Could NS be the glue America needs?

by Gillian Tett

Todayonline Jul 09, 2012

This month, American newspapers are full of indignant stories about the country's discontented youth. Little wonder: Now that schools and colleges are out for the summer, millions of graduates are lodged aimlessly in the family home, struggling to find jobs.

Could one solution be a return of the military draft? Until recently, the idea was taboo in polite company, especially liberal circles. America has shied away from conscription since the disasters of the Vietnam war.

But, last week, former United States Army General Stanley McChrystal floated that proposal at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "I think we need a national service," he told the elite crowd. "We need it at the conclusion of high school and university. I don't think young people would fight (the draft) if it was seen to be fair."

Gen McChrystal received a standing ovation. Why? The issue is something that dominated the Aspen debates: Polarisation.

America's elite is increasingly worried about social divides. Never mind that US income inequality is growing; what really worries them is the fear that the US no longer has a common cultural and moral pole to unite around.

As libertarian author Charles Murray explained in Aspen, today's poor, white working class is increasingly socially detached from the rich. And, as political scientist Robert Putnam added, that reflects a decline in "bridging capital" - institutions that unite Americans across the income and social divide.

This is where Gen McChrystal steps in. The reason he wants a military draft is twofold: It could provide more troops and could also offer some of that badly needed bridging capital.

If "everyone over the age of 25 was able to go into a bar and talk about where they served", it would unite Americans, he explained. "I think Israel gets amazing value from that ... in terms of creating a shared experience." And a bit of service might offer some discipline for today's youth, along with a sense of (shared) sacrifice.

Could this idea ever fly? It seems most unlikely right now. The fiscal crunch is placing the military under pressure to cut its reach. And the idea would be controversial on the left.

As someone who has seen the impact of a draft, as a result of having relatives in Switzerland and having lived in the former USSR, I understand Gen McChrystal's point. I am wary of extending army power. I dislike militarised societies. But I also know from friends and relatives how effective military service can be as a social glue and rite of passage.

Being sent far away and forced to coexist with a cross-section of people is life-changing. Other institutions can achieve that effect but military service is uniquely powerful. Just look at veterans for evidence.

The irony in Aspen is that many of the elites applauding Gen McChrystal probably would not expect their own kids to suffer under a draft. As Vietnam shows, the poor end up being most affected.

But the General's ideas still raise a crucial question: If the military is not going to be social glue for the US, is there anything else? That is, perhaps, the great issue that hangs over this year's presidential race and remains dangerously unanswered.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED

Award-winning journalist Gillian Tett is the US managing editor and an assistant editor of the Financial Times.

Engineering success through failure

by James Dyson

Todayonline  Jul 09, 2012

Singapore's Minister for Education has called for the country to move beyond rote learning and unlock its creative potential. Simultaneously, Britain's review of its curriculum is looking to Singapore for inspiration.

But while Singapore's excelling education system is to be admired, there are lessons to be learnt from Britain too. Because failure in the classroom is not always a bad thing. In fact, Singapore should be actively encouraging it.

Measuring success in education is not easy. British exam results have risen every year for decades. However, universities and businesses complain of poor basic writing and numeracy skills.

The media laments. Teachers grumble. Politicians blame each other. The latest well-meaning attempt to overhaul the education system has included calls for Singapore-style education and a return to rote learning.

In contrast, Singapore is the model student: Second for maths, fourth for science and fifth for reading, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development international league tables.

But A grades are not always the best indicators. Thomas Edison, one of history's great inventors, believed in Fs - that is, F for Failure.


INVENTION MATTERS

We make progress by making mistakes. While inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner, I failed 5,126 times. But prototype 5,127 was a success.

Singapore will only unleash its potential through teaching the value of failure. In a world where intellectual property is often far more valuable than the tangible, it is invention that counts.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Singapore filed 4,000 patents worldwide in 2011 - impressively up more than 30 per cent on 2010.

Compared with the US, which stacked up 415,000, there is plenty of catching up to be done (population sizes excused, of course).

Singapore's Minister for Education, Mr Heng Swee Keat, last month called for an education system that was "less about content knowledge" and "more about how to process information". Promising words.

Learning "rote" is too often distilled down to memorising useless facts or ticking boxes. Processing information is problem solving. And to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, problem solving is to 'Try. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Fail better'.

