours while wearing flip-flops, was inspiring.

I am certain he did not do it to attract attention. I am equally certain he did not expect his feat to be featured on the front page of The Straits Times.

What struck me was his determination to act on something that was dear to him.

For me, he recalled the refreshing feeling of childhood innocence that many of us once had during a less complicated time of our lives.

I thank Wei Jie for reigniting the fond memories of childhood exuberance.

Perhaps the YOG organisers could consider featuring him as the last runner of the torch relay - surely, a fitting symbol of the passionate spirit of youth.

Derek Lew

How video games changed the financial world

Aug 10, 2010

By John C. Beck

MANY of us enjoy solving an apparently unsolvable problem or finding a way around, over, or through a barrier. This is what humans do - it is how we have survived and adapted. But the activity is now more pronounced than ever - and it is messing with our financial systems.

To explain this, I need to start with video games.

During the last few decades, video games (computer, console and hand-held) have come to absorb the attention of our young more than any other activity. Even children with attention-deficit disorder can play a video game for hours at a time. Equally disturbing, all of this activity takes place during a period of childhood development (from the ages of six to 13) when the neural pathways of the brain are still being formed.

I and others of my relatively advanced years spent much of our formative youth outside the classroom engaged in organised sports, usually refereed by adults, in a world where 'rules are there for a reason'. The video game generation, by contrast, lives in a world of rules that are meant to be broken.

The most important non-school activity for many children is playing video games. And the only way to win in a video game is to break a rule: You need to learn to walk through walls, go down a path that was previously blocked, or defy the laws of nature.

Half of the fun of most video games is in trying to find such loopholes. Even the average player gets rewarded for finding these hidden secrets. And the holy grail of any game is to break the system by finding a bug in it that the designers and testers didn't know about.

In our book Got Game, my co-author Mitchell Wade and I found that people who grew up playing video games had significantly different attitudes in business compared with those who did not. Indeed, the experience of playing video or computer games had a greater impact on how a person behaved as an adult than his social status, education, age, or any other sociologically important variable.

The effects of playing video games at a young age were in many cases positive, creating adults who were more strategic, better leaders, more competitive and even more sociable. But video games also created a younger generation of workers who were more open to risk and were always ready to try to beat the system.

This gamer generation is now the financial industry's backbone. Close to 100 per cent of those under 35 in any developed nation grew up playing games through at least their teenage years. Those who specialise in mathematics and computer science are more likely than those in other fields to continue playing games right through college and into adulthood. Most of those maths geniuses employed on Wall Street and in other financial markets grew up with video games.

Derivatives, in the form of futures contracts, have been around since the ancient Greeks, but they have boomed in the last decade. The worldwide value of derivatives, according to the Bank for International Settlements, has increased from about $110 trillion in 1998 to over $900 trillion last year. By contrast, the value of all publicly traded companies in the world is about $80 trillion.

In an environment filled with rule-breaking financial instruments, national and international regulators of financial markets have a lot to learn from video game design.

Most video games are created to give the player as much free rein as possible. But to keep the system from breaking, designers spend tens of millions of dollars per game (up to 50 per cent of the cost of video game development is in the testing phase) to limit the scope of play.

Many video game players probably remember their disappointment when they reached the 'edge of the world' in Super Mario - that place where it looks like there is a landscape reaching to the end of the horizon but Mario can't move any further. That was a hard and fast boundary.

Financial rules need to encourage innovation and creativity, but within limits - clear, distinct, unbreakable borders. The mindset of financial regulation design has to change from football - where a player can run offside but is penalised for it - to video games - where a player finds it impossible to run offside in the first place. The latter requires a lot more design upfront but a lot less refereeing later on.

Additional patches to Stock Market Regulation 1.0 - like those being considered in Washington and in European capitals - will not work. The current versions of regulation were designed for an analogue world. What we really need to launch is a digital Stock Market Regulation 2.0 - a version that won't stop the financial whiz-kids from creating and innovating, but makes it very clear where the boundaries are.

