Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

Two suicides at NTU in a week. The stock market continues its endless slide. Citibank’s troubles, thought to be over last year, seem worse than anticipated. North Korea “defends” its airspace, causing costly diversions. My implant supplier didn’t send me a birthday cake this year. Our beloved Merlion was struck by the proverbial lightning. Fans of geomancy say that the last incident spell bad omen for Singapore.

It would seem that we can run but not hide from this destructive lightning. Our local media does a very good job of “balancing” the bad news. We’re not the only ones in trouble. Other countries are also facing problems and affecting us. No decision maker in singapore is responsible for all this mess. No investments are bad investments. Everything will bounce back - eventually. How reassuring.

But little more than a year ago, my landlord at Lucky Plaza had plenty of ammunition from market information and predictions to justify a doubling of rental. They managed to sell their medical suites at ridiculous prices. The property market was hotter than the most fiery tom yam goong and even alamak people could pronounce “en bloc” as “ong block”. Faced with a new leasing contract, my former neighbour, a microbiologist, decided to sell his lab and retire. Our landlord told him that he just missed the chance of a lifetime to snap up a medical suite for a comfortable retirement. The rest of us didn’t have the retirement option. I spoke to the gynae next door. We concluded that we were sitting on a bubble and decided not to commit ourselves to a length, hefty mortgage. Yet, even though we were concerned about the crazy valuations, our landlord had the upper hand and decided that their medical suites were in demand. We bargained hard (with little ammunition) and managed to get a small discount. Luckily, we didn’t fall for their sales pitch and bought our units for $2M each like some people did.

We don’t need a very good memory to recall all sorts of positive news and assurances that rained down on us from above, drenching everyone with unbridled optimism. The Beijing Olympics. The upcoming integrated resorts. F1. Nobody said “so what?”. Our leaders have been telling us not to worry about rising costs. One senior minister said that the rising costs were due to rising standard of living and not with property prices being overvalued. Many people were persuaded to bank hard on property and stocks. Even when the sub-prime crisis started to surface in the first months of last year, we have been reassured that Singapore will be safe due to our limited exposure to such risks. Foreign businesses (quite a number of my expat friends) were finding the rentals and other costs here ridiculous and packing up. Neither landlords nor the authorities addressed their concerns when they could still be retained. It was take it or leave it. Cost is not an issue as it has all to do with “branding”. There was no voice of reason loud enough to warn everybody that we were facing a financial meltdown on a global scale.

It all seemed like yesterday. The situation now is a complete reverse of “ong block” days little more than a year ago. The other day, I met the retired microbiologist at Lucky Plaza. He was so proud of his decision to retire. He just came back from a holiday in China. He visited a friend at Mt Elizabeth who was in deep trouble. The poor doctor bought up a unit at Mt E (over $3M) and a piece of private property (almost $2M) early last year. Facing difficulties servicing his mortgage now, he has been calling up friends who might be able to buy over his house. Please. Please. Please… poor thing.

All of a sudden, banks are posting horrendous losses. Assets suddenly become toxic. Imports are down. Exports are down. Manufacturers are laying off staff and tycoons are abadoning their mistresses. Costs are everything. Airlines like Thai Airways post unprecedented losses of USD592M while budget airlines have their day in spite of one Singaporean expert’s view that they will never make it. Online shopping, often frowned upon by many Singaporeans, is now becoming popular as we realise that most sellers out there are honest and things shipped in from the US can cost less than the same items displayed on expensive showcases in Singapore. In his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson has argued so cogently that an online 24/7 store can have an unlimited shelf space unlike the traditional store in a mall where every item in the store, depending on its size, consumes a certain display cost every month.

Let’s apply our common sense, sack the experts and think hard about what is going to work in these times. I’ve already touched on budget services and unlimited online catalogues. If I were granted a wish now, I might be tempted to wish I can run my practice on the streets with no need to pay rentals. But operating under such conditions would not be very good for the patient’s well-being. Perhaps I could do something less invasive like selling wanton mee.

The best place to sell wanton mee now? Kathmandu! Rentals may have gone up a lot, but there is real wealth being created in the valley. With peace restored, hordes of unemployed Europeans are flocking there to make better use of their unemployment allowances. My friend Jyoti may need to build another hotel.

