Yew Jin's Sometimes Blog

The Singaporean voice acting is so bad - it's good.

Straits Times has also reported on the blog of the Taxi Driver with a PhD in Singapore.

It is apparent from the number of comments in the newspaper article and the blog that the netizens of Singapore are up in arms with this - horrors, a PhD holder driving a taxi cab. I suppose the Asian mentality is still influenced by the axiom that getting a good education means a good life. Well, and the warped notion that a good life is a high paying job.

In any case, this story has personally touched me and I read through the blog in one sitting (and my wife is dumbfounded at my fascination at this issue). I suppose it was a stark reminder of how things could turn out for me and my family - will I get retrenched in my 50s, be laden with debt and no job prospects, and be resigned to driving a taxi cab? (Sidenote: I have secured various verbal agreements with people to live in their balcony if things get bad)

In other news, I received this email:

I am writing to confirm that we have corrected your name on our records. Please reply with any corrections.

Here is how we now have your first name: Yew Jin
Your last name: Lim
Since you have completed your PHD, we have changed your title to Dr.

Communications to you should now be addressed: Dr. Yew Jin Lim

One question:
When addressing your mail using only your initials, should we include the initial of the second part of your first name, ie. Dr. Y.J. Lim?
Or, should we use the first initial only ie. Dr. Y. Lim?

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

In response, I have fulfilled my end of the bet (see the landing page of yewjin.com for details)

Grrrrr. Ok, which one of you emailed the University? :)

Probably the only taxi driver in this world with a PhD from Stanford and a proven track record of scientific accomplishments, I have been forced out of my research job at the height of my scientific career, and unable to find another one, for reasons I can only describe as something "uniquely Singapore". As a result, I am driving taxi to make a living and writing these real life stories just to make the dull job a little more interesting. I hope that these stories are interesting to you too.

We are waiting with bated breath for the birth of my son. I want to incorporate my vist back with the video of his arrival using my new toy - Flip Mino HD.

Video editing is pretty tedious (and thankless IMO), but here's a preview video which I create which highlights the quirky things you can burn as offerings. See Ancestor Worship [wikipedia.org]. Check it out.

I am back in Singapore for a vacation but recovering from jet lag. I flew United back which has terrible in-flight entertainment (but at a price that can't be beat!), so I finished all the books I bought (and then some!). Here are quick reviews for some of them.

"The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing" provides an excellent concise overview of financial definitions and tools. Kelly also provides introductions to trading strategies tied to investors such as Graham, Buffett, Lynch, O'Neil, etc. The writing style is conversational and easy to follow. However, it serves as a purely introductory text to each topic, and the reader is constantly advised to pick up the relevant book for more details. This is not necessarily a bad thing - just don't expect this to be the only stock-trading book you should be reading.

"Clean Code" talks about fundamental software engineering practices that one might pick up when working collaboratively over a long period of time. It covers programming style, refactoring and patterns. The coverage is fairly basic but it is light reading, so a seasoned software engineer can cover it in less than a day, while more novice individuals can read this over a few days to allow the ideas to sink in. The style suggestions given in this book (useful comments, meaningful names for functions and variables, etc) are all standard advice, but the examples given in this book illustrate the usefulness of following these basic guidelines. The examples are all in Java, but it should be easy to extrapolate them into general principles for any language.

Google has style guides for every language we use in projects, and this book is not as useful to me, since I am better off following the style that everyone else is following. However, if you work in a company with no style guide for the programming language you are using, you cannot go wrong applying the principles advocated by this book, and then enforcing this style onto everyone else who works in the same project.

"The Productive Programmer" covers an interesting aspect of programming - the tools and tricks that seasoned software engineers use to understand and test their programs. It covers code coverage tools, debugging tools, code analysis tools and text editing tips. I can see how useful if you work in an environment where the tools you use are not standardized or set up for you. Again, at Google, there is already a lot of foundation work done to prepare software engineers with tools that others have found useful, together with documentation or courses to enrich software engineers on how to utilize these tools.

I am not sure if this is praise for Google, or for the book. :)

I just read a poignant blog article on the psyche of Singaporeans' political soul - We like big brains.

Question

My biggest (and potentially most sensitive) question: Do Singaporeans actually support their uniquely efficient policies? An earlier study found that Hong Kongers are statist at heart; are Singaporeans any different? My suspicion is that the source of Singapore's success is not the public's unusually high economic literacy, but its unusual deference to economically literate elites. Will experience confirm my suspicions?

Admittedly, this informal survey suffers from potentially severe selection bias. Perhaps civil servants exaggerate the incompetence of the public to make themselves feel important. But I suspect that if selection bias plays a role, it goes in the opposite direction: Civil servants are more likely to exaggerate the popularity of their policies to make themselves feel well-liked. The fact that "resignation" remains a popular answer is telling: The architects of policies like ERP might like to fantasize that the public loves their work, but daily experience gets in the way.

As seen in Straits Times Forum, surely you jest Ms Wee?

THE population dearth is indeed a desperate situation which requires desperate measures. Are Singaporeans prepared to face the desperate truth, which is that the Singapore identity and culture that we were debating not long ago is fast becoming extinct? In recent years, Singapore has had to 'fake' its population by opening the floodgates to foreigners.

I agree with Mr Thomas Ling ('Tackle the problem not the symptoms', Aug 20) that upping financial incentives and maternity, paternity or childcare leave is barking up the wrong tree. This illustrates the adage that money cannot buy everything. Much reflection is needed on attitudes to life, career and relationships.

For one thing, young women today are almost totally lacking in fu dao (the way of women), a Confucian ethic. According to Confucius, 'a woman should serve her family first and herself last'. Young women today are too arrogant, too loud and don't even know how to sit properly. It makes one wonder about their parents and shudder at the thought of them becoming mothers.

Give the men a break. Changing nappies is a woman's job. Men are made for greater things than this. You wouldn't ask a woman to carry a tonne of bricks, would you? Girls have to be taught their domestic duties and women have to be more hardworking at home. Girls should not grow up thinking the home is not their responsibility.

It is best for women to sacrifice a few years of their working life to nurture their families. Men, too, should be made more accountable on their role as breadwinners. This will create a win-win situation for all parties, including employers and children.

Our neighbourhoods are cold these days because of the absence of chatting mothers and mingling children.

In Chinese philosophy, women are yin and men are yang. They are complementary but not equal. When their energies are not balanced, there is disharmony.

A country that was built on Confucian ethics should perhaps rebuild on Confucian ethics. Unfortunately, this will not create the instant results we need. However, whatever is worth having will not come easily.

Jennifer Wee (Ms)

To those who do not know yet - I have a baby, and he's due in December.

But I have to confess - I have been keeping a secret. I really want to name him "Evil", and get him to pursue some doctorate or medical degree. So that he can be officially called Dr Evil.

_sigh_

Why is it the wife always gets veto-rights?

Interesting nugget - Larry Brilliant's won the TED prize in 2006 and his TED wish was to create a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread. See video [ted.com].

Singapore's version - RAHS (Seriously, do we need to make Risk Assesment And Horizon Scanning an acronym?). If only we could have used it to find, oh I don't know, missing terrorists or recalcitrant political activists. :)

If Nasi Lemak don't come to Yew Jin, Yew Jin will cook some pseudo Nasi Lemak. Our first attempt.