The writer is a senior adviser at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

[An interesting theory of the mindset for the financial crisis. There is some element of truth in that gamers will find loopholes, bugs, or "god" mode in games to give them advantages. It's not improbable that such a mindset would carry over into the real world of finances where rules are man-made and not always air-tight. Add to that the stupidity of deregulation, and basically it was a game without rules.]

Planned mosques in US opposed by residents

Aug 10, 2010

Dogs brought out to intimidate Muslims, signs spray-painted

MURFREESBORO (TENNESSEE): Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland - far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near the World Trade Center site - are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive.

The 13-storey, US$100 million (S$135million) Islamic centre that could soon rise two blocks from the site of the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York would dwarf proposals elsewhere. Yet, the smaller projects in local communities are stoking a sharper kind of fear and anger than has surfaced in New York.

In the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, opponents of a new Islamic centre say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer. They are afraid the 6ha site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the US government.

'They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group,' said Mr Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area. Mr Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators recently who wore 'Vote for Jesus' T-shirts and carried signs that said 'No syariah law for USA!', referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray-painting a sign announcing the 'Future site of the Islamic Centre of Murfreesboro' and tearing it up.

In Temecula, California, opponents brought out dogs to protest against a proposed 2,300 sq m mosque that would sit on 1.6ha next to a Baptist church. Opponents worry it will turn the town into a haven for Islamic extremists, but mosque leaders say they are peaceful and just need more room to serve members.

Islam is a growing faith in the US, though Muslims represent less than 1 per cent of the population. Ten years ago, there were about 1,200 mosques nationwide. Now there are roughly 1,900, according to Dr Ihsan Bagby, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky and a researcher on surveys of American mosques.

The growth involves Islamic centres expanding to accommodate more Muslims - as is the case in New York, California and Tennessee - as well as mosques cropping up in smaller, more isolated communities, Dr Bagby said.

A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Centre found that 39 per cent of adult Muslims living in the US were immigrants who had come here since 1990.

'In every religious community, one of the things that has happened over the course of immigration is that people get settled and eventually build something that says, 'We're here. We're not just camping',' said Dr Diana Eck, a professor of comparative religion at Harvard University. 'In part, that's because those communities have put down roots in America and made this their home.'

A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors from Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina.

It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programmes, sponsoring anti-violence forums and scrutinising teachers and texts.

Radicalisation of alienated Muslim youth is a real threat, Dr Bagby said. 'But the youth we worry about,' he said, 'are not the youth who come to the mosque.'

ASSOCIATED PRESS, NEW YORK TIMES

[It is sad that the country that claims for itself the role of promoting democracy and tolerance practices so little of it.]

Curing cancer by committee

PAULINA STREET JOURNAL

http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc2010crowdsourcing.php

July 29, 2010

My eldest decided the other day it was time I knew about something about Web 2.0 — Web 2.0 being broadly understood to mean whatever happens next in the world of the Internet. So he presented me with a couple of books plus an essay, which he felt would get me up to speed. I've now perused these learned works, which have given me insight into the shape of things to come. For example, is your idea of diversion an evening in front of the tube? I'm sorry — in the future, you'll have to cure a loathesome disease first.

Let's start with the essay. It's entitled "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" by Clay Shirky, a teacher at New York University, a hotbed of advanced online thought. The essay appeared in 2008 and is well known among the cognoscenti, and my bringing it up now will strike some as on a par with getting excited about the Gettysburg Address. My apologies to these cutting-edge individuals. For the rest of you, here's the gist:

In the early nineteenth century, the chief way people dealt with the stresses of factory work and urbanization was the consumption of vast amounts of gin. Not till much later did institutions arise — Shirky cites museums, libraries and schools — that took advantage of urban aggregation to provide the citizenry with more constructive ways to occupy their time.

The equivalent of gin in the latter twentieth century was the TV sitcom, which soaked up the excess energy generated by increased postwar affluence and leisure: "Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat," Shirky writes. In short, TV = opiate of the masses.