SINGAPORE: A final-year engineering student at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) jumped from a campus block after stabbing a professor on Monday morning.

After stabbing the professor, the male student - who was in his 20s - slit his wrists and jumped off a five-storey building.

What a tragedy. As we were students once, many of us should be able to imagine what David Hartanto Wijaja was going through. He lost his scholarship and he was not going to graduate with flying colours. But did he have to stab a professor and then commit suicide? If not sure about slashing wrists and jumping off the building, but stabbing a #@%! professor is definitely not something too far from many students’ minds.

The latest “investigations” were quick to defend the system. David received 3 warning letters before his scholarship was withdrawn. Copies of those letters were sent to his parents. With the scholarship withdrawn, David would need to pay for tuition fees of about $3000. It was pointed out that his family could afford that.

Goodness. Do these folks believe that David should not feel pissed off enough to stab someone who might have wronged him just because of all those “mitigating factors”? Some folks speculated that David might have stabbed the prof by mistake as the latter had nothing to do with the termination of his scholarship. But the prof was his thesis supervisor and his thesis was not going well. Couldn’t he have stabbed his thesis supervisor because of problems with his thesis and the loss of his scholarship was just contributing factor to his violent action?

As a rebellious student always unhappy with the system, I didn’t have too many favourite lecturers. But I certainly had quite a few “least favourite lecturers” who were always waiting for a chance to put my name in the “infringement book”. Perhaps I’m just the non-violent type. I didn’t even throw a shoe at lecturers who had wronged me. I would normally just write a few poems to let off steam or a little more effectively, I would wait for staff assessment time to show off my talent in novel-writing. The only things I would sharpen were my pencils. But what if David were 24 years older and ended up as my classmate? I believe Prof CCC’s (not his real name) life might have been in danger.

If David were a dental student who knew his anatomy, this prof would have stood no chance of being discharged from hospital after a couple of days. With one of my sharpened pencils, David would have put Prof CCC (not his real name) in ICU for the rest of his life and more than a few meek characters in the faculty would have celebrated. Yes, there are profs from heaven and profs from hell. Many a student would have gladly put the profs from hell back where they came from if the consequences don’t matter anymore.

What would I do if I come across one of those profs from hell? I’ll probably present them with an armour. They may need it as more and more foreign students who have not been bludgeoned into submission since childhood come ashore.

Wait a minute. Isn’t that a female armour?

There are some family businesses that survived many generations after the original founders. There are some that folded up, not due to poor performance, but internal rivalry and other ridiculous reasons beyond the control of even the most prudent managers.

One of the reasons why some family businesses can survive tough economic times is because the family sees itself as a unit going through thick and thin. Every responsible employer knows that he has to pay his employees before he pays himself. If there are enough family members who put themselves in the position of the leader, tighten their belts along with him, making sure that employees are paid, suppliers are paid, utilities are paid before they pick up their share, the business is likely to survive a lot more punishment than one that relies solely on employees who are not related.

A family business loses all its advantage when members treat themselves like unrelated employees, demanding to be unaffected by any downturn. Even when the leader is sacrificing his own income to keep the business going, these people act like they have bought an insurance policy, insisting on the “guaranteed income” that the unrelated employees are getting. These family members seem to forget that they stay in the boss’ house, have their electrical bills, phone bills, TV licence and internet acccess paid for by the boss. They even enjoy the luxury of a maid paid for by the boss. Yet, they are jealous of the unrelated employee who indulges in the occasional branded handbag, feeling that it’s an indication that these people are “overpaid”.

Fortunately, bad times don’t last forever. When things take a turn for the better, some family members involved in the business are the first to insist on raises and bonuses - for themselves. In other words, they take no ownership of debt but want a healthy share of profits, feeling absolutely no guilt in making such demands.

When they are unhappy with the job, they may pass all kinds of disparaging remarks about the family business before leaving. When they find out that they are not being treated better elsewhere, they insist on going back to the family business, thinking that it’s their right and conveniently forgetting all the nasty things they’ve said when they left. They normally behave for the first few months, but once they settle in, they start playing “threaten the boss”, insisting on being bribed for good behaviour. If not, they’re going to wreck the office.

I guess even fair-weather friends would not have the cheek to behave this way. When they are family, what do we call people who turn the concept of family into a business?