fire chemistry and public relation

In fire chemistry there is something known as the "fire triangle". It describes the basic 3 components require to have a fire, viz heat, fuel and oxygen. You need all 3 to have a fire. Short of any one of them, a fire would not start. That's why in some cases, firefighters choose not to do anything but just starve the fire dead.

I see a parallel with public relations, in particular dealing with bad but mostly untrue publicity. With the growth of online media, it is getting easier to start irresponsible remarks, even easier to spice them up with comments from mostly anonymous netizens who may not have the ability for independent critical thinking.

Taking them head-on is like uniformed G.I.s taking on vietcongs in the jungle. Your rebuttals will most likely end up like bullets hitting the banana leaf but not the opponents. Simply not going to hurt them.

So, rather than fuelling the remarks on, it could be better to starve them and let the flame die on its own. Something like not giving an attention-seeking freak his undeserved attention. To make it better, dilute it with positive publicity.

That's why some companies have this policy of not answering to remarks or accusations on the internet.

old airport's road

A few weeks ago we went for the Singapore Biennale 2011 Open House at the Old Kallang Airport. I am definitely not the arty-farty type, so what really excited me was the chance to visit the place again.

Why "again"? I was born in the jet age, so I probably couldn't have done a check-in at Kallang. During my school days I visited the place quite regularly when it was already the People's Association HQ. Still, I didn't have the chance to check out the control tower or the hangars. This time round, I did.

That's an aerial photo of the place which I did a little project on during university. Land use.

I guess for the infrastructure and transportation fans, they will probably be intrigued by the place like I did. I mean, that's the symbol of air transportation before the coming of the jet age. The spiral stairs leading to the control tower, the big hangars and sheds serving the propeller planes. Even the old door knobs and windows. Some parts looked run-down, but hey, what do you expect?



On a side note, while the trains are still there, do visit the Tanjong Pagar Train Station before it ends operation this year!

unclear about nuclear

With the recent crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, people living thousands of kilometre away are raising their concerns over the safety of nuclear energy. Some of these concerns were shown in the form of rushing for salt at the supermarket, or grabbing sushi made with the last "safe", "uncontaminated" shipment of ingredients from Japan.

Nevermind. Let's talk engineering.
Recently I am involved in some risk assessment and management projects in the energy sector (but let's be clear that I am not a nuclear expert). Actually everything we do carries a certain risk, be it eating a fish or taking a bus. It is just that whether we want to ignore the risk or put it in bold. So what is risk? Risk is impact x likelihood. Something that has big impact but zero likelihood of happening has zero risk. Something that has no impact but happens every other second as we are speaking, has zero risk too. Then you just do the tabulation with all the risk factors. So in a way we are always taking risk!

With risk, we come up with mitigating measures (or sometimes called control measures). For example, if we don't want to choke on fish bones, we can always use 100% x-ray test to make sure we don't swallow any. That would be inhibitively expensive, but definitely do-able in terms of process, yeah? I mean, I'm not even talking about money!

What I am trying to say is, for someone to decide to plant a nuclear power station, he must have thought of all these risk and whether it is worth risking. It doesn't help to campaign against nuclear energy if you are using energy like nobody's business (read, blasting air-conditioner at full blast).

If you want to know how risky or not-risky nuclear energy is, this 1988 report from UK's Health & Safety Executive may be a good read. C'mon, nuclear is not something new, but we still get ignorant people saying things like radioactive rain will reach Singapore.

waiting for "superman"

No, it's not another superhero movie, but you will still see a scene of George Reeves saving a bus load of school children. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for "Superman" is a documentary talking about the state of public education in the United States.

If you think this movie has that An Inconvenient Truth-feel, it's natural 'cos Davis Guggenheim directed it too. Covering the whole of education system from pupils to parents to teachers to Mr President, I think it is equally apt to title this movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Education is a pillar of every country, so there is no running away from it.

While the story is based on the American context, local viewers will find many scenes all too familiar. The crew followed a few families who were balloting for places in good schools for their kids (think the Singaporean parents queueing for primary school places). The touching scenes of girl not allowed to attend graduation because her mother could not pay up the school fee; the hardworking girl who aspires to be a veterinarian but couldn't get a place in a good school; etc etc.

One step further, the movie brings up the relationship between society and school. Is it the screwed-up neighbourhood that screws the school up, or the screwed-up school that screws the neighbourhood up? How education spending has increased over the years but not the students' grades; then the thing about chartered school (something like our independent schools) vs public school; the bad teachers who read newspaper in class (no, not the News-in-class programme during English Language) and can't be fired.

As a former guy in the Education Service, I find the movie really strikes a chord. Some of us really wanted to make a positive change in the kids, but the bigger climate just does not permit us to do so.