The Web has at last provided us with an outlet for the mental energy heretofore sucked up by sitcoms. Exhibit A is Wikipedia, and one can only guess what additional marvels await.
The general formulation, then, is as follows: (a) massive societal upheaval produces social surplus; (b) lacking alternatives, we then blow off said surplus in useless dissipation (gin, TV); (c) eventually institutions and/or technology evolve to put the surplus to more productive use; (d) world becomes better place. To illustrate, Shirky calculates that Wikipedia to date has consumed 100 million hours of effort, which seems impressive until you consider that, in the U.S. alone, we spend 200 billion hours every year watching television. If we harnessed those squandered resources, Shirky observes (the common expression is "unused cycles"), we could produce the equivalent of 2,000 Wikipedias per year — and if that doesn't fill you with guilt, I don't know what will.

Next on the reading list was The Wisdom of Crowds (2004). In it New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki argues that groups of people, not all of whom are necessarily geniuses, often get better results than geniuses working alone. He cites some uncanny predictions, which I think it's worth my describing in detail:

In 1968 the U.S. submarine Scorpion vanished in the North Atlantic en route to its home port. The Navy knew little other than the vessel's last reported location. Rather than search randomly, naval officer John Craven drew up scenarios of the sub's fate — nature of failure, speed, rate of descent, and so on. Then he submitted these to experts who were asked to gauge the likelihood of each without consulting the others. Finally, Craven performed statistically wizardry on the result to come up with a collective estimate of the sub's location. The sub, which might have been anywhere within a 20-mile circle, was found 220 yards from the estimated spot. Whoa.

British scientist Francis Galton in 1906 analyzed the results of a contest at a regional agricultural fair, in which participants were asked to guess the dressed weight (after butchering) of a certain ox. The contest was open to anyone, including farmers and ordinary jamokes. Eight hundred people gave it a shot. After the contest was over, Galton collected the entries and averaged the guesses: 1,197 pounds. The actual weight of the dressed ox: 1,198 pounds. Whoa again.

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch. Investors promptly began dumping the stock of four contractors who'd help build it: Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Rockwell, and Morton Thiokol. (The last made the booster rockets, which featured something known as an O-ring.) All four stocks at first fell sharply. The first three partially recovered by the end of the day, but Morton Thiokol's kept falling and at the close of trading was down 12 percent, suggesting the market had determined the firm bore primary responsibility for the disaster. After painstaking investigation an official commission confirmed this conclusion six months later. The market had figured it out in one day.

By this time the reader is thoroughly freaked out. Now, the first two stories you can rationalize. Perusing the Wikipedia article about the Scorpion, we learn that underwater breakup noises helped the Navy get a fix on the vessel's location. Likewise, in the Galton story we may surmise that the collective wisdom of the knowledgeable farmers swamped the scattered efforts of everyone else.

Correctly assessing the blame for the Challenger disaster, on the other hand … there's a miracle for you. Surowiecki cites an analysis by two economists, who wind up conceding they can't explain it — there's no evidence anyone had inside information, and the traders had no scientific knowledge. So how did they do it — magic? ESP? Did they sense a disturbance in the force? No. Surowiecki explains:

At heart, the answer rests on a mathematical truism. If you ask a large enough group of diverse, independent people to make a prediction or estimate a probability, and then average those estimates, the errors each of them makes in coming up with an answer will cancel themselves out. Each person's guess, you might say, has two components: information and error. Subtract the error, and you're left with information.

Who can argue with that?

The other book my kid presented me with, which for me put matters over the top, was Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business (2008) by Wired magazine contributing editor Jeff Howe. Howe describes various successful online collaborations, the best known example of which other than Wikipedia is undoubtedly Linux, the free open-source operating system. He quotes a fellow named Ted Gulley, who runs contests in which programmers compete online to produce the best software:

We have truly brilliant people playing. One of them will make a breakthrough, and on its own it would have been the best solution in an old-school contest. Just because they're brilliant. But with … the contest, immediately people are able to come along and tweak it. No single person could do that. It's the swarm, this great big collective brain we have access to. What will really be amazing is if we can tap that brain to cure cancer.

