Of Lovely S'poreans

More petrol ah?

Of Silence

Overheard on the train today: "You want to sit down or not? You want mummy call police catch you? I call now uh!" All spoken in good english, perhaps till the part where the uh came out...

It is amazing that to this day, parents are using the Police as an outsourced fear to manage their children.

In managerial terms, how do we manage performance and behaviours? Rewards, Inducement, Threats.

Why do parents resort to the ultimate falsehood of "police will catch you" to manage their children then? Is it due to the authoritative image that the men in blue hold? Or are parents today still as weak as those 20years ago that they need an external source of power to lord over the children?

Over the exchange between the mum and child on the train, a silent figure stood, towering above the restless boy at stood near his feet, it was only when the boy grabbed the man's knees that i realised that the one person that kept quiet all this while is in fact the father..

Mummy : "you want to sit or not?!"
Daddy: (silence)
Mummy : "some other words to the kid"
Daddy : (still silent)

Different styles brings about different results

Silence is golden?

Flashback:
Back when i was in NPCC, it was part of my duty to train up the next batch of NCOs to lead the unit after i'm gone(sounds so morbid). During one class session where a batch of noisy cadets were held in a classroom, of the the NCO-to-be approached me for help to manage the restless kids

Me : Well, there are 2 ways to do it, firstly, you can walk in, take the duster from the board and slam it against the board, that should shut them up.

She: ... (shocked)

Me : Of course, there's also a softer approach, go back in, switch off the lights, grab a chair and sit there silently

She: K****** Sir, can demo?

Me : Ok

And i did it

Of Cool!

It's all happening this weekend

Of Serving

What exact is Service? Service is a provision of a good that is not physical in nature, yet, it requires a physical body to provide this "good" to the recipient.

My job now requires me to create a service culture amongst a wide variety of people, each with different levels of competency, motivation and knowledge about service. In a way, this is a social engineering project to mould the mindsets of people and change behaviour.

Pavlov's classical conditioning equates behaviour to certain cues that can be used to trigger positive behaviour. At the workplace, incentives in the form of bonuses, time-off and/or recognition from bosses are colleagues are some of the possible sources of motivation. Move higher up the ladder and big words like Self-Actualisation comes into play.

Oh yet another note, every male Singaporean and second generation PR are liable for National Service. Within such parameters, is it fair to require those who are enlisted to provide this service with a heart? To go the extra mile so as to speak? National Service - NS - National Slavery, when young men are enlisted by law to be trained as soldiers, police officers, fighter fighters and everything else for 2 years(i did 2years and 4mths), what kind of service levels would you expect from these men?

The service doesn't just stop there, on a yearly basis, majority of the ex-National Service Fulltime (NSF) are recalled after their Operationally Ready Date(ORD) for Reservist duties, some slip through the sytem due to various reasons and never put on another uniform again.
These men form a pool of resources known as National Servicemen (NSmen). From F to men, must be quite a change. We drop our job responsbilities and risk incurring the wrath of bosses and appraisial ratings to report back to respective units for duty.

Who do we serve when we report for such duties? Our unit? Our Country? Our People?

Sometimes, the level of service is afforded to those who we think deserve it, there's a correlation between what we are willing to give and who we serve, that could be a form of discrimination, but surely we can use our freedom of thought to decide what we want to do isn't it?