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This is my last week at the Ministry of Education. It’s been a little over four years, and I find myself in a very different place from where I envisioned four years ago. My time in the government has been a most serendipitous and amazing journey, and I am indelibly changed because of it.

I used to participate rather actively in the great Singaporean pastime of government-bashing. I despised the way the government worked - it was easy to find points of agreement with the cab driver: Singapore is fraught with hidden taxes that makes living very expensive; the politicians earn way too much; the government is full of bureaucracy and doesn’t care for citizens.

All the points are valid of course. But the greatest lesson I took home with me is this: the government isn’t a faceless machine. She is made up of fellow citizens. True, some are self-serving. Some are in it for the money. But no more and no less than in any other large organisation, private or public. As citizens we should not waste our time here; we should be looking to nurture a culture of selflessness and empower noble intent. Rather than be mired in a never-ending spiral of self-despair and finger-pointing, we should engage in a constructive relationship with the government.

Web 2.0 ushers in Gov 2.0, and Gov 2.0 cannot exist without Citizen 2.0.

A friend from another country once asked me why Singaporeans complained so much but did so little. It really hit home. We could attribute it to fear, but to be perfectly honest, we complain because it is the easiest path to take.

I joined the government 4 years ago with the intention of changing the way Singapore government agencies create websites. To my surprise the people at the ministry welcomed my ideas and were willing to let Selwyn and I build the corporate website from the ground up. It was then I realised that the ministry was made up of real people, many of whom genuinely want to improve the lives of people living in Singapore.

The line between the government and her people is an imaginary line, and contrary to popular movie wisdom, neither has need to fear the other. Citizens who want to change Singapore for the better should not hesitate to join the government and effect change from within.

The Road Ahead

I have grappled with this decision for about a year now. It has become clear that it is time for me to move on. The entrepreneurial dream is something that burns within me and many of my friends.

But it has dawned on me that entrepreneurship is not so much a working arrangement as it is a state of mind. The entrepreneurial spirit is one that doesn’t tolerate the status quo simply because, but constantly questions and endlessly strive through continual iteration to improve processes, products and people.

I have decided to continue being an intrapreneur. Come April I will be joining the folks at Temasek Polytechnic. I was totally blown away by how much the organisation valued me as an individual rather than a unit of resource, and the hiring process was thoroughly outstanding. I am excited at the possibilities there, and thankful that God has provided for me and led me down a path filled with peace.

Dearest Faith,

I opened my eyes, escaping slumber for that brief moment, comforted by the fact I lay beside you, a place better than any in my dreams.

I love you.

This morning my 4 year-old daughter Anne picked up a small notebook that had a flower on the cover.

“This is for girls”, she stated.

And that’s how my notebook became hers.

“What would be on the cover if the notebook was for boys?” I asked. “A ball? A toy car? An aeroplane?” I suggested.

A cheeky smile spread over her face.

“Trash.”

I’ve been following the NBA for many years now, and most would agree that the NBA is one of the most savvy organisations when it comes to using digital media.

While most content-producers are afraid of piracy, the NBA Youtube channel puts up high-definition highlights of games. It always astounds me how clear the videos are.

My blog layout can’t take the awesomeness of the full-size video. Do yourself a favour and watch the original size on youtube. Remember to click on the HD button.

While the NBA was arguably strict on its players’ use of Twitter, every NBA team has a twitter account from which they update fans with news and even in-game statistics.

The NBA understands one thing well - the stories are larger than the individual clips. By updating us on the small things such as scores and video highlights, we are kept intrigued by large story-arcs: whether the draft class of Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony will continue to dazzle; whether CP3 will bring back the dominance of the little man; or whether the global game will change the way basketball is played in the NBA.

So when Bono advocates content tracking over the internet for policing of copyright violations, he comes across as trying so hard to protect an industry that should probably relook its entire product offering. Bear in mind that Bono made a lot of money from tours. His fans buy into his story, and the experience of a live concert. Those things aren’t going to be replaced by youtube clips anytime soon.

Perhaps it’s time for the music-makers and storytellers to go back to basics. They sure could learn from travelling musician Josh Wilson who lifted the spirits of passengers stranded at Newark during the lockdown.

Maybe the communal sharing of stories and music should take precedence over people making grotesque amounts of money.

