卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

OK, I grant you that I could have done all this before, but really: which genius decided that the best time to take Singapore’s online tax-filing system down for two days of maintenance was the last weekend before the filing deadline? For goodness’ sake…

No-one likes paying tax, but it can at least be made easier. Online payment is convenient - when it’s done right.

I spent a long time last night  trying to submit my Singaporean tax return. My last employer had entered all the necessary details, so that was already on the system. Very convenient. However, the job before that had overlapped into 2007 slightly, and that employer hadn’t been connected with the tax system, so I had to amend the form to add on that income, subtract CPF, etc.

Except - it wouldn’t work. Every time I tried to submit, I was stopped by a pop-up that informed me “Only positive numbers are accepted”. Try what I might, this stumped me. There was nothing in the FAQ.  Why on earth was the system thinking that I was inputting negative numbers?

Eventually, after much frustration and wasted time, I had an inspiration. What if I took off the 67 cents from the end of the amount..? Bingo! It worked!

Note to the retard who wasted my time - find a dictionary, please! “Positive number” and “round number” are very different things!

Sometimes I really have to wonder why Singapore persists in calling itself an English-speaking country…

Are we heading for a global recession? All of the signs are that the US economy is now in recession. The next thing we find out is how much knock-on damage this will cause in developing markets. Are the Asian markets sufficiently decoupled from the US economy for India-China trade to keep everyone here afloat? We’ll find out in the next few months.

This recession, which was sparked off by the US housing bubble and compounded by bankers’ recklessness, has been a long time coming. Steven Roach at Morgan Stanley was warning about it even before I took my MBA, so it’s not as if we haven’t seen it coming.

What has come up swiftly and without much warning, and may yet bite us hard, is the shortage of food staples - rice, especially. With a number of media sources warning of food riots and social instability as a consequence, this is likely to be tough all around.

The people who are going to suffer the most are the ones Niti is investigating at the bottom of the pyramid - and this is going to be very different from anything we’ve seen before.

I remember, as a child, seeing the pictures of the famine in Cambodia, and the appeals for public donations. I helped to organize a Blue Peter Bring & Buy sale at my primary school to contribute. Soon afterwards, the focus shifted to Ethiopia. Here I oversimplify horribly, of course, but in essence the famine victims here had to be essentially passive, waiting for external food aid to arrive.

In a lesser case of food shortage, citizens in the old Soviet Union had to opportunistically join queues as soon as they saw one forming, hoping it meant that a delivery of food or other scarce goods had just arrived - even when (famously) they often didn’t know what they were waiting for until they reached the head of the queue. This would just be luck of the draw.

What difference will it make when the poor, who are most desperately affected by food shortages, all have mobile phones? Will governments and aid agencies use it to inform people of deliveries, and in this way alleviate anxiety? Will be see spontaneous, SMS-directed “hunger mobs” flash-forming on the rumour of food availability (either delivery, storage or hoarding)? And what will it mean for us when instead of seeing appeals for donations on TV, the hungry millions are calling us for help personally?

So… the Spice phone, with no screen or non-voice call functions will cost the equivalent of RMB 141? With basic but full-featured phones available at RMB 199, or even RMB99, new - where’s the market, again?

RMB99: advert next to public newspaper board. These boards are still pretty common around Beijing, with the day’s paper there for passersby to read.

RMB 199, in the window of a phone shop at Wudaokou. With a constant influx of new students - Chinese, Western, and (in large numbers) Korean - the phone market is intensely competitive here. A cluster of shops make it a great place to look for that new phone, regardless of budget.

A Cylon Centurion:

A Motorola Smart Rider Phone: