Someday in the future, if I have enough money to provide scholarships to others, this is what I will do. I will put up a full page colour advert on all the major newspapers  and run a month-long online ad campaign on all the major online media, portals, blogs to advertise my scholarship.

My scholarship will have NO application form. Yes you read me right. NO APPLICATION FORM.

The idea is, We have $$$ to be given out for scholarships.  But we are different from the rest. We don’t do things the normal way. Here’s the information that we will provide. An office address. An email address. Your task is to proof to us in the most outrageous, outstanding, radical way why you deserve to win this scholarship.

I love this idea. Students will scramble to crack their brains to be the most creative application since there are no application forms. They are encouraged to use whatever methods to impress. It can be low-tech stuff like sending a big colour package descriving your life in a postcard or sending in dozens of photos with short descriptions or high-tech stuff like creating a 5 minute video presentation of you skydiving explaining your reason or creating a website with support from members from you college and school or using faceboook and creating a group with 10000 followers why you deserve this scholarship. The idea is proof to us in a different manner why you are different. The key is the sky’s the limit. But one thing is certain - just sending in your resume and 10 page essays will get your application tossed into the bin unless it is accompanied by something unique and exceptional.

Send in you application in whichever way to the office address and/or email address to be evaluated. Only the most creative application will be shortlisted.

Your exam results, co-curricular achievements, personality, character and all will/should be reflected in the application. This is cool. This really shortlist the most motivated and determined people.

My 2nd round will be total hard-core business development, marketing idea/brainstorming, creative session individual presentation.

This is all about ideas and selling yourself. I like creativity. I think it’s understated in our current model. It is not being emphasized enough. Let’s go build creativity.

Oh I would love to give out 2 years bond or bond-free scholarships too. Hmmm….I would love to be surprised everyday during this scholarship application. Will I ever get to see this happen?

UPDATE: I was at Sime Darby interview on Monday and I sold this idea to them..Will they take it up? It will be interesting if they do.

All the staying at home is slowly killing me. I kinda feel like I’m rotting. Get a job, most people will say. But what kind of job? Gah.

Btw my situation reminded me of an article I read in The Star pretty recently about Lee Kuan Yew talking about unemployed graduates in Singapore.

The following is the quote from here.

It is a national dilemma. Unless graduate unemployment is reversed, the middle class here faces erosion and social problems and poverty could set in.Out-of-work graduates are unable to service their home payments or maintain their family. More couples may decide not to have children.When he was Prime Minister during the early days of university-building, Lee Kuan Yew had said that Singapore would avoid countries like India, in producing too many jobless graduates.
With an able mind and higher expectations, too many of them would sit idly around coffee shops hatching revolutions, he explained.

Another article from the same author about Lee Kuan Yew quoted from another article here said:

For me, it’s like reliving some of the problems I had reported in other countries a generation ago.The headline made me recall what (then Prime Minister) Lee Kuan Yew once said about unemployed graduates.Commenting on the street violence that often marred life in India and Pakistan in those days, Lee attributed it partly to the large number of out-of-work graduates.
They were a potential source of instability. Their education allowed them to organise, plan or lead violent revolutions and they had the free time to do so.

I kinda feel what LKY said was true. I put myself as an unemployed graduate. Well I satisfy the first criteria, albeir voluntarily and the second criteria, let’s just say I’m an A-Level graduate and will be a university graduate in 3 years time.

And all the free time that I’m having, what have I been doing? Planning revolutions here and there on the Internet for the local youth scene.

Might work out, might not work out.

“With an able mind and higher expectations, too many of them would sit idly around coffee shops hatching revolutions, he explained.”

Damn I’ve been going for coffee sessions too many time thinking of ways to strike it big. Well perhaps it’s good. Or is it?

And just a few days back, I came out with a rebranding exercise for myself and this blog. I’m working on another personal project. Another revolution? Man!

Working makes time passes by very fast. But not working leaves me with too much idle time. And the brain is always cooking up some surprises for me.

Bobby “CE” Ong: It’s time to implement those revolutions. No more talk shop. Time for action.

Is it ethical for a company to put up sponsored links on Google on search terms for their rivals? How do you judge business marketing ethics?

I was doing a random search for Reebok and Adidas and what I saw on the sponsored links on Google horrified me.

What do you have to say? Should Nike continue their practise?
Or better still, what has Adidas or Reebok has to say about their rivals placing sponsored links on Google on their search term!

Oh I’d just noticed something really interesting too. Adidas search listing is about 3 times more than Reebok’s. Where has Reebok gone wrong in their marketing?

I like the life I’m leading now. No exams. No school. No work. No stress.
All the free time to do whatever I want to do.
And all the free time to learn what I want to learn.
And all the free time to think and wander off however much I want.

I’ve been thinking lately that in life there are several things which we have to fulfil to lead a meaningful, happy, peaceful and a prosperous life.

OK, let’s stop and retract our chain of thoughts.
What is life?

Say we put the following assumption into place that our life starts from the moment we are born and ends the moment we die. What can we consider a life that is worth living?

