Singapore Air Show

Last Sunday Sarah, Daniel and I went to the Singapore Air Show. I'm posting a few pictures for aviation enthusiasts.



Here we are next to the A380



Here with a KC-135 refueling aircraft from Okinawa



The kids with a US Air Force pilot



Sarah with a crewmember



A380 during a demonstration flight

Acquarium

Here is out new acquarium. Sarah and Daniel feed the fish daily (well, almost)and they take their responsibility seriously. Sarah is wearing a Chinese dress and Daniel his Cars pjs.

Youth Olympics

Singapore won the right to host the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010 and people are very happy about it. Singapore had been lobbying strongly to be the host country and finally a positive decision was made.

Today I attended a marketing event at Nanyang Technological University where Coke's marketing director was the key speaker. He said that to celebrate the Youth Olympic achievement, Singapore's Coke will sell tomorrow 201,000 coke cans with a specially designed conmemorative logo. With all the due diferences, it's a bit like Beijing's award to host the Olympics. Now it's Singapore's time to honor the newly orginized Youth Olympic games.

Color challenged

Every time we go out with the twins, people come to us to ask us about them. It is indeed unusual to see twins. Here in Singapore families have one and sometimes two children. When we say we have four children people get suprised.

What I have found interesting is that in general, people cannot recognize if they are boy or girl. They usually ask if they are both boys. I used to find this question strange because we always dress Hannah in pink and Christian in blue, so it was evident they were boy AND girl... but, was that evident?

Now I realize people here do not necesarily dress girls in pink or boys in blue. For them, pink or blue means nothing and thus they cannot distinguish their gender by the color of their clothes. In our culture kids dress in those colors and thus we immediately assumed gender would be self evident. Not so much. Now we know that assumption is wrong here in Singapore (and I suspect in much of Asia).

Tragedy at NIU

I read the news and I'm schoked and saddened. Another shootout at a university, this time at Northern Illinois University. In this case is specially disturbing because it's so close to me. The shooter was a graduate students at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I also attended U of I and lived in Champaign for 10 years. I met some people that were students at NIU.

When the massacre at Virgina Tech occured I was at Cornell and we orginized a remebrance service at Sage Chapel. I invited all of my TMO's Cornell friends to go by saying that I would be waiting at Sage Hall and whoever wanted to come with me would be welcome. The service was sobering and I was particularly impacted by the emotion in words of unity said by Cornell's President David Skorton.

And now it has happened again. What a sensless tragedy

Everybody's birthday

Last Wednesday here in Singapore we celebrated "everybody's birthday" I understand that the 7th day of the Chinese New Year is the birthday celebration day. As a result, the team and I (about 14 people) went to a very traditional Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. I must point out that I was the only non-Asian person in the group (in fact, in the whole restaurant that was sitting about 300 people).

This restaurant is in the seventh floor of a building and its style is art deco from the 60's. It looks like a ballroom with some food stands. In them, there were some "displays" of cooked animals: Whole roast duck (including head and eyes), an entire pig and an aquarium with fish ready to be cooked.

Out first dish was something that sounds like "Low Hey" It consists on raw fish with something that looks like small fortune cookies and dry noodles. The interesting part is that it is served without mixing it at the center of the table. Then the whole group "cheers" by wishing a prosperous New Year while throwing the Low Hey high in the table. The idea is that the higher the food is thrown, the more prosperous the year will be. This practive is quite messy but people enjoy it nevertheless. These are some of the delicacies I tasted (in addition to the raw fish): Boiled sea cucumber (a marine worm the size of a cucumber), shark's fin soup (although I made a polite point about the practice of kiling sharks only for their fins), USA fried duck and white moss dessert. As I have already mentioned, sometimes it's better not to ask what it's been served to avoid unpleasant suprises.

Cleaning habits

Here in Singapore I found something that I have not decided yet how much it bothers me. One the one hand, it's good but on the other is anoying.

Let me explain. At several places that I have been to (my office, restaurants, malls, etc) public bathrooms are in general clean. This is the good part (at least according to my opinion, my wife thinks bathrooms are disgusting). The problem -at least for men- is that almost always women clean the restrooms. This in itself is not suprising. What bothers me is they clean them when men are using the services.

