My mom has asked a few times what it is that I do. It's a tough one. Usual titles such as banker, engineer, doctor, architect, etc. would be most fathomable to an all-time Vietnamese that she is. "Public servant" would be boring and not be descriptive enough. Well, let me see if what I've done the past few days can put a nice ring to it.

I met the founder of Dignity Kitchen again tonight at an Impact Chat. Just like the first time, he shared the most candid anecdotes of meaningful, hard-earned employment for people with disabilities in Singapore. And this businessman sure knows how to sustain such success stories! Instead of corporate big wigs, I often get to meet the who's who in social sector, people that do good well.

About the Impact Chat - it's a regular platform by IIX Asia and Shujog that shares entrepreneurial approaches to improve social conditions. It's fascinating to know about IIX Asia and Shujog's work on impact investing. A key part of my job is to help develop an ecosystem of international events in the social sector here in Singapore, and their Impact Forum last June was a great piece.

On this note, the inaugural Philanthropy in Asia Summit this September should be an excellent meeting to promote new thinking to philanthropic activities (good to see the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network among the organising partners). It's satisfying to see something I believe in coming to life.

Earlier during lunch, I met the founder of the Visayan Forum Foundation, an NGO dedicated to fight human trafficking in the Philippines. USAID has been a main supporter (fair enough, since most victims end up in the West). This was at a talk hosted by newly-established Hub Singapore, part of a global Hub network catering to social entrepreneurs and the first official Hub in Asia. 2012 has been a good year for Singapore with many such notable developments!

A few days back, I got to know more about the Rainforest Cuisine from Qi founder herself. Forests are a rich food source. Yet barren Scandinavia is home to some of the world's best restaurants, while Southeast Asia is burning our Borneo away (a real-life Avatar story). So some of the top chefs in Singapore are heading to Borneo to select jungle-deep ingredients for their new dishes, for people to have a taste of the importance of the rainforest.

So this is a typical week of work, that to me is atypical at the same time. I am with a tourism board and deep-diving as much as I can into the social sector. This has worked out fine for me so far, honing my professional tourism career and keeping me in touch with the humane side of the world.

That's it for this week! I'm off to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow. Come party if you're in town!

Rain and Jay Chou have topped the 2011 Time 100 Poll results, way ahead of  Barack Obama (46) and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt (129) in a list that even Angela Merkel and Paul Krugman didn't make. Now we understand Lee Kuan Yew when he said the "one-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government ... Results can be erratic."

Well at least the official 2011 Time 100 by editors and thought leaders offers adequate redemption in conscience and celebrates the "artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry" that really matter. 

Nevertheless, while sometimes the experts really know best, it's high time social media deserved its due credit for having accelerated the democratisation of influence - a more open (I'm avoiding "flat" after reading about Globaloney) sphere where it's never easier to influence or be influenced. Small little people can and will, for better or worse, be heard more than ever.

I particularly enjoy this annual ranking; it's like an index of how much (or little) one knows about the world in the year passed. Say, I recognise 31 our of the 100 world influencers in 2011 (it was 28 in 2010). More to do to be acquainted with the like of Geoffrey Canada or Lamido Sanusi. 

There's a new kid on the block this year - Joel Stein's Time 100 most influential things in the world. A pretty witty and captivating piece, with a really added dimension to the meaning of "things." Not sure if I'm gonna be a fan should this list continue next year, but I've already found a few favourite things:

Household work is often at best under-appreciated and at worst conveyed condescendingly - (dirty) laundry, (greasy) dishes, or (stinky) baby bottoms. Truth be told - dictionary.com defines "chore" as "a hard or unpleasant task."

Thankfully, the OECD's 3 March report, Cooking, Caring and Volunteering: Unpaid Work around the World suggests that without voluntary or unpaid work, the world we're living in would be at best a third or at worst even half worse off.

Suddenly, household chore doesn't sound so dirty anymore.