New ideas are not found by doing the same as everyone else. They are found by learning from your mistakes. If you are told that there is one right way to do something, you are unlikely to go looking for another.


ENCOURAGED TO PERSEVERE

The message in British and Singaporean schools needs to be that embracing failure is a lifelong commitment.

Britain has made strides in recent years. Design and Technology lessons challenge students to apply the theory they learn in science and maths to real problems.

They will not succeed straight away, but they are encouraged to persevere. And when they hold a physical solution in their hands, a passion for invention is ignited.

This is true in business, too.

In our company, we occasionally set our engineers a challenge unbound by the day job (if there is such a thing at Dyson). They have fired rockets, created battery powered go-karts and navigated obstacle courses.

The most sophisticated challenge yet, a ball-based mechatronics challenge, will shortly see teams from our sites in Singapore, Britain and Malaysia go head to head.

Victory is not the point. They will learn and, more importantly, be inspired to create new exciting technology.

Singapore is ready to do the same. Its superb academic scorecard makes the world jealous. Now is the time to make the world envious of its ideas and inventions. And ironically, that begins with learning the importance of failure.


Sir James Dyson is an inventor and the founder of Dyson. He is a frequent commentator on education andinnovation issues in the British press.The technology company spendsS$2 million a week on R&D at theirUK, Singapore and Malaysia facilities.

What's so bad about charisma?

Jul 7, 2012
 
politics 360

Trouble happens when followers cede independence
 
By Jeremy Au Yong

THERE was an interesting study on charisma conducted in 1998, just after Steve Jobs returned to Apple but before he built his reputation as a messianic chief executive.

Then, researchers asked 150 students to allocate $10,000 across three possible investments: a mutual fund, money market certificates or Apple shares.

The students were given similar sets of financial information with one big difference. Half the students were shown a video of Jobs making a presentation at a trade show with his trademark flair, while the rest were not.

Researchers wanted to see if the simple addition of Jobs' charisma would have any impact on the investment decisions. The results shed some light on the impact charisma can have.

The arrest of Kong Hee and four other leaders of the City Harvest Church last week for alleged financial wrongdoings has once again drawn scrutiny to the notion of charismatic leadership.

Without commenting on his innocence or guilt - that is now a matter before the courts - his case does reignite debate over the potential dangers of charismatic leaders.

It is a conversation Singapore society has had before. After the cases involving former National Kidney Foundation (NKF) chief T.T. Durai or former Ren Ci head Ming Yi, some concluded that there was a need to be warier of the charismatic among us, because charisma is like a super power that is deadly in the wrong hands.

But if people are aware of the risk, why do they leave themselves vulnerable? Why do they not learn their lesson? And what exactly is it about charisma that seems to disable even the best defences?

Like any super power, there is nothing intrinsically bad about charisma. The ability to attract people and inspire them to follow you is actually very valuable.

For every Jim Jones, the charismatic leader responsible for the mass suicide of over 900 people, there is a Steve Jobs or a Richard Branson.

In fact, an argument could be made that charismatic leaders actually saved many companies because they pushed through change that was needed.

The problem with charisma does not lie with just the charismatic leader. Rather, the trouble tends to stem from how charisma changes the way the followers relate to the leader and the organisation.

Political scientist Marty Linsky once wrote that effective leadership meant 'disappointing followers at a rate they can absorb'.

He reasoned that a leader who disappointed his followers too much would be turfed out while one who did not disappoint at all was not leading anyone anywhere.

The idea implies a sort of social contract between a leader and a follower. In the absence of charisma, this contract has to include a shared sense of mission. The follower goes along with the leader because he believes the leader is taking him where he wants to go.

If the leader then starts to head off in a different direction, that social contract is violated and the leader may find he has lost his followers.

This arrangement, however, can be eroded by the presence of a a magnetic personality. A very charismatic leader does not have the same social contract. He does not need to be on the same page as his followers.

In this situation, people follow not because of some aligned sense of purpose. They are there because they are drawn to this outgoing, dynamic, passionate person.

One clear sign that an organisation has come under the spell of a charismatic leader is a sharp distinction between the way he is viewed inside and outside the organisation.