It’s the end of the year, and as 2010 approaches, it is the time for change.

I’ve done the unwise - leaving my job at the Ministry of Education without first securing another, but somewhere in my heart I know that it is the right thing to do. It is both the fleeing from the inevitable apathy that comes with dogmatically sticking to a set routine, and the embracing of possibilities.

And all I have at hand are a set of vague plans.

As with any plan, there is a need to pray, and ultimately the surrender of our plans and submission to God’s. Guess I’ll come clean and say that I don’t know what He has in store for me either.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

This resonates so, so much, and so deeply.

Dearest Anne,

It is amazing how fast time has passed us by. I was there, for the most part: your entrance into the world, your first word, the time your hand got caught in the elevator door.

Look at you now.

I couldn’t be any prouder.

I’ve been doing a really poor job at chronicling the growth of the two kids. So much as changed so quickly that it’s really hard to keep up.

All I know is that every morning when we haul the 1 comatose and 1 wide-alert body down to the grandparents’ car it never fails to elicit a sigh from me. Nothing tells you that time is fleeting with the same profundity as watching babies turn into children, and children getting all grown up.

Anne is now 4.5 going on 14. She has an amazing grasp of the spoken language and has a more extensive vocabulary than I did when I was 9. She rattles on and on about girly things, like which hairclips she should put on, how she wished she had longer hair because there was this beautiful girl who had waist-length hair and how she wants to be a cartoon on tv so everyone in the world could watch her. She clearly has no lack for showmanship, that’s for sure.

Caleb is the sunniest 1.5 year old you’ll ever find. He certainly knows how to work his dimple, and the gurgling laughter often reminds Faith and I of Sir J.M. Barrie’s quote about laughter being the beginning of fairies. Caleb isn’t speaking extensively yet, though he understands most of what we tell him. I suppose with Anne talking so much he reckons his contributions there aren’t necessary.

It’s only been a few years on paper, but Faith and I feel ourselves growing older. It is the best thing in the world to come home to each other, then when we see the two children going hysterical with joy at seeing us in the evenings it truly brings meaning to the phrase “my cup overflows”.

I’ve always been enamoured by professions imbued with a “higher calling”. Nurses, doctors, activists, and the last time I checked, journalists. After all, isn’t a major point in the whole “journalists vs bloggers” debate? The claim that journalists are held to a higher standard in terms of reporting, and more importantly, ethics?

To be fair, the title “journalist” has expanded a lot in recent times. In this age of self-publishing anyone with a novel idea and internet access is able to address an audience. One could argue that the folks at celebrity gossip website TMZ are journalists to some degree. Or the tabloids for that matter. After all, they do bring news to an audience that craves for the genre.

My argument here is not whether Ris Low is news. My own rudimentary understanding of the word’s definition is that “news” is the opposite of “old’s”. Anything that is current is news. Any instant thought on an old subject is a new thought, any content created is fresh content, any pointer leading to old content is a new pointer. As such, it is all news, and it is all relevant if you find the appropriate audience.

My argument is that the Straits Times has failed to live up to journalism’s higher calling. I will constrain this discourse only to Ris Low - there’s no knowing how long we could go on if we were to address the allegations of biased and incomplete reporting.

The role of the press has traditionally been the middleman between authorities and their people. She walks the line between being the government’s mouthpiece and the people’s defender. Above all, the role of the press is to elevate the level of discourse.

The whole Ris Low saga is a scathing revelation of ST’s priorities. In her latest online posting ST’s Online Editor Joanne Lee defends the stance that Ris Low is still news. She is defending ST’s extensive coverage of Ris Low even after Ris has stepped down as Miss Singapore-World. She is defending articles about Ris having to retake her exams (implicit allegation that Ris was caught cheating on her exams would be the news angle here) and Ris not allowed to shop alone.

Is it news? The two articles are the top read stories on the Straits Times Online, so yes. Does it sell papers, attract readers and eyeballs? Yes. If journalism were solely a business of dollars and cents, there probably would be no question. But we hold journalism to a higher standard than just the making of money. The question with producing this sort of news, I would pose to the journalists at the Straits Times, is this: At what cost?