While waiting for superman for our system, you may consider watching this movie.

some safety concern

I was having dinner with a group of mechanical engineers from the oil and gas industry. One of them shared a very interesting story:

A big oil company deployed an FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) for operation off the coast of this African country. It was shallow water, so by right it would be cheaper to deploy a platform instead of a vessel. But it was out of safety concern that the company opted for the FPSO. What safety concern? When the bullets start flying, the FPSO can just float away. And in fact, they found bullet holes in the hull.

There are things that you can't find in standards or manuals. That's real life engineering.

lesson of the day

If you are not your boss,
don't try to be cleverer than him.

Was at a meeting chaired by my big boss. I had so many points that I wanted to raise, it was like the rectal muscle wanting to release the loadful. Ok, pretty visual.

Not really a wise thing to do at times, especially when people may not appreciate the points you've brought up and they just wave you off.

And it's kinda like what I wrote previously about pen and the men. When you are at that position, act as you are at that position.

lesson i didnot teach

After the result for the Joint Admission Exercise was out, a few of my ex-students wanted to treat me to dinner to thank me for coaching them in their final year. They got into the course of their choice and I was happy for them.

Well, ok.

So when we met, the first thing one of them asked was "you earn a lot in your current job hor?" Ok, that was the first sign of my wallet burning a hole. So in the end they chose the restaurant and I footed the bill. I know, they were supposed to treat me, but how would an earning adult let kids pay?

After the dinner they suggested having dessert. I thought it was time they take some responsibility and told them straight I won't be paying. They were ok with it and so we entered another restaurant. In the end they did not have enough cash and I had to top up for them.

In school we had civics and pastoral care lessons. I definitely wasn't good at pastoral care lessons cos the programme was so structured, it was difficult to chip in your own personal input. In fact I think I did better at it when I singled out students to talk in the corridor than to the whole class inside the classroom.

As for the dinner incident, it is worrying that kids are making big promises and yet they can't / don't want to keep to them. Notwithstanding their spending power, they do tend to go for things more expensive than say students of my generation.

Not sure if that's something a school teacher / ex-school teacher can do about.

covering ocifer

Unless your supervisor really thinks that annual leave isn't an entitlement, somewhere in your career you must have taken leave, or at least you've seen people in your company taking leave. When you are on leave, your company doesn't close shop, so someone has to cover for your work.

My senior colleague likes to take leave (well, this sounds duh. I mean, everyone has his leave entitlement). But whenever his leave got approved by our supervisor, I would receive an email designating me to be his covering officer. The problem is, he never consults me or informs me that he is taking leave before making me his covering officer. What if I refuse? What if I say I have enough of workload piling up to even bother about his work? What if I want to be on leave too? You may argue that since the boss has approved his leave application, it indirectly means the boss is instructing you to cover for him.

I thought it is basic formality and courtesy to at least come to my desk, inform me about him being on leave and asking me to cover for him (not much of an asking, I would say, but still, better than none) Better than say, "tomorrow I on leave leh, you cover for me hor. If phone rings, come pick it up ok?"
----
Another time. Dear me happened to be on course for one day. Me being at the lowest of the hierarchy, can't "arrow" anyone to cover for me. So I didn't. I just set an out-of-office reply and left.

When I returned to office, I got screwed. Say no one was covering for me. What if blah blah called up. But I am the lowest of all low-life, do you expect me to get higher ranking guys to cover for me? It is like, the vice President goes on holiday and asks the President to cover his work.

Nevermind, my skin has grown thicker now. You want me covered? I'll shamelessly make the boss cover for me. "For urgent matters, please call blah blah blah..."
----
Oh and I just realize how people can pursue their agenda at the expense of others.

It's time to activate my i-Field.

shinkansen e5 debut

Just as we thought the Chinese CRH 380A is grabbing all the attention for high speed rail for the right and wrong reasons, JR East's new E5 Shinkansen made its debut yesterday.

(the Chinese rail sector is troubled by some shuffling to its top management. Even that guy who appeared on Discovery Channel is under investigation now.)



From the start they are clear that the E5 (which sounds like a mobile phone model) with a top speed of 300km/h cannot match the CRH's speed. Rather, they put attention on the seating, especially the Gran Class cabin with airliner first class seatings.

At first I thought the green finishing makes it look kind of uncool, but maybe the uncool is the new cool. In fact the green exterior and the long nose makes it look very duck-ish or platypus-like.

drafting letter

Do you know the difference between drafting a letter and crafting a letter?

Anyway...

In one of my previous companies, I always saw the boss standing behind one of the colleagues, and saying out word by word while the chap typed on the keyboard word for word.

That's an over-qualified (BSc) typist, I suppose. Reminds me of spelling test during primary school days. The boss did not trust the employee's drafting/crafting or what? He might as well type the email himself, right? I'm sure your typing speed is faster than you saying it out slowly and accommodating to your staff and correcting typos...

The same thing happened to me. Or similar. I typed the email, printed it out, boss vetted it, made corrections, retyped, reprinted, re-vetted.. then his boss vetted the email. You know infinite loop?

Why don't bosses save the time and trouble and type the bloody emails themselves?