The report also evidences how the burden of unpaid work falls disproportionately on women across the 29 countries studied. With just two exceptions, unemployed fathers spend invariably less time taking care of their children than working mothers. And while the South Korean man spends just 50 minutes on unpaid household work, the Indian woman dedicates up to 5 hours a day more than her man to the tasks at hand (yes pun intended).

Today, 8 March, is international women's day. I think the last time I mentioned this in Singapore was years ago, purely because nobody is ever aware of it here. And so I was pleasantly surprised that my co-worker was telling me all about it this morning. But well, she spent a semester in Vietnam, where the day is probably more celebrated than Valentine's. But when my Bulgarian ex-boss mentioned 8 March later during lunch (maybe it's a communist thing?), I was genuinely delighted! So I need to end my year-long hiatus and write something about it.

Gifts are like presents - just better. I think the best gift to all the ladies in the world is our overdue appreciation that they matter just as much as men. And the best form of appreciation is to walk the talk. So enjoy it if you live in Australia, where men spend more time caring for their children than anywhere else in the world, or in Denmark, where your men will diligently do 3 hours of housework for you every day.

Hey, happy women's day :) Most of all to those in Asia!

author Petras once analogised celebrities to superheroes, who could choose to deal with world problems in their very own, extraordinary way:

• naked people can be the solution to high crime rates in the U.S. "I could turn on just about any television channel in Europe and see full nudity. And their crime rate is a lot lower than ours. Go figure." it's definitely getting hot in here for rapper Nelly.
  
• guess who should have gone to Copenhagen 2009: sweet dear Drew Barrymore who "took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal" in a Chilean village and found that awesome thinks the way to save the environment is to "shit in the woods."
• this is the best perhaps Obama should listen to actor Dustin Hoffman, who has a brilliant idea to the end of war: "When a lot of dogs are on the beach, the first thing they do is smell each other’s asses. The information that’s gotten somehow makes pacifists out of all of them. I’ve thought, 'If only we smelled each other’s asses, there wouldn’t be any war.'"

and so celebrities are like the new blondes. they're pretty people, they're on the news, and everyone loves them because they entertain. except that they're smarter than blondes 1.0 (well, there're always exceptions to exception). and below are just some of my favourite blonde superhero moments the past weeks.

• "I really hate vaginas. I'm allergic to vagina. But I can't say I had no idea, because it was a 12-hour shoot, so you kind of get the picture that these women are going to stay naked after, like, five or six hours. But I wasn't exactly prepared. I had no idea what to say to these girls. Thank God I was hungover." not Neil Patrick Harris; it's Robert Pattinson, who covers the tenth anniversary issue of Details magazine with his head next to a vagina. probably for 12 hours. the air has since been cleared, that the vagina quote was just a joke, and Pattison's learnt the hard way that he should never "talk about vaginas, people are very sensitive about them!"

• "And I think to myself about that one girl or those hundreds of thousands of girls who meet that guy at a club who makes them feel like they belong and they don't have that negotiation. We all know that having sex without a condom is ... Russian roulette." a very apt advice from Lady Gaga, or her nipples, at the MAC Viva Glam anti-HIV campaign, London. fret not, safe sex only means more sex to Gaga - "I want to make it fashionable to have safe sex. You must be safe. You can have sex with hundreds of people with a condom on and get nothing. If you have sex without one, then you could get all sorts of problems."
• "Politics is compromise," said Matt Damon, who feels Obama has compromised too much. "I'm disappointed in the health care plan and in the troop buildup in Afghanistan. Everyone feels a little let down because, on some level, people expected all their problems to go away. But real change comes from everyday people. You can't wait for a leader."

actually, superhero celebrities are even better starting point than "everyday people," like the We are the world 25 for Haiti crew. what's better therapy than laugher, from Saturday Night Live!

the global economy seems to be at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Goldman Sachs' reported quarterly profit of US$3.19 billion is unimaginable a year ago. across the Atlantic, British exports are growing at their fastest pace since January 2008. notably, China's club of the rich and the famous is celebrating a membership of 130 billionaires. elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong has just sold the world's most expensive apartment at US$57 million, and Vietnam's VN Index closed at 609 today, passing the psychological mark of 600 for the first time in 19 months.

