Choose your own president

It is the morning of 1 September 2023. Having learned your lesson in the pandemic general election, you wake up early today to beat the queues at the polling station. Because voting is compulsory, you cast your vote, then head back to laze the rest of the public holiday away.

Even though voting is secret, what you overhear in public, what you read online, and what you and your friends discuss over the course of the day jump out at you: you have chosen the same candidate as a majority of the electorate.

Put this way, it is a statistically unremarkable event. But what if instead, there was a secret in the voting booth that aligned the majority of voters to your choice?

You chose Tan Kin Lian!

 

In polling booths across Singapore, Tan Kin Lian is chosen by a slim margin as Singapore's 5th Elected President. Few suspect it, but hardcore opposition supporters do not form the largest portion of Tan's winning coalition. Tan wins the day not on his own merit. Instead, enough voters across Singapore's political spectrum have grown weary of the endless machinations of the PAP to redefine the elected presidency. After 30 years of PAP's tomfoolery, enough voters realised that the presidency has become a clown show and the appropriate way to reward the PAP is to elect the biggest clown they can find on the ballot sheet.

You chose Ng Kok Song!

In polling booths across Singapore, Ng Kok Song is chosen by a slim majority of the votes as Singapore's 5th Elected President. Few suspected it, but he has a winning coalition that consists of pro-establishment types who nevertheless do not want an unpopular PAP to monopolise power over the presidency, and pro-opposition types who nevertheless cannot hold their noses to put the X next to Tan Kin Lian's name.

It is not being an "independent" that elevates him to presidency, but being a blank slate. Having expressed no political views and being a social non-entity with zero contributions to social and civic life ironically make him palatable enough to win the highest vote count.

You chose Tharman Shanmugaratnam!

In polling booths across Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam is chosen with more than 50% of the votes as Singapore's 5th Elected President. Few suspect it, but voters have noticed that his opponents are actively worse choices. Tan is an eccentric boomer who keeps stuffing his foot in his mouth while resting on his dusty 20-year-old laurels as NTUC Income chief. Ng has managed, outside his long professional career as a fund manager and entrepreneur, to be a social non-entity with next to zero contributions to Singapore's social or civic life. They reasoned that they would rather take a chance with Tharman.

In the months to come, President Tharman attempts to heal the wounds of Singapore's troubled presidency, and then put his own spin on the office. 

Nazi board games

Excerpts from the BBC:

Nazi board games under the hammer

A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are being auctioned in the UK...

The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.

"They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that. These show how the Nazis were determined that children as young as four or five needed to get into the swing of things."

The two word that come to my mind, though, are National Education.

Think about it, few other countries in the world incorporate national goals, ideology, and the official slant on current affairs into child education and childplay as much as Singapore.

One imagines the family of National Education learning tools that inhabit the same social space as the Nazi boardgames: The Fall of Malaya board game, Command and Conquer, SAF edition...

And for the wired generation, The Fall of Malaya/Japanese Occupation MMORPG!
Play as 3 factions! The Japanese 25th Army , the Malaya Command (i.e. Percival and his Australian and Indian minions), and the Communist irregulars!

Each faction has its unique strengths! Play as the Japanese with their Mobility doctrine, Malaya Command with its Manpower doctrine (easy recruitment from the Commonwealth), and the Communist irregulars with their Progaganda doctrine!

And of course, the moral of the game is: We must ourselves defend Singapore! Woohoo...

Playstation3 economics explained

Being on leave today, I went down to Sim Lim to take a look at the PS3s. And yes, they do cost about $1,600. Normally this post would be the domain of a singapore economist, but since he's on hiatus and I thought I'd do the honours. While the Straits Times article was more interested in playing the "parallel imports are almost illegal, unsafe, and overpriced" angle, there's a perfectly logical reason why they'd cost that much, and we don't even have to invoke price speculation in the explanation.

We need to understand the economics of importing items into Singapore.

1. Take into account the US exchange rate fluctuates between 1 USD to 1.6 to 1.8 SGD (currently 1 USD = 1.55 SGD).

2. Take into account the price of freight.

These factors give us

3. Rule of thumb for sole importers is to set the pricing at double the US price in Singapore dollars. If an item costs X USD, its selling price in Singapore would be 2X SGD, in other words.

(This, by the way, explains why Borders tends to price certain books over the sky. Of course, with competition, the "double the USD price" method of calculation doesn't work anymore, leading people to just walk over to Kinokuniya to get the same book for cheaper prices.)

But you'd say "Look, the PS3 retails at about 510USD in Japan and 600USD in America. S$1,600 is far more than double those amounts!" But we're looking at the wrong figures - what the Singaporean PS3 importers are looking at is the Australian retail price: about 800USD. If we assume that Sony's suggested retail prices are essentially base price + freight/shipping, then Singapore's retail price might end up around there as well, being approximately the same distance as Australia from Japan or the US (or whereever they manufacture and assemble the PS3).

And what do you know, 1600 = 2(800).

I do foresee the price to drop, but only on a few conditions:

1. Sony announces a launch date and retail price for the PS3 in Singapore. Imported sets will fall to double the USD value of this announced retail price.

2. Sony clarifies the DVD region of the PS3 sets sold in Singapore. Yes, all PS3 games are region-free, and for once, Singapore is in the same Bluray region as the US and Europe, but one wouldn't want to be stuck with a PS3 that plays all new games, but refuses to load any US-region PS2 games, would we?