Consider ourselves lucky that we are born normal and do not have Down’s Syndrome because I still cannot figure out the reason of living a life if one is born with Down’s Syndrome. Anyone care to provide a perspective?

For me and I believe for many of us, the main benefit of being born is the ability to have a mind and conscience that is able to think rationally. And if we are able to think rationally, we should do something about our lives and not let it drift around aimlessly.

So back to my point, what can we consider a life that is worth living? There are several universal laws in this universe which we may not fully comprehend yet and there is only one way to go. You are either with the law or against the law.

Sounds convoluted? Haha….it probably is.

What I mean by universal laws are things like the concepts of chi and feng shui. Concept like karma. Universal concept on health and financial freedom. I know due to the many different forms of religion, some of you might believe or detest the existence of these concepts. But let’s just assume that they are all true and we take their teachings at face value.

Now, if we can play God and dictate our lives as we want it to be, what kind of life would we want to lead? In other words what are our priorities in life?

This is very hard but I shall try to compile my list. Do kindly comment if you think I missed out on some major aspects of life. This is not a ranking. There is still a lot of thoughts if I were to rank them.

1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Family
4. Spirituality
5. Success
6. Security

Did I miss out any broad topic about the important priorities in life? I guess the above 6 comes together. Having 5 parts while missing out on life will cause us to lead an unfulfilled life.

For example, someone might be a very successful entrepreneur. He is rich, successful, well protected by guards, have a family - but his health is failing. Or say he has everything except spirituality. After achieving all, at a grand old age of 80, he feels delusional about life. Or say he has everything except family.

I think you get my point. You can try out for any other combinations. Having all 5 while missing out one 1 will bring about sadness.

It’s pretty scary sometimes thinking that many people go about their whole life chasing several aspects of life while neglecting the others only to regret years later. But time can’t be turned around and the consequences have to be paid.

I guess I’m happy that I know that the following 6 must come together at such a young age. They used to tell us, Don’t study hard, study smart. I guess I’m gonna Play It Smart too. I’m gonna chase my monetary dreams, but I’m not gonna work my ass off. I want to be rich and retire early. Or I would like to think of this better. I want to slack and be rich. Sounds impossible? I suggest you read the following books that provide an alternative perspective towards money and financial freedom - Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki.

Health. I’m starting to realise how easy it is to work hard everyday without exercising at all. I’m equally guilty in this aspect. I’ve not exercised for the past several months. Sedentary lifestyle….Not a very good idea. How? HOW?

Spirituality. Argh….No need to talk about this yet…..Wrong attitude. How? Perhaps a good idea is to buy a book on all the major religions in the world and read them. Then I can rationally decide whether Buddhism is really the better choice for me or being an atheist or an agnostic is a better choice.

Wait. What about feng shui? It helps us achieve success right?

All the above needs to be worked on from a young age. It’s not fair to simply avoid and postpone talking about them till old age. If we procastinate, we might regret. Geez, life is not that easy anymore right?

Guess we should all just go to some Casino and let fate decide for us.

I applaud Datuk Idris Jala’s cost cutting measures at MAS. I applaud his efforts to innovate and increase the company’s revenues. I applaud his efforts in turning around the company. And I welcome changes to the way things are done at MAS.

BUT I have huge reservations to the latest initiative launched two days ago on the new airline fare structure. I understand the need for MAS to stay competitive. I understand that the 4 new airfare structures introduced by MAS is a covert method of more perfectly price discriminating passengers to increase total revenue. Theoretically, by charging 4 different prices for the same air route, MAS will be able to more perfectly exploit the different elasticity of demands for different passenger groups and hence increase revenue.

BUT this is what I have to say. The new airfare structure is simply TOO COMPLICATED AND COMPLEX for the average customer to understand. And this might work against MAS.

Four different price structures is a little too much for the average consumer to grapple with. There are just simply too many subtle differences in terms and conditions.

A few years back Celcom also experimented with this system for its prepaid customers. It launched 3 different plans for prepaid customers – Celcom Xcel, Xceed and Xplore. Theoretically it seems perfect. It offers value to different segments of consumers and tends to increase Celcom’s revenue. But I’m guessing the intended result did not follow the standard Econs/Biz manual. I do not have the data to support my point here, but I’m guessing that the program was not as successful as the management had planned. Celcom eventually merged its 3 prepaid plans into what is now known as Celcom Xpax.

So MAS, I would like to say the following to the management. Consider the SUBTLE INTRICACIES of offering so many options to customers. Maybe the more savvy ones will spend more time researching about your different plans. But will time-constrained consumers be willing to spend time understanding your 4 new structures? Or will they just give up and fly SIA or fly budget AirAsia?

Look, I’m not saying all is lost. There is pretty much nothing MAS can do since it has already launched the airfare to much fanfare 2 days ago. What MAS must do now is to engage in an aggressive marketing strategy to SIMPLIFY the structures.

I was reading newspaper reports on the 4 structures and they are very vague. Failure to do a good marketing strategy will simply result in disastrous losses.