Now we start to get to the heart of the thing. However, some subtleties remain to be grasped. You might think the great big collective brain consists only of the brilliant. Not so. In the Web 2.0 view of things, dopes have their place. Surowiecki writes:

Bringing new members into the organization, even if they're less experienced and less capable, actually makes the group smarter because what little the new members do know is not redundant with what everyone else knows.

He quotes organizational theorist James March:

The development of knowledge may depend on maintaining an influx of the naïve and the ignorant, and … competitive victory does not reliably go to the educated.

Anybody who follows politics is thinking: no shit. However, there are broader implications. Surowiecki goes on to say:

What is striking … is just how much information a group's collective verdict so often contains … the crowd is holding a nearly complete picture of the world in its collective brain.

So let's review:

• Online collaborations have accomplished amazing things.
• Crowds of mopes (and let's be frank, muchachos — this means you and me) are collectively smarter than isolated geniuses, since we all have random quanta of information that no single individual possesses.
• If you were to add up the thoughts of everybody in the world, the dimwitted parts would cancel out and what's left would be complete global knowledge.
• We all have computers (well, one billion of us do) plus lots of free time, provided we don't blow it on Desperate Housewives and Jersey Shore.

You see where this is headed. Once they get the work assignments figured out, they're going to be after us to cure cancer, probably for free, although maybe we'll get a T-shirt out of it. How and when are we supposed to go about this? I expect they'll be e-mailing us instructions. In the meantime, if you know what's good for you, don't watch sitcoms on TV.

— Ed Zotti

Japan's MISSING centenarians

Aug 5, 2010

Unaccounted-for seniors spark pension fraud fears

TOKYO: What began as a search for Tokyo's oldest man and woman has turned into a case of Japan's missing centenarians.

Worse, it is raising suspicions that some families may have deliberately covered up the deaths of their elderly relatives in order to continue taking their pension money from the government.

Ahead of a national holiday to honour the elderly next month, Tokyo officials looking for a man listed as the city's oldest at 111 years found that he likely died more than 30 years ago.

The discovery of his mummified remains last week prompted them to look for Madam Fusa Furuya, listed as the city's oldest woman, but she too could not be found at the address where she was registered.

The disappearances kicked off a frantic search for other listed centenarians, with media reports yesterday saying that at least a dozen more are missing.

Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Akira Nagatsuma on Tuesday pledged that the government would check on the elderly 'to confirm where and in what circumstances they are living', the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

Japan, known for its world-beating life expectancies, had 40,399 people aged 100 or older as of September last year.

Newspapers have started their own national headcounts, with the Asahi Shimbun identifying 12 centenarians who are missing, the Yomiuri Shimbun naming 15, and the Mainichi Shimbun reporting 18.

Just in Tokyo, where about 2,500 centenarians are registered, the whereabouts of nine people aged 102 or more are unknown, reports said.

The media frenzy started last week after a visit by ward officials to the home of Mr Sogen Kato, which led to a police search that found his three-decades-old skeleton on his bed, in a room where the latest newspaper was from 1978.

Police are now investigating his relatives - who claimed he had retreated to his room to become 'a living Buddha' - for fraud because the government had been paying a pension into the man's bank account.

A total of 9.5 million yen (S$149,200) in widower's pension payments had been deposited since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had been withdrawn only recently, reports said.

In the case of Madam Furuya, who would be 113 years old if alive, her estranged 79-year-old daughter told officials she believed her mother was with her younger brother, with whom she claimed to have lost touch.

But the address she gave officials turned out to be of an empty plot of land in Ichikawa city, near Tokyo.

When officials located the 71-year-old son in Tokyo, he said he did not know where his mother was, the Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday.

Another daughter, when contacted by officials over the phone, said: 'I do not know where my mother lives. I don't want to become involved in this matter.'

The Japanese are now asking how the system can allow people to vanish, apparently without anyone noticing.

The government leaves it up to local communities and independent health-care bodies to check on centenarians, and methods differ from one municipality to another, said a Health Ministry official.

'In a small town, it's easier to check on the safety of centenarians by visiting them. But in a larger city, officials may just give a quick telephone call to family members,' the official said.