Many outside the NKF seethed when Mr Durai's lavish lifestyle came to light, so much so that the building was vandalised.

Yet, when he resigned shortly after, NKF staff members gave him a grand, emotional send-off. At the end of his farewell speech, they gave him a standing ovation.

'I've seen him work. It's his passion. He works seven days a week, by choice, for a larger cause,' a manager was reported as saying that day.

All this despite the court proceeding just days earlier showing that Mr Durai had, among other things, travelled on first class flights and had a gold-plated tap installed in his office toilet.

The results of the Steve Jobs survey give an insight into how powerful the effect can be. The group that watched a 20-minute video of Jobs invested on average three times more in Apple shares than the group that did not.

They all had the same facts, but the sheer force of personality coloured their perceptions of those facts.

The charismatic leader can thus disempower his followers. They do things not because they have reasoned that it is the right thing to do but because they have ceded a lot of independence to the person asking them to do it.

Suddenly, there is no amount of disappointment they cannot absorb.

And often, not enough attention is paid to this supporting cast. When we look back on the NKF now, we tell the story of how Mr Durai compromised the organisation. But the story is not complete without including the role of his close associates.

Even if we argue that he put them there, he could not have achieved that manoeuvre without others watching it and choosing to look the other way.

To understand that is to see that no amount of new safeguards against a leader will ever be sufficient if the followers are weak. The bars of the cell may be thick but they are useless if the inmates hold all the keys.

And it is in the very nature of charisma to create weak followers.

Thus, in trying to protect organisations from abuse, what is needed may not just be more regulations or more procedures.

Instead, it is about making sure we never turn a blind eye to our own reasoning just because a flashy leader passionately and articulately tells us to.

jeremyau@sph.com.sg

It's raining names

Jul 7, 2012
 
LETTER FROM KYOTO
 
By Janice Tay

FIND me a clothes line, hang me up to dry - or I shall throw myself into a tumble dryer.

The rainy season is here. The Japanese call it tsuyu but I call it The Great Damp. Even when the weather's fine, the air is thick with moisture that seeps into you, into clothes, into bedding, and into the top of my fridge, which has taken up mould farming.

On the days that it storms hard enough to wash angels out of the sky, I stay indoors and read. More often than not, a book about the rain and its many names ends up in front of me.

There are the names that tell you when, how long and how hard. Hijigasa ame - elbow umbrella rain - the one that comes so suddenly you have to shelter yourself with your sleeve while you run for shelter.

Hito shibori - one wring - not long but heavy, as if someone has wrung a rain cloud dry.

A close cousin, ippatsu ame - one blast rain - stops almost as soon as it starts.

Then there are the rains named for their shape, named because they look like thread, zeros, cat fur or the shafts in a bamboo forest.

Every now and again, there is kai u - strange rain. Fish, frogs, tadpoles and worms have all apparently splattered down from the heavens, the victims, according to one theory, of whirlwinds or tornadoes that sucked them up into the air.

A more everyday oddity: The rain that comes even when the sun shines. Fox rain is one name for this, probably from folktales of foxes taking on human form to deceive. Another name: rainbow pee.

There are also the names that remind you that it's never just water spilling from the sky; there's always someone at the other end who will be dampened, drenched or delighted. And that someone need not be human.

In spring, there is yuei u - flower pleaser - just as there is mugi kurai: barley devourer. In summer, there is baba odoshi - granny scare - a sudden downpour in the afternoon that sends someone who has left beans or other things out to dry into a panic.

Regardless of season, there is yarazu no ame. It falls hard when a guest or lover is about to leave, and holds them back a little longer.

The rain here comes so close, it pours inside the body. Ji u - ear rain - a ringing in the ears. Kokoro no ame - heart rain - something that covers a heart, and will not let light in.

But the most common rain names are those that show the season. Kan ake no ame - frost end rain - falls around the first day of spring though the rains of this period are still cold, sometimes mixed with snow or ice.

Much warmer is banbutsu jou - all creation - which revives all those that winter left for dead. And when life returns, so does colour. Kurenai no ame - crimson rain - is the rain spanning the weeks when flowers of every shade of red - azaleas, rhododendrons, peach - bloom.

The summer entrant aoba ame - green leaf rain - follows, coating leaves so they look even shinier.