I am seriously wondering why MAS is taking a budget approach towards airfares when it already has FireFly to service to budget segment. Look where SIA is going? It’s taking the luxury approach and is posting remarkable profits year after year. It stopped flying economy class to New York and now only flies business class there.

MAS, your cabin crew is one of the best in the world. Make full use of it. KNOW YOUR MARKET. Don’t be sucked into a futile competition with AirAsia. Both of you are competing in different market segments. And most importantly, don’t do a Qantas.

WTF? Dong Jiao Zong (however u ever learned how to pronounce that) wants Science and Maths to be taught in Chinese in Chinese Primary School? WTF. WTF. WTF.

WHY ON EARTH?! Are you people nuts? It took the government such a hard time making English the medium of instruction for Science and Maths in schools and now you want to revert the policy? And your argument is to protect Chinese culture?

Hello, being in a Chinese environment with Chinese subjects is not good enough to learn Chinese eh? Not all Chinese kids are good in English too ok. I see so many students from Chinese schools graduating with poor speaking and writing skills. Do we want our Chinese kids to be further disadvantaged in this globalised world?

Anyway, this is a note the Education Minister. PLEASE KEEP THE CURRENT POLICY OF TEACHING SCIENCE AND MATHS IN ENGLISH. I was the last batch of students to be taugh in Malay and I despised that fact. I went on to pursue my A-level in Singapore where everything was taught in English. Luckily for me, I use English at home and I did not have to struggle much in Singapore with language. But for many others I bet learning everything in English was tough. So please keep the current policy for our future generation’s benefit.

This is weird. I am still getting used to this lifestyle - a lifestyle of slacking and bumming. After 2 years of hard work, it is rather strange not having anything to do.

When you are so busy, you wished for time to relax. When you have all the time to relax, you wished for things to challenge yourself. Life is ironic, isn’t it?

8 months to kill time. What shall I do? I had wanted all the time in the world to slack last time, but I did not really give much thought into what I will do during that free time. I was too busy studying I did not have the time to dream and imagine about the future – my favourite past time.

Laugh as much as you like, but I like dreaming and imagining up stuff. I used to do it a lot back in secondary school but I had to cut down on them in Singapore.

Read this: Life in Singapore, especially the junior college is simply too rigid and stressful for me to imagine stuff.

Look Singapore, you want to create creative students right? You want to remove the conventional, conformist, indifferent attitude of people right? You want people to think in unique, out-of-the box ways right?

Well, your education system DOES NOT encourage the above. It’s too RIGID, too ORTHODOX and too EXAM-ORIENTED. Students are encouraged to chase NOTHING ELSE but As in examinations.

Yes, it’s a process called meritocracy; I understand that. Perhaps it’s a trade-off between conflicting education policies. You push your students hard to ensure they are strong in their Science and Maths, but at what expense? I understand the need for Singapore to be the best in this globalised world; your teachers did a terrific job in drumming that into me. But I pity your Singaporean kids. They slog all their way through from Primary 1 all the way to JC2.

Those stronger ones might have the opportunity to develop other aspects once they are strong in their academics. They might EXPLORE other avenues. But how many of your students actually DARE explore things beyond their text books? Doing so might cause their exam results to deteriorate A BIT and cause them to LOSE OUT a lot. Is it worth it?

I had a serious misconception about your country before coming. My perception of your country and your education system before starting JC was this: Because Singapore is a more developed country, it will have a better education system as compared to Malaysia. And when I mean better I mean an education system that encourages creativity and unorthodox thinking. And this often means it is LESS EXAM-ORIENTED because exams FORCES students to think in a RIGID, INFLEXIBLE manner.

Maybe I did not do my research well enough. Maybe I did not watch I Not Stupid. And that probably gave me a cultural shock when I first entered my JC. I am surprised at the frequency of tests. I HATED the fact that the only way for me to succeed was to ROTE-LEARN my lecture notes.

The amount of things I had to MEMORISE used up so much of my brain capacity that at the end of the day I just have no spare brain cells to indulge in my imagination. Just ask Albert Einstein how important imagination is.

‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’

Anyway, I’m not out here to deride the Singapore education system. The system is also good in the following aspects.

1) The Singapore education system encourages one to think critically of a subject matter. Yes, all those studying and those tough tests actually improved my analytical skills, something that I did not learn very well back home. After 2 years I’m a different person; I can look at anything now and analyse it to bits and pieces – and the weird thing is, I actually enjoy doing so!

2) The Singapore education system makes a student more determined and competitive. Losing is not fun and the Singapore education system is excellent in making people lose. It is not uncommon for half the cohort to fail a certain subject. I thought exams are designed to pass students! Well, not here in Singapore. It’s design to fail student. Well it demotivates you, but it also encourages you to push harder to succeed. As long as you do not give up, the whole process just makes you a stronger person.

***

Ah, just my personal musings of the Singapore education system. I diverged a lot from my original thoughts. Perhaps I gotta write a more objective piece of the education system soon. 8 months to go - all the time to write.