Singaporean and their cars

Singaporeans are obsessed with owning a personal vehicle, but this is something I find hard to appreciate. Cars are expensive to buy, drive, park and maintain. This excludes costs from accidents or car thief. Getting a driver's licence requires considerable effort too, costing around $2k minimum (rough impression). Most importantly, like every modern urban city, the surge in car-chasing has led to more frequent and heavier traffic jams eats up everyone's time and mind.

Singapore is really tiny. And with its acceptable public transport system, the private car obsession is incomprehensible. Much effort has been made to increase the costs of car ownerships, such as the right to own a car through Certificate of Entitlement (COE) to the right to use a road using electronic road price (ERP). Push factors. Singapore also plans to increase her subway network from the current 148.9km to 278 km by 2020. 

Nonetheless, I understand I reside in a part of Singapore that has great access to public transportation systems. I live within walking distance to 2 train stations, of which one is directly connected to 3 different subway lines. In addition, I live 15-30mins to town/CBD area by train. Even during peak hours, I need to wait no more than 3 trains to be able to board, even on the worse raining days. Not many Singaporeans have such luxuries, and I can only praise my parents for their excellent residential choice. 


I am still commonly advised to learn driving, especially at my age. I know its a skill I ought to. Unfortunately, things have not fallen into the situation where I just have to learn driving. Nonetheless, I reckon Singapore needs more people like me; those lazy to drive and willing to take the public commute. If not, cars and their usage will only cost more, and road speeds will only get slower. Without people like me, everyone will just suffer. 

Singapore's Education; IP Schools

A small island with no natural resources, Singaporeans are constantly reminded that "humans" are our only resource. Education stands to be a top priority of many Singaporeans families. The (not-so) recent hot topic in Singapore's education system is the integrated programmes (IP), where 12 year olds are selected into an institute that provides them with a safe track to an established Junior Colleges (JCs), and thus, a steadier path towards well-recognized universities.

Mergers and exclusive contracts are major corporate world activities, not just because of the huge underwriting profits for bankers, but also the possible anti-competitive nature of such actions. In essence, anti-competition is bad because consumers lose (e.g. pay higher prices for the same goods) at the expense of the producers. Why a sudden mention of mergers and exclusive contracts? Because the IP structure seems like form of vertical merger/exclusive contract, where upstream and downstream firms form a direct linkage in the production line. Basically, IP-JC sections hold "exclusive rights" to the products (bright students) from the secondary sections. More schools in Singapore are offering IPs, and many parents are worried that their late booming children are disadvantaged by the smaller number of good JC openings for their children later on.

Definitely, my approach of merging (pun intended) these two topics may not be very ideal, but I hope to only  provide a different perspective at the same old boring issue (product differentiation). Maybe someone with more time can look into this issue from this angle, but this guy/girl should not be me (at least not in the near future). Some of the more interesting issues would include:

1) Do child have to score better grades just to enter the same JCs, aka grade inflation.

2) Are IP schools providing better education? Many worry that the IP curriculum weakens the students' ability to tackle exam questions necessary for the 'A' levels.

3) Are primary school kids more pressured now to excel to enter into an IP school, leading to possible burn-outs, post exam trauma, or even other psychological issues, such as poor self-esteem from not being able to enter an IP school. Not sure about the kids, but the parents seem much more pressured to get their kids into IP schools these days.

Lastly, I am glad that I am not a young student anymore. Seeing as an outsider, I cannot help but feel sorry and pressured for these young kids. I cannot expect how it will be like when I have my own kids though, but that, will be another story all together...

Reference point and Singapore's subway system

Reference point is common concept in psychology and behavioural economics. It explains how the mental anchors people hold will influence in their decision-making process. In simple terms, reference points postulates that human decision-makings are not independent of surroundings or situations.

Recently, I believe Singapore has saw an episode that Singapore's subway system, a 24 year well serving system, broke down not 1, not 2, but 3 times. within a week. Singaporeans, as usual, were up in arms. However, I believe that some of the negativity Singaporeans experienced during this fiasco are due to their own high expectations of subway system. Largely in part, this high reference point is some kind of winner's curse, where the strong track record of the subway system has bitten itself, with Singaporeans experiencing their virgin subway disruption of such a great scale. In this aspect, the system should not be faulted for being excellent in for the past 24 years. Other countries, noticeably UK and Paris (as reported in the local newspaper), have subways that have much higher frequencies of disruptions, and fares that are also much higher.

In addition, I guess the negativity also stemmed from other aspects of the transportation system itself. Yes, subway and cab fares rose less than 6 months ago, a topic that I hope to discuss about in a future entry. Yes, this subway disruption was drastic. Some blame the population growth. Yet, I do believe there are areas in which the system can improve itself. For one, how the disruption was handled could have been improved. However, I have no aim of addressing this. My point is this: Singaporeans are setting their expectations too high, which I postulate it to be from the extremely high reference point that Singaporeans are used to adhere and live by. Maybe, we have been living too comfortably.

Lifestyles: Benny Lewis, Fluent in 3 months

I recently came across this very interesting website. A guy called Benny Lewis has been travelling non-stop for 9 years and trying to learn different languages from the places that he has travelled to. Interested people can visit http://www.fluentin3months.com/about/

Lewis questions the overly materialistic world (which I agree), and is proud of how his currently nomadic lifestyle. To a certain extent, I am envious of him. I agree that consumerism rarely leads to happier lives, and that attachments to gadgets only bring as much sorrow as they can bring happiness.

Before one concludes that this dude is not into money, do understand that travelling overseas costs money. He did mentioned that he has done several odd jobs in his travels. Interestingly, his efforts to promote his services (skype language consultancy) and products (language hack guides) are but just an Internet business that allows him to travel around the world. In fact, such is a very effective promotion gimmick: to put himself constantly in new environments to prove how his language hacks works! It does help that his blogs are interesting as well. Greater readership, greater possibility of having more business.

What touches me about him is his approach to his life, not settling for a secured job, but rather, looking to explore life to its fullest. To do so, he just needed to choose the correct 'career'. Kudos, Benny Lewis!

Love Model

Economists love models. Here, I attempt to set up a simple descriptive model I call the "Love Search" Model.

Let M (for male) be seeking a quality long-term partner (not trashy one-stands). A few assumptions have to be made on M. Assume M only chases single girls of an age close to his. It is also assumed that once an M is attached to a quality girl, she does not re-enter the market. The model postulates that as M ages, his possibility of getting attached decreases, until it becomes zero by the time M reaches a certain age

This, of course, explains not the real world. 

1. The first few assumptions boldly suggest that no "bastards"* exist. But they do, either as thieves of other Ms quality girls, or poor-maintainers of their own that cause quality girls to return to the market. 
2. The probability of M getting hitched need not decrease with age if he is willing to marry ever younger girls, and this is commonly so in the real world.  
3. A wrongful (standard) assumption is the stability of preferences, and this works both from Ms on quality girls and vice versa. 
4. Asymmetical information on the availability of quality girls (and Ms) means Ms may have no access to quality girls at all.

Some advice for the lonely ageing Ms from this model (policy recommendations?). Be a "bastard", chase younger girls, adjust preferences, increase market information. This model could do with more refinement, but I had enough fun. Constructive comments are greatly welcomed.