Splitting summer in two is the rainy season, tsuyu. Mukaezuyu - welcoming tsuyu - may go out to meet it. It appears before the season begins in earnest, raining on and off for a few days.

There are times when the rains don't come as expected. Farmers dread the empty tsuyu; its other name: withered tsuyu.

Also feared is abarezuyu - rampaging tsuyu. A deluge that roars down from day to night, it swells rivers until they burst.

A stretch of fine days around the middle of July may lead you to think that the rainy season is over. But sometimes kaerizuyu - returning tsuyu - nips back and keeps the weather wet for another two or three days.

With autumn, the rains grow cold and hawks go south. The rain that comes when they leave: taka watari - hawks crossing.

After they go, the days grow only colder, bringing at times amayuki - rain mixed with snow. Another winter visitor: kazahana, wind flowers. Early in the season, under a clear sky, the wind sometimes snatches up snow and drizzle, tossing them about before letting them fall.

But the days of wind flowers are still far off. It is tsuyu now, The Great Damp, and today promises to be wet again - more time, perhaps, to stay in and read about rains so that when they come, I may greet them by their proper name.

When churches are charities

Jul 7, 2012

Religious organisations which operate as charities have special features, hence a different approach may be needed in terms of regulation

By Willie Cheng

THE City Harvest Church court case has resurrected the periodic question: Why should a church, or for that matter, a religious institution, be accorded charity status?

The naysayer's reasoning goes like this: Charity is about helping society's poor and needy. Sure, churches can be charitable and give some money to those in need, but so do many other organisations which are not charities. Religion, after all, is fundamentally about God and spiritual matters.

A proper discourse on this subject however requires an appreciation of how the definitions of charity and church have evolved over the centuries.

Charity and church defined

SINGAPORE and about 60 other countries trace their legal heritage to England. Specifically, the legal definition of charity harks back to the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601 of Elizabethan England and its subsequent refinements in common law.

Chief among the common law cases was Income Tax Special Purpose Commissioners v Pemsel (1891) where four categories of charitable uses were defined:

•     the relief of poverty;
•     the advancement of education;
•     the advancement of religion;
•     other purposes beneficial to the community not falling under any of the preceding heads.

Over the years and across the world, the fourth category has been used to cover an increasing variety of causes such as vulnerable groups (the disabled, elderly, etc), animal welfare, environment, the arts and heritage. Singapore, for example, specifically added sports as a charitable cause in 2005.

One reason for including the advancement of religion as a charitable cause in early England was that much of the charitable work of providing for the poor and needy was being done by the church. Religion, in those days, meant the Church of England.

However, over the centuries, the religious scene has changed significantly. For starters, there has been a proliferation of and diversity in churches.

In the first few centuries after Jesus Christ died, Christianity was consolidated and became widespread with the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. Starting in the 16th century, a movement by certain priests to reform the Catholic Church led to the formation of several Protestant denominations such as the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans and Methodists. In time, these denominations sprouted further subdivisions and sects, alongside untold numbers of independent 'non-denominational' churches. Larger ones with weekly attendances of 2,000 or more, such as City Harvest Church, are called 'megachurches'.

These churches may differ in opinion regarding theology and/or liturgical practice. But they mostly subscribe to Jesus Christ as the saviour and the Bible as God's word (even if they may interpret its contents differently).

Some critics consider independent churches shallow in theology while being deep in secular models of entertainment-based worship and marketing. For example, critics take issue with the doctrine of the 'prosperity gospel' some of these churches around the world subscribe to. The prosperity gospel teaches that financial blessings are the will of God and more donations to the church result in increased material prosperity to the individual. It is a philosophy which some theologians argue has no sound Biblical basis.

Another key distinction among the various forms of churches lies in their structures and leadership.

The Catholic Church and the mainstream Protestant denominations have fairly well-established organisational structures and processes for the formation and conduct of the clergy. For example, a Catholic priest is ordained only after an intensive period of scrutiny and formation of eight or more years, upon which he takes a vow of chastity, obedience and, sometimes, poverty. He is expected to live less than modestly. In Singapore, Catholic priests are given a stipend of $500 per month, with their board and lodging provided by the church.

