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Showing posts with label ASEAN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ASEAN. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Haze Breakthrough Unlikely
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Cruising On
News that the Singapore's Marina Bay Cruise Centre has officially opened in good news. As a person who has enjoyed several of the Star Cruises I well remember the problems the country faced a couple of years ago when they were unable to berth larger vessels.
Cruising is a multi-million dollar industry and having the capability with the new terminal to dock ships of up to 220,000 tons and measuring up to 360 meters in length, Singapore is well placed to build on its determination to be the cruising hub of South East Asia..
To me it is just another example of the nations 'can-do' attitude. They don't spend years being bogged down by resource consents and bureaucratic red tape; they simply make a government determination to pursue a goal and get on with it!
$S500 million might seem like a huge sum of money but they will get a great return on this investment as as 'The Little Red Dot' cements itself as the home port for several of the major cruise lines in this part of the world.
Cruising is a multi-million dollar industry and having the capability with the new terminal to dock ships of up to 220,000 tons and measuring up to 360 meters in length, Singapore is well placed to build on its determination to be the cruising hub of South East Asia..
To me it is just another example of the nations 'can-do' attitude. They don't spend years being bogged down by resource consents and bureaucratic red tape; they simply make a government determination to pursue a goal and get on with it!
$S500 million might seem like a huge sum of money but they will get a great return on this investment as as 'The Little Red Dot' cements itself as the home port for several of the major cruise lines in this part of the world.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Entente Not So Cordiale
"Big fat red faces for Singapore leaders" thundered the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. Naturally this got my curiousity going.A too strong laksa perhaps? No I was mistaken.
It proved to be the frank assessment by Singaporean diplomats of their ASEAN and Asian neighbours as (apparently) revealed in cables leaked to WikiLeaks.
The Straits Time's headline for the same news item was undertandably more subdued - "S'pore diplomats on region".
Which ever way one chooses to deliver it, the cable contents are embarassing and at variance to the public persona displayed, and public announcements made, by the ASEAN membership.
As I wrote in a recent article on the Digital Consultant blog, the WikiLeaks saga has "proved without doubt, the duplicity of diplomacy; what has been said publically is often at complete variance to what is being shared in private."
While privately many Singaporeans may agree with the sentiment that "Malaysia's "dangerous" decline is fuelled by incompetent politicians, Thailand is dogged by corruption and a "very erratic" crown prince, Japan is a "big fat loser" and India is ''stupid''" very few, if any, would say so publically.
What these revelations have done to the "binding spirit" of ASEAN, one can only imagine.
To cap off a week of diplomatic misery comes the news that there is a be a second and competing site, created by former WikiLeaks collaborators who are less than enchanted with Julian Assange.
This one is to be called 'OpenLeaks'.
..... and with Xmas in mind, Santa's cables and WikiLeaks
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Systemic Failures
We have been experiencing very strong winds these past few days, or to put it more precisely, equinoxal gales.
As a result of these events our newly installed clothesline has developed the unpleasant habit of lifting like a jet foil, disengaging its support arm and lowering itself against the fence. Ours is not called the Supafold for nothing!
While this is technically not supposed to be able to happen it has done so nevertheless, the last time coming down on my wife's shoulder and leaving quite a graze.
The Hills clothesline has been the dominant brand in New Zealand for many years but in recent times the solid steel has been replaced by a much lighter weight of metal and there has also been a significant increase in the amount of plastic used. This means that the frames are no longer rigid and flex alarmingly.
It doesn't help that these lines are no longer manufactured in Australia as, with most products nowadays, they bear a stamp "made in China".
Today the clothesline installer paid us a visit, the obligatory half an hour late as all New Zealand tradesmen seem to be.
He was clearly skeptical that the wind would actually blow a clothesline down but after we had introduced to our neighbour whose wife had been cracked on the head in a similar rig malfunction, he got the message.
We shall be replacing our retractable support arms with the fixed variety.
During the course of our conversation it transpired that the installer had lived in Bali for several years before returning to New Zealand. The topic of Indonesia inevitably led to comments on the rife corruption in that country.
I was also reminded how Singapore is experiencing yet another serious cloud of haze pollution from Sumatra, as bad as that which we endured in 2006.
Despite all of the previous promises by the Indonesian government, expensive dinners and friendly ASEAN handshakes the reality is that Indonesia goes its own sweet way, burning off land whenever it feels like it.
Neignbourly considerations do not enter into the Indonesian equation and money given by Singapore in the past to monitor haze and educate farmers has made little or no difference. I would suggest that the majority of farmers probably never even saw a dollar of the aid money.
As a result of these events our newly installed clothesline has developed the unpleasant habit of lifting like a jet foil, disengaging its support arm and lowering itself against the fence. Ours is not called the Supafold for nothing!
While this is technically not supposed to be able to happen it has done so nevertheless, the last time coming down on my wife's shoulder and leaving quite a graze.
The Hills clothesline has been the dominant brand in New Zealand for many years but in recent times the solid steel has been replaced by a much lighter weight of metal and there has also been a significant increase in the amount of plastic used. This means that the frames are no longer rigid and flex alarmingly.
It doesn't help that these lines are no longer manufactured in Australia as, with most products nowadays, they bear a stamp "made in China".
Today the clothesline installer paid us a visit, the obligatory half an hour late as all New Zealand tradesmen seem to be.
He was clearly skeptical that the wind would actually blow a clothesline down but after we had introduced to our neighbour whose wife had been cracked on the head in a similar rig malfunction, he got the message.
We shall be replacing our retractable support arms with the fixed variety.
During the course of our conversation it transpired that the installer had lived in Bali for several years before returning to New Zealand. The topic of Indonesia inevitably led to comments on the rife corruption in that country.
I was also reminded how Singapore is experiencing yet another serious cloud of haze pollution from Sumatra, as bad as that which we endured in 2006.
Despite all of the previous promises by the Indonesian government, expensive dinners and friendly ASEAN handshakes the reality is that Indonesia goes its own sweet way, burning off land whenever it feels like it.
Neignbourly considerations do not enter into the Indonesian equation and money given by Singapore in the past to monitor haze and educate farmers has made little or no difference. I would suggest that the majority of farmers probably never even saw a dollar of the aid money.
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