In Tokyo, ward offices said it can be difficult to check on the elderly because relatives sometimes refuse to cooperate and prevent welfare workers from entering homes, according to a survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun.

The cases are raising concerns about the government's ability to effectively monitor the whereabouts and well-being of the elderly in Japan, and to ensure that the national pension system is not abused.

In 2007, the government came under fire after the Welfare Ministry lost millions of pension-related files, stirring outrage that people might not receive payments they were due. The latest record-keeping mishaps turn the problem on its head, allowing the deceased to continue receiving pension payments.

The cases also highlight a growing trend in which many children hole up in their parents' homes well into adulthood - often without working - a cohort unkindly dubbed 'parasaito' in Japan.

Said Shukutoku University's Professor Yasuhiro Yuuki, an expert on social welfare: 'Depending on their parents' pension plan, the children can get quite a lot of money, or enough to survive on. Children say they are taking care of their parents, but actually they are just using their pensions.'

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG, XINHUA


DISAPPEARED

# Between 12 and 18 are unaccounted for nationwide, according to Japanese dailies.

# Nine missing in Tokyo alone

HEADCOUNT

# Japan officially has 40,399 centenarians as of last September.

# About 2,500 of them are registered in Tokyo.

[If this is prevalent, then 2 things - one Japan's life expectancy is not as high as it should be, and 2, their society is not as aged. But only slightly. Unless, it is really prevalent.]

Malaysia's foreign inflows fall 80%

Jul 29, 2010
Malaysia's foreign inflows fall 80%, challenging govt's bid to become a high-income nation

By Carolyn Hong

KUALA LUMPUR: A steep plunge in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Malaysia last year is challenging the government's ambitious plans to grow the economy rapidly to become a high-income nation, economists say.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's World Investment Report 2010, released last week, shows that FDI fell by 80 per cent last year from 2008. Foreign investors brought in RM4.4 billion (S$1.9 billion) last year, compared to RM23.4 billion in 2008.

'FDI fell in all developing countries last year but Malaysia showed a very sharp fall,' University of Malaya economics professor Rajah Rasiah told The Straits Times.

He said Thailand and Indonesia did not contract as severely.

On top of that, the data also shows that Malaysian companies continued to invest more abroad than at home.

Investment outflows were a hefty RM25.7 billion last year and RM48 billion in 2008, continuing a trend that began in 2007.

These investment moves have become a challenge to Malaysia's goal to grow by 6 per cent annually to raise national income from US$8,260 (S$11,260) to US$12,140 in five years.

To expand strongly, private investments in the country have to grow by 12.8 per cent a year, or by RM115 billion, according to the 10th Malaysia Plan, a five-year development blueprint for next year to 2015.

Emeritus Professor of economics Mohamed Ariff told The Straits Times that the steep fall in foreign inflows was worrying because Malaysia's growth is dependent on private investments.

He said FDI was important, not just for capital, but also for access to new technologies, trade links and markets.

Domestic capital was not an adequate substitute, he said.

Minister of International Trade and Industry Mustapa Mohamed, however, said on Tuesday that the fall in investments was not worrying because it was due to a structural change.

He said a RM1 billion investment may bring less benefits than a RM10 million one that offered more high-paying jobs.

'We are beginning to attract quality investments,' he said.

[Sure. A RM1b investment in low-tech industry is not as good as a RM10m one that offered more high-paying jobs to your cronies. But surely a RM1b investment that offered high-paying jobs is way better than a RM10m investment? So yeah, you're beginning to attract quality investments, but for every RM1 of quality investment you lose RM99 of lower quality investments which means less jobs for the lower wage workers.]

He also said FDI inflow from January to March this year was almost as much as the total for the whole of last year.

But Prof Ariff, who was head of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research until last year, said the fall in investments cannot be explained away so easily.

'It's not a one-off thing or a small drop. Investments have been declining for a while and Malaysia has been lagging in the region,' he said.

Mr Tony Pua, a Democratic Action Party MP who is also its economic adviser, pointed out several 'firsts' that suggested a steady decline.

He said that having lost out to Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam in recent years, Malaysia recorded lower FDI than the Philippines for the first time last year.