actually, such figures are not the only way to appreciate the ongoing macroeconomic changes. for one, the men's underwear index (MUI) is a pretty good gauge of the state of the economy: sales of men's underwear tends to be strong when the economy is doing well and, as expenditure on men's underwear is more discretionary than women's lingerie, such expenditure would be first to forgo during a downturn. on a personal note, I do think the MUI is valid, at least to a larger extent than the hot waitress index. and by the way, Alan Greenspan follows it too. the beauty of economics.

despite the fact that the world's gentlemen are probably doing better underneath it all, the bad time may yet to be over. although Singapore is probably the first Asian country to be out of recession, Lee Kuan Yew still repeatedly cautions that this might not be a V-shaped recovery. in fact, Singapore is continuing its Job Credit scheme to help sustain the moderate upturn. and to Paul Krugman, it's "mission not accomplished" for the U.S. as unemployment should average 9.8% in 2010, resulting in an "output gap" of US$2 trillion. that's the annual GDP of the U.K., the world's 7th largest economy, forgone a year.

yet another, even starker, way to assess the state of the world is to look on the other, often neglected, side of the poor and the hungry. coincidentally, today's the World Food Day, marking the establishment of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. but I doubt there is much cause for celebration: the world's chronically hungry population will exceed 1 billion this year, an increase of almost 90 million from 2008. certainly the ongoing economic crisis should shoulder part of the blame, for the number had steadily decreased since the 1970s. no wonder the 2009 World Food Day theme is "Achieving food security in times of crisis."

now we can further share the populist sentiments against Goldman Sachs' US$16,700,000,000 executive bonuses to be paid out in 2010. mere sum for the U.S.' largest investment bank? that translates to more than half a million on average for each of the bank's 31,700 employees. yes, the Dow passed the 10,000 mark this week. but the first time it did so, back in 1999, America's unemployment rate was 4.2%, not 1 in 10 as at the moment.

and as China's billionaire club is expected to surpass the U.S.' within just 4 years from now, it is unacceptable that 1 billion of us are, not hungry, but chronically hungry. admittedly, there have been commendable exceptions to the trend, such as Kuwait, Mexico and Vietnam. but if China, with all the resources and political support, takes 10 years to bring 58 million people out of chronic hunger, that would be almost 200 years to achieve the UN millenium goal to end poverty and hunger. not to mention that the worst affected regions, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2009, are in sub-Saharan Africa, which cannot match China's effort in any sunstantive way.

so yeah, should the MUI or the GHI reflect the fortune of the world? you decide.

there was a time when I often mulled over whether having Vietnamese as part of my language proficiency would value add my resume. yes, it's among the top 20 spoken languages in the world and yes, there're more native speakers of it than of Italian. but chances were that you would be hired not because you could speak Vietnamese.

and so it's a pleasant thing how for the first time, I can feel, for both pragmatic and nationalistic reasons, that Vietnamese is an asset. everyone is eyeing a piece of Vietnam, and there's no better way to get started than understanding the language. and although English is the medium for almost anything nowadays, there's still something that should be, and is best, said in Vietnamese.

it's a thing to be proud of as your language gets recognised. it's like the coming of age of the nation. think how China had no interest in English before the industrial revolution, and how Chinese is today probably the fastest growing language in the West (let's not delve into the exponential growth of Nerdic). yeah, it kind of marks the point when your country is in the globalisation game, despite having heard the talk for years.

but this asset could very well become cost. bloggers Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, Bui Thanh Hieu , Huy Duc and journalist Pham Doan Trang should know better than most, for all are under arrest for speaking out against the government. I couldn't access their posts and so don't know what it is exactly. my guess is that it should be on bauxite mining in Vietnam's central highlands, on the South China Sea disputes, along those lines.

