Category Archives: General

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The Singapore River

My hotel is near the Singapore River – my favorite part of town. It’s at Robertson Quay (pronounced “key”, though I spent years wrongly saying “kay”), a swank high-rent district next to the ultra-hip restaurants of Clarke Quay (hey, they even have a Hooters!) and the more traditional (and thus my favorite) Boat Quay. The Boat Quay is a line of 100+ year-old buildings along the south bank of the river full of bars and restaurants. But what is so intriguing is that the backdrop to these three-story, brightly stuccoed shops are the massive steel and glass skyscrapers of the financial district – a beautiful juxtaposition of the modern and traditional that is so common in this city/state.

I’ve eaten at the Boat Quay every night I’ve been here so far. Which explains one of the reasons why I love Singapore – the food. The country is essentially a mix of four cultures – Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, and English. The English came here during their bad-old colonial days, turning this little Malay-infused island into a shipping way station. They also imported Indian and Chinese labor until those populations become very significant. Now the English-influenced style forms a pervasive backdrop to an extraordinarily wide range of multicultural traditions. And the food from every one of these traditions and more can be found on the Boat Quay. Mmmmmmm.

Walking back from the Boat Quay each night I pass through the Clarke Quay, so how can I help myself? I have to stop in at one of Singapore’s only brewpubs – the Brewerkz. Although there is not anything very “Singaporian” about the place (it could just as easily be at home in San Diego or Seattle), the beer is good. It certainly beats the bland local stuff – Tiger Beer. But it is not too hard to find a good English pub to cool off in – like the Penny Black on Boat Quay.

So what is the weather like in Singapore this time of year? The same as every time of year – 90F and 90% humidity. We’re on the equator – you can tell the seasons only from the changing displays of the chic designer shops along Orchard road. But, being from Austin, I feel right at home with the heat.

Greetings from Singapore

It only took 30 hours to get here from Austin, but I’m back in Singapore after an absence of about 4 years. I’m here to give a three-day training class on lithography to one of the local semiconductor companies. But since they want every litho engineer in the compay to take it, I’ll be staying next week to repeat the course as well (half is all the company can spare from the factory at any one time). It’s a long time to be away from home (until now the longest I’ve been away from my baby daughter has been two days), but I love to teach, so I think it will be worth it.

So if the jet lag doesn’t stop me, I might do a little blogging about this city/state/island over the next 10 days.

Puzzling over science

I am not a jigsaw puzzle addict, but I do like to dabble in puzzling, especially when around family. I guess it reminds me of my childhood, where puzzling (along with Monopoly) filled the gap now occupied by video games for most kids. In any case, I revisited my jigsaw past over the weekend with an interesting result – philosophical thoughts about science. You can read a short essay on the topic called Puzzling Over Science.

In the news… Exxon again

Exxon Mobile is in the news again, as they released more information on their 2005 financial results. This one is interesting: in 2005 Exxon spent more money buying back stock than exploring for oil. So is investing in Exxon a better bet than investing in oil? Hmmm. Meanwhile, Exxon is not taking the bad publicity sitting down. They’ve been running full page ads saying, in effect, hey, other industries are better at making money than oil! Look at pharmaceuticals. Banking. Software. All higher margin. But none of these industries are selling commodity items. They are service or high tech (where the value comes from knowledge, not from the value of the raw materials). Commodity businesses, in a free and open economy, are supposed to be low margin. So why isn’t oil?
But the comparison to the drug industry is interesting. Drug companies spend far more money winning, dinning, and effectively paying doctors to prescribe their drugs than they do researching new ones. Here is why such behavior is similar to the oil companies. Taxpayers are asked to subsidize two of the worlds most profitable industries – oil and drugs – through massive tax breaks, below market rate (or free) royalties on government property (government land for drilling, government patents for drugs, etc.), relief from environmental regulations, and numerous measures to protect these industries from competition. Why? We are told that these subsidies are needed to promote oil exploration and drug research. Really? At cursory examination of the financials of these two industries shows how ridiculous that assertion is.
Company profits are good. Big company profits are even better. But profit gained by the subversion of a free market just means the consumer is in for a soaking. Fill-er-up.

In the news… Exxon-Mobil profits

A few days ago, Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest corporation, announced their 2005 financial results. And what results they were. Revenues were over $370B (that’s more than the GDP of Saudi Arabia) and profits were $36B. That’s over a billion dollars a day in revenues, and profits of over $100M per day! A pretty good year, though Exxon was quick to point out that the pharmaceutical industry was doing better (an interesting argument: “don’t complain, the drug companies are price gouging worse than us”). But I shouldn’t begrudge a company its profits – making money is a good thing. What gets me is I don’t understand why they were so profitable this year. After all, they experienced record high costs of their raw materials (crude oil) and major disruptions of the refining and distribution operations during the hurricane season. Shouldn’t that have hurt their business, at least a little?
It seems that the basic principles of a free market economy don’t apply here. And that’s the problem, with two parts. First, the US oil industry is massively protected and subsidized by our government (even more than most other big industries). When things go bad (or at least appear bad, since obviously 2005 was not a bad year for Exxon), we can count on congress to give tax breaks and price subsidies to the big guys. Second, and more importantly, us consumers are so hooked on oil that we have become total immune to price changes. Raise the price 50%, and we don’t lower our consumption one bit. That’s not what they teach us in Economics 101. Why do we act this way? Maybe we will change our oil consuming habits, it just takes us a while. I can only hope.