The data also shows that this was the first time Malaysia drew under US$2 billion in the last 20 years other than in 2001. Malaysia was also the only South-east Asian country to show higher outflows than inflows.

Prof Rajah believed that the main cause of the decline was the country's low- skilled labour base.

He said that when FDI started to slow in 1993 - due to the labour shortage - Malaysia took steps to focus on technology.

But these measures were ineffectively managed by officials who were not integrated into the industry networks, while Malaysia's race policy closed the door to the best talent.

'We did not evolve the people's capabilities,' he said.

He said Malaysia now has only 300 to 400 technology workers for every one million people, compared to 3,000 per million in countries which had transited from middle- to high-income status.

Prof Ariff said the problem was complex as it involves disparate factors ranging from education to the judiciary, bureaucracy and race-based policies.

These required strong political will to reform.

'The Prime Minister is taking some bold steps, and maybe it's too early for results. But Malaysia must stop being in denial,' he said.

[Hopefully, it's too early for results. The alternative is that it is too late for any results.]

carolynh@sph.com.sg

A tale of two economies

INDONESIA

• FDI last year was S$14.3 billion; this year, it is expected to reach S$17.9 billion
• Stable political outlook
• Growing consumer demand

MALAYSIA

• FDI plunged last year toS$1.9 billion
• More local firms invest abroad
• Low-skilled labour base

100mm: Expect floods if this much rain falls in an hour

Jul 22, 2010

By Victoria Vaughan

IF MORE than 100mm of rain falls in an hour, expect flooding.

National water agency PUB said yesterday that in the last 10 occasions when rain of that intensity fell, it had resulted in floods eight times.

Of those past 10 rainstorms, two happened last year, three the year before, two in 2007 and three in 2006.

Every year, Singapore gets, on average, two storms dumping that much rain in an hour, and nine storms in which the 100mm is spread over three hours.

PUB, responding to questions from reporters after the recent floods, explained that besides the intensity of a storm, the following factors also work together to set up perfect conditions for flooding:

• The type of developments in the area; that is, whether it is built up.
• The kind of surfaces there; that is, whether they are paved or porous.
• The distribution and movement of the rainfall.
• The ground level in relation to the water levels in the drains.
• The capacity of the drains to channel away the storm water.
• Whether there is a blockage in the drains.
  

Of the last 10 most intense rainstorms here, the heaviest happened on July 19, 2007. The monitoring station at the Ulu Pandan water treatment plant recorded 137mm in an hour that day, said the National Environment Agency (NEA).

The recent downpours have not topped that. The June 16 storm which put Orchard Road under water sent down 101.6mm in two hours.

Orchard Road was not even the wettest place that day: Sentosa logged 115mm of rain.
Another recent storm, that on July 17 from Typhoon Conson, brought 114mm of rain to the Lower Peirce Reservoir in one hour.

But a high of 194mm that day was recorded at Poole Road in Tanjong Katong.

The second heaviest of the last 10 intense rainstorms came on April 3, 2008, when 126mm was dumped on Jurong Pier Road. This burst led to flash floods in Dunearn Road near Swiss Club Road, Upper Paya Lebar Road near Bartley Road and Commonwealth Avenue. The storm lasted from 4.20pm to 6pm.

The third heaviest downpour happened on Nov 19 last year, when 121mm was recorded at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic station. The Bukit Timah canal burst its banks and knee-deep water brought traffic to a standstill along several stretches of Bukit Timah - Coronation Road to Third Avenue, Wilby Road to Blackmore Drive and the Sixth Avenue junction.

The downpour took place between 12.50pm and 3.20pm.

From the history books, Dec 2, 1978, still holds the record for the highest amount of rainfall in a day in the last 60 years. That day, 512 mm fell.

Seven people died, including five who drowned, and about 1,000 people were rescued and evacuated by the Singapore Armed Forces and the police in one of the biggest rescue and evacuation operations here, according to the Defence Ministry website.

The highest one-hour rainfall, at 148mm, was recorded on Nov 2, 1995.

vvaughan@sph.com.sg