I suppose we could say Vietnam has been soft on the Spratlys and the Paracels. but it's a whole different thing labelling, say, the government as a feeble machinery that could only hold press conferences to a mere roomful of domestic journalists to "protest" against China's expansionism. we may not be fully aware of the constraints Nguyen Tan Dung faces. no, having constraints is not a weakness. even Obama has his fair share of those. in fact, understanding constraints is key to effective governance - look at Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore and Hayato Ikeda's post-war Japan.

and let's have some perspective: the South China Sea thing and central highlands bauxite mining are separate issues and should be approached differently. it is unbelievably ridiculous to think that China once again wants to "invade" Vietnam as "whole villages of Chinese workers have mushroomed on the [central highlands] plateau, and 10,000 Chinese settlers are expected in the coming year." China had tried that for a thousand years without success. and, to be objective, China would be better off "occupying" energy-rich CIS states than Vietnam for the matter.

I understand the green and the wealth redistribution movements against the Aluminum Corporation of China Limited (CHALCO) in Vietnam or the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in Wasit, Iraq. but xenophobia, excuse me! when the world gravitates around China, it's a good thing that Hu Jintao is sending trade and not troops to Vietnam. the blame's not on China that Vietnam has no money to develop its central highlands. beggars cannot be choosers, that is.

I agree that the bauxite project is a bad call, for environmental and strategic reasons very much as General Vo Nguyen Giap has written on. there could be better ways to devise a long-term strategy on the matter. in the meantime, people with an asset and a mind to work it should work it with care and responsibility, especially the anti-China lobby, so as to reach the masses effectively and avoid regrettable arrests.

it's been a really long time since I last blogged. it was a whole new environment as soon as April was over and May heralded in a long blast of summer of anticipatory travel, age-old family affairs and, of course, friends, lost & found. in all, I'm lucky that no matter how bad I do during school terms, the summer has always been good. and this one was great. and I didn't even screw up my study.

things do change.

for one, I used to be puzzled why people would visit Thailand over and over again. be it an urban escape to Phuket or just a weekend shopping spree in Bangkok. now I kind of get it. the cultured and hospitable mix of malls and temples, highways and getaways have done the country good. I would wanna visit Suan Lum night bazaar again. it was like a safari of street-wear varieties where one can appreciate the bargain galore in comfort.

also, the few weeks of backpacking from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City have made me feel better attached to Vietnam. the experience must have been amazing to strip me off the long-held prejudice against the country, that it was hardly fun, that the people were more often than not rude, and that you might as well move Mount. Fuji before attempting to do business in Vietnam. in place of that is now a new-found respect for the nation, for its drive to change. coincidentally, it's Vietnam's 34th national day today, 2/9/2009. may there be more than just fireworks and musical propaganda to eventually unmask the hidden charm.

and in the end, the (extended) family matters were still pretty hot. but even that has changed. what previously seemed permanently impaired has now been pretty much ironed out. I'm just glad people are beginning to be brothers and sisters again. but of course, it may never be the same. some things do change; some things just don't.

like how even when something as monumental as "Ikea" typefaced in ubiquitous Verdana instead of the customised Futura of the past 60 years happens, Ikea remains the leading low-cost proponent of fine living, just as it has been paying close attention to the design of even a $9 lampstand since 1943.

or like how although the DPJ has finally unseated the incumbent LDP from its 5 decades of uninterrupted rule, and Yukio Hatoyama repeatedly promises to change Japan, the land of the rising sun is still facing a severe confidence crisis. in fact, Hatoyama has been constantly moderating his change rhetoric since his apparent election victory at 9:40pm, 30 Aug, realising the full extent of challenge on the DPJ.

change, of course, should be good. change is necessary for development. and so, as much as I would like to see Vietnam changes, it's not going to be easy.

update: Paul Krugman's excellent piece on China's dollar trap half contradicts and half supports what I've written. Krugman believes that governor Zhou's call for a "super-sovereign reserve currency" only shows the T-bills Republic's mistake in over-accumulating the dollar. so yeah, I may have been off suggesting that it's a sign of China's economic might. But my counter-argument that China's not ready to up the ante on the dollar any time soon still holds. on another note, I am totally in line with Krugman on China's desperation for trade.


me and Lusi were on a quick lunch, and we were on the topic of China's international clout vis-a-vis the U.S., from the perspective of the yuan-dollar relative importance. that is some serious talk (which rarely happens between the jolly us), and so this is a complementary piece to my recent opinion on the increasingly relevant US-China rivalry. but instead of a general, multi-faceted picture, this time there'll be a focus, on the yuan-dollar balance as a proxy for US-China competition.