On the other hand, most of the non-mainstream churches are essentially independent congregations, some loosely affiliated to each other, but mostly with their own rules and practices. Many of these churches do not have the same kind of rigorous institutionalised approach to selecting and developing leaders. Indeed, leaders often emerge by virtue of their charisma and ability to win followers. It is the congregations, rather than institutional rules, which determine leaders and lifestyle expectations of the leaders.

Should such charismatic leaders have flawed characters, they can do untold damage. In extreme cases, such organisations are classified as cults. Cults are banned in Singapore, but not in some countries. Yet, by granting charity status to such cults or near-cults as some countries do, regulators confer on them tax benefits and, more significantly, legitimacy.

Keep religious groups out of charities?

GIVEN the historical broadening of the definition of charity, it would be, in my opinion, wrong to narrowly target religion for exclusion as a charitable cause.

Yes, (most) religions are about God and the afterlife, but they are also fundamentally about goodwill and bringing out the goodness in man. Which is to say: they are about the community good.

If religion is excluded - say, we revert to the layman's notion of charity as helping the poor and needy - we need to also exclude sports, the arts, heritage, animals, education and health care. We would, in fact, exclude the whole gamut of other causes of 'community good' that have grown over time.

At the same time, we also need to recognise that there are churches and there are churches. What then do we do about the errant religious organisations that may not be extreme enough to be classified as cults (and thus be banned) but, in all other respects, qualify to be charities? The default answer is: Treat it as any other errant social service charity or sports charity.

In other words, have a clear set of rules and regulations for how charities are to be governed and managed. And if there is a breach by any of the charities or its personnel, throw the book at them.

Special features of religious groups

HOWEVER, the application of such rules and regulations to religious charities is not so straightforward. There are three related and distinctive features of religious organisations that regulators have to grapple with.

The first is the basis of donations. An inviolable principle in the charity sector is 'donor intent'. This means respecting the basis for which a donation is given. In the case of religious institutions, most believers give with a blanket fiat for their leaders to do with the donation as is deemed fit rather than for specific or even general charitable purposes.

The second is evangelisation. The missions of most religious organisations include evangelisation, not just of the converted, but of the broader community. Evangelisation sits uncomfortably with regulators in the more secular countries. Yet, it can be argued that evangelisation is no different from, say, the advocacy of other charities, such as the healthy lifestyles (to avoid certain diseases) promoted by health-care charities like the Singapore Heart Foundation and Sata CommHealth.

The third is the leadership of these organisations. The governance and management of religious institutions tend to be bound together, rather than be separated, as is considered best practices by secular bodies. Religious leaders also have a sway over their followers which can sometimes be seen by regulators and outside parties as bordering on the irrational.

The interplay of these three factors has challenged regulators when they seek to implement a single sector-wide approach to regulating charities.

In Singapore, the same set of regulations is applied to all charities, regardless of sub-sectors (for example, the religious, social service and arts sub-sectors).

There is, however, differentiated treatment in the Charity Code of Governance based on the size of the charities: the bigger the charities, the more controls and scrutiny are needed.

As highlighted above, there are unique aspects of religious charities, as there could be for charities in other sub-sectors.

It might be timely to review these sub-sectorial differences for a more targeted and meaningful approach to charity governance and regulation.

The writer, a former partner at management and technology consulting firm Accenture, is author of Doing Good Well. He sits on the boards of several commercial and non-profit organisations, including Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore Institute of Directors, and Catholic and secular charities.

It's the 'S' word for better education

Jun 30, 2012
 
LETTER FROM LONDON
 
By Teresa Lim FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

SUDDENLY, the name of our Republic is popping up in newspapers here with a disconcerting frequency. For a change, it is not in sneery accusation (for being bourgeois, or politically uptight) but in praise.

British Education Secretary Michael Gove has been working hard to upgrade the British education system. About a week ago, there was the inevitable leak. There are more government policy leaks here than from a sieve, and they always find their way into the newspapers. This time, it was the Daily Mail.

Mr Gove was duly summoned to Parliament to say if it was true he was planning to scrap the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) by 2014, and to explain why.

This is what he said: 'We would like to see every student in this country able to take world-class qualifications like the rigorous and respected O levels taken by Singapore students.'

For years I have been telling my two incredulous sons that my results as a 16-year-old an unmentionable number of years ago are worth more than theirs. Now I have the British Education Secretary on my side.