Ris is a 19 year old for crying out loud. You’re really going to do this? Is it worth the short-term bump in online views, the pittance of ad revenue? Is there any empathy left in you? When you first picked up your pen, you did it with empathy. It wasn’t business, you were young then and money wasn’t the motivation. You wrote because you wanted to show the world a reflection of themselves from a myriad of perspectives. The stories of personal triumph, the informative investigative pieces you had spent so much time putting together, the call for action to help those who are suffering?

Do you not see, in your dogged pursuit of Ris Low, that you have caused suffering?

As Asians we are probably used to the Spockian justification, “logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (or the one, yes yes). But the public does not need updates on Ris Low. We do need a press who will have the courage to accept the long-term view that the shareholders are best served when the people are well-served. The short-term gratification of getting the public’s fleeting attention at the expense of what the Straits Times could and should be is a bloody waste.

I spent the last month pretty much totally smitten on Glee, a weekly sitcom about a teacher gathering a bunch of misfits in high school to form a singing group. The premise isn’t new - it’s Mr. Holland’s Opus, a huge dose of Scrubs humour and beautiful, beautiful pop music set to Broadway. It’s basically Broadway on tv.

What is brilliant about the idea is how the show has served as an aggregator of pop culture for me. I’ve bought the show episodes off iTunes. Then there are the extended versions of the song which were cut short for the show, but available for sale. I bought those as well. Then intrigued, I searched for the original performance of the song, and sometimes bought those as well. I’ve never been so compelled to spend so much on media, but the storytelling and music make it well worth the money.

For example, Glee’s performance of “Don’t Stop Believing” had me buy Journey’s original rendition (oh so beautiful).

So yes, Glee in itself is campy, but it’s opened a window in the previously closed room of things I like, and I’m loving the new stuff. My wife and I are now momentarily-crazed fans of Kristin Chenoweth.

Going ahead, I have some ideas for Glee. :) They should release the instrumental tracks with backup vocals so fans all over can belt it out and put up their renditions on youtube. Do this a month or two before American Idol - you can imagine how many participants will be plugging Glee on the largest singing show on earth.

We could possibly see a renaissance of some sort.

I speak in my own echo chamber of course, I can’t fathom people not loving Broadway.

In the past few weeks we’ve seen the unfolding of the story that is Ris Low. For the uninitiated, it involves a 19-year old winning the title of Miss Singapore-World, her inpromptu interview and the revelation that she does not possess the eloquence expected of someone about to represent the nation on a global stage.

The public reaction was expected. You had those who made fun of her, those who created a Facebook group and those who were just dying to cast the first large boulder.

It didn’t help her cause that she was later found out to have previously committed credit card fraud, and then admitted to having suffered from a bipolar disorder.

But she’s stated that she’s still not throwing in the towel and returning the crown; how it’s been a dream of hers and she’s pursuing it, despite the overwhelming cacophony of voices maliciously denigrating her.

We Singaporeans love to play judge. Somewhere in our “you must grow up to be a lawyer” childhood we have been imprinted with the idea that power lies in the hands of those who do the judging. So we’ve acquired this over-developed ability to judge others. We are quick to deliver scathing remarks, complain if the train is a few minutes late and rant as if the universe owed us a living.

But real power doesn’t lie in judgement. It is easy to play armchair judge on Singapore idol and belittle someone elses’ lack of talent or skill. The contestants will probably tell you that going under the bright lights is a very sobering experience, and you come out of it more humbled and less likely to criticise.

So yes, Ris Low is flawed, and she probably isn’t the first choice we’d pick if we wanted to win the international competition. But I know of so many who have similar problems with diction, and my own past is as chequered as hers. The only difference is that I haven’t had the guts to subject myself to the possibility of failure in pursuit of a dream, however ludicrous others may claim.

I admire Ris for her bravery and I believe that everyone should be given chances to undo the mistakes of their youth and access to support in overcoming their personal adversity. I want my children to be brought up in an environment that believes and embodies these beliefs.

The question before us is not so much whether we will win the Miss World title, but whether we can take this chance to mature as a society and recognise that the fragmentation in society caused by being overly critical and competitive is destroying us from within. And whether we have the guts to bravely look in the mirror and accept the fact that we are all fraught with imperfections, but we are all united in the unfolding story that is Singapore.