Barry Eichengreen has just dismissed the G-20 as a too diverse grouping for consensus-building and effective crisis management, contending that the rich world, i.e. the U.S. and Europe and Japan, cannot quite align their interests with those of Indonesia and Argentina. but China seems to be offering an innovative solution: on the eve of the G-20 London summit, China and Argentina have agreed on a yuan swap facility of up to 70 billion yuan to allow dollar-tight Argentina to directly trade with China without the usual intermediary U.S. dollar. This should help prevent a further drop in trade volumes, thus stemming the adverse effects of the financial crisis on export-driven China.

China has already inked yuan swap agreements with many other countries before Argentina. there is a recent 100 billion yuan swap line with Indonesia, and another 20 billion with Belarus, in addition to earlier arrangements with South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong that in all total 650 billion yuan, or US$ 95 billion. and so what's significant about the Sino-Argentina swap deal is that China is extending its sphere of influence into Latin America, the traditional backyard of America. here's a large country in a large continent right next to the U.S., where many countries either officially dollarise or practically prefer the dollar to their domestic currencies. and yet Argentina is taking the option to bypass the dollar and trade directly with China on the yuan.

this, coupled with the recent assertion by China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan that the world needs a new reserve currency in place of the dollar, should prompt Obama & Co. to have an economic Cox Report on China, as the assault has now entered a new realm of currency supremacy, besides cyber-war and aircraft carrier and space race.

nevertheless, when the going gets tough, the tough usually gets going, for the United States of America. many people thought Japan was going to overtake the American economy in the 1980s, the same way Germany was believed to be on its way to surpass America after World War II. the U.S. and its people have this quality that brings the country to where they are today, a quality that has trumped Germany's "soziale Marktwirtschaft" and the Japanese perfectionism. of course China can bring a different ballgame altogether. but there's no obvious reason why the U.S. cannot respond with its trademark American enterprise.

also, China can, but whether it is ready to bring the dollar to task is a very different thing. as recent as November 2007, governor Zhou was still supporting a strong dollar as the subprime crisis emerged in America. and the yuan cannot replace the dollar as long as it is still pegged to the dollar, although China seems to have allowed minimal yuan movements since 2006, and the peg is at its lowest level since inception (See chart). in addition, China is currently the largest holder of American bonds, and the Chinese Communist Party cannot afford to have 70% of their foreign reserves eroded away following the collapse of the dollar. this is no wild guess: China's central bank assistant governor Yi Gang said in November 2007 the dollar must remain the key component of the country's then 1.4 trillion dollar reserves because it was "the largest currency that we use" for trade and FDI as well as other international financial settlements.


let's also note that for every country in need of a yuan swap agreement with the People's Bank of China, there are almost three who are on dollar swap lines with the Federal Reserve. my guess is that China is extending the yuan swaps not with the primary intention to signal the coming of age of the currency, but for the practical reason of trade. China needs trade to prevent further economic slowdown, and so it is simple logic to provide swap facilities to Asian countries who trade extensively with China, as well as Argentina, of which China is the second largest trade partner.

I suppose the most important fundamental question to ask when assessing the declining role of the U.S. dollar is, what are the alternatives? the dollar may be unreliable, and it gives America too much financial and political leverage over the rest of the world, and it is almost immoral to have third-world savers fund the American consumer who lives on credit. but China is not ready to do it. Japan is not ready to do it. and the EU is not prepared to slam Benjamin Franklin any time soon.

well, instead of a single supreme global currency, we can have the best of all worlds. but that is going to take real long before the U.S. and the EU and China and Japan and the UK and Russia and India and Brazil come to a consensus on the relative weights of their currencies.

can China go it alone? Lusi thinks 2009 year-end would reveal something interesting on that. and so she was totally surprised when I said, give China 20 years. at the least.