Worse, men don't seem to bother or even acknowledge the existance of the cleaning ladies and continue on with their business. Both parties trully ignore each other and nobody seems to mind.

Maybe the way I was brought up is old fashioned and westerner, but whenever I encounter a lady cleaner in a bathroom, I simply cannot use it. I cannot ignore her, as though she did not exist. I refuse to accept a cultural norm that negates the existance of people holding certain jobs.

Happy Chinese New Year

This was my first Chinese New Year celebration. As I have documented, there were decorations everywhere with mandarins, gold, red and the god of prosperity. On Friday we decided to go to Marina Bay and see the "carnival" that had been prepared. My mother-in-law, Sarah and Daniel came with me while Nohemi stayed home with the twins.

At the fairground, I noticed several people (mainly children and women) were dressing in traditional Chinese dresses, with bright red and gold colors. There was a festive atmosphere and families were strolling along the Singapore River. Towards the center, there was a big gazebo with stands indicating the different holidays Singapore celebrate. The one that I found most interesting was called "The festival of the Hungry Ghost" In this uniquely Singaporean festival, people burn pieces of paper to apeace the ancestors' spirits.

Ther was also a big statue-about 10 meters high-of the god of prosperity, a chubby ancient Chinese god that is said to, well, to bring prosperity. At the stroke of midnight, this god throws "gold" coins to signify a prosperous new year.

At the end of the day everyone was very tired but nevertheless we went to a very nice restaurant at the legendary Fullerton Hotel, at the Singapore riverfront. Sarah was sooo happy to be there that that's when I realized how much she misses USA. I hope she adapts well to this new culture and gets to enjoy it as much as we do.

On the actual New Year, I decided to follow an ancient Chinese tradition: I gave Sarah and Daniel some money in a red envelop. The idea is that seniors give this envolpes to juniors (parents to children, uncles to nephews, etc) in even amounts -2,6,8 dollars- but never 4 since 4 is an unlucky number. Then children place the envelop underneath their pillow and sleep with it for one night. This is supposedly to bring good fortune for the future. Notwithstanding the "good fortune" part, I though it would be a fun activity for the children so I gave them their money. The problem is I think they are still keeping it under their pillows. In any case, they had fun and got to experience a new cultural tradition that we had never heard of.

Talk at NUS

Last Monday I gave a talk about risk management at National University of Singapore (NUS). The idea came a few months ago when I was hosting the Cornell table at the MBA career fair in Singapore. My table happened to be next to NUS and I got to meet some MBA people and we exchanged business cards. Since I enjoy what I do, I thought that maybe somebody else may be interested in knowing more about it so I called NUS and offered to give a talk.

I got in contact with the president of the Finance club and we orginized the event. About 30 people showed, included a person that I first met when we arrived in Singapore and my Operation's TA at Cornell (Lucy). She finished the PhD and now is a professor and the college of business at NUS. I enjoyed the talk and I hope I showed the students how interesting risk management is in a global context. I talked nonstop for about 2 1/2 hours. Several students were interested in the topic and in job searchin strategy. As a result of my involvement, I received several follow up questions via e-mails and some phone calls. The student's reponse gave me some additional ideas that I will be working on shortly.

Octagon coin

This may be an "urban legend" in Singapore but I found it interesting nevertheless.

It is said that Singpoare went through very difficult economic times during the 70's and 80's and the then Prme Minister decided to consult a Chinese astrologer to find out a cure for the economic decline. The Astrologer told him to have all Singaporean display an octagon in their houses to bring good fortune. Number eight in China means prospeirty and prices are often quoted as "88". For example, the sale price of a good pair of jeans can be $88.00, just as in the USA is 99.

Going back to the main story, the Prime Minister knew he could not order all citizens to have an octagon since there are people with different religious beliefs (Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc) that would never follow such instructions. To solve his predicament, he had the treasury issue a new one dollar coin with an octagon in one of the faces. Since everybody uses coins, he reasoned, every houshold would have an octagone and good fortune would return to Singapore. That octagon is called something that sounds like "pa qua." True story or not, I think it reflects some of the believes of this society.