It is a bittersweet victory as it also means I have to confront the idea that they might not be as well-schooled as I was. In fact, they have each had an excellent education. The difference is, mine was free. Theirs has been extremely expensive, and yet they still use calculators for simple sums for which long division or multiplication might do the trick.

[So in Britain, the parents are lamenting that children today can't do simple math that the parents were taught in school years ago. Here in Singapore, parents are complaining that kids today are doing math in primary school that their parents had trouble with in Secondary school! Which problem would you rather have?]

So to the 'S' word again.

'The way that they teach mathematics in Singapore is brilliant - both in theory and in practice.' This is the Daily Telegraph a week ago, quoting Dr Martin Stephen who until last year was head of one of the top boys' schools in Britain, the private St Paul's which is based in London.

This national newspaper has been campaigning for recognition of what it calls 'the mathematical crisis' facing Britain.

But mathematics does not seem to be the only thing in trouble here. England's teenagers are near the bottom in Europe with foreign languages. They have problems even with their own. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment's latest country profiles are for 2009. These show that in the nine years from 2000, Britain slipped from seventh place to 25th for literacy.

Mr Gove rightly senses that it is education overall that is in crisis. One problem is simply structural. Incredibly, in Britain, there are three awarding organisations for A-level and GCSE qualifications, at least one of which stands to benefit financially from more schools subscribing to its tests because it sells the teaching resources and textbooks.

Reportedly, representatives from some of these boards do the hard-sell on their qualification by assuring schools that their tests are extremely easy to pass. Mr Gove calls this 'the culture of competitive dumbing-down' with examination boards vying with one other to make their exams the least difficult.

I do remember helping my younger son three years ago with his GCSE revision. I was sure I had misunderstood one of the past papers. After all, the answer seemed to have been given in the question - only to be reassured by my son: 'Yes mum, it is that easy!'

But Mr Gove is facing resistance to his overhaul of the current GCSE system. Already Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, is said to be livid at Mr Gove's proposals, which have not yet been discussed within the Cabinet.

Mr Clegg is upset at the prospect of a two-tier education system being brought back. GCSEs replaced O levels and the more vocational Certificate of Secondary Education 24 years ago to provide a comprehensive examination everyone could take.

In fact, the GCSE system is already two-tiered. There is the higher tier, where students can achieve grades from an A-star down to an E, and there is the foundation tier with pass grades of C down to G. Foundation-tier students with an 'F' or a 'G' would have failed by the standards of self-respecting school systems elsewhere, but in Britain, they have passed.

Mr Gove is right to rail against a system that flatters to deceive because it lets children down. But he is going to have to convince those who worry that the reintroduction of any O-level equivalent is elitist, disadvantaging those who do not qualify to do it. One way must be to bring up the quality and value of a vocational education.

In Singapore, O levels are the national curriculum, unlike in countries where it is offered only by private schools. Mr Gove recognises that ours is the gold standard for the qualification. His challenge, when forging something similar, is also to introduce back to Britain a culture of respect for learning, for moderate discipline, and for methods of teaching which may include some traditional rote learning.

How interesting that former premier Margaret Thatcher should have observed 27 years ago on her first official visit to Singapore: 'Each time I come back, I marvel at the pace of change, and at the confidence with which you undertake enormous investment. I like to think that once you learnt it from Britain. And now we are re-learning it from you.'

So it is with O levels. The only irony is that GCSEs were introduced under Mrs Thatcher in 1988, three years after her speech.

The writer is a Singaporean living in London.

Outgoing Singapore Envoy to US - Professor Chan Heng Chee

Jul 1, 2012

When US noticed the 'little country that could'Outgoing envoy to the US Chan Heng Chee recounts her 16 years in Washington

By Tracy Quek

In a town where politics and policy are the raison d'etre for many of its residents and networking is an art form, Singapore's outgoing Ambassador to the United States Chan Heng Chee is a diplomat who appears to be very much in her element.

In her 16 years in Washington, Professor Chan, 70, has come to be noted for her 'salon dinners' at the Singapore Embassy, gatherings that bring together Washington's strategic thinkers, media personalities and policymakers to discuss hot- button issues of the day over a good - often Singaporean - meal.