Just when I was about to report my not getting into Mensa, I came across an article about Rocket Scientists doing Brain Surgery (sort of), and another about cloaking devices being designed.
Are you kidding me ?!
Not only am I not ‘IQed’ enough to get into Mensa, all these other people are inventing all these mind-boggling things in an obvious show of intellectual gigantism !
….
Hahah
Just kidding. Yeah. I didn’t make it into Mensa. I was a bit annoyed to find out I didn’t even get a score out of it. If I didn’t make it into the top 2%, I’d at least like to know how far away I was…
So as I told Shirley, hey.. I could live with being in the top 3rd %. :P
Work’s pretty full on. I’ve never been this busy working in my 2 years in Australia so far. Over the past week, I’ve been faithfully in the office at 815 every morning, and from 10am onwards, in meetings all day, non-stop till about 7pm.
In between, I need to get work done, and co-ordinate the next few meetings ahead.
So it’s somewhat rare, like now where I have a half hour to spare before my next meeting (seeing as I’d already prepared for it).
Had some thoughts. About stuff. Thought I’d expunge it from my brain by sticking it here.
1) Saw some photos of the Singapore Flyer. I’m not sure how well it’s received back home but it sounds a little like we’re running out of ideas. I mean a giant ferris wheel ? That’s pretty retro isn’t it ? Why not a giant “top-gun” or “viking” ? Go to any of those “Euro fun fairs” (are they still around ?) and I’m fairly confident there isn’t a long queue of people lining up to ride the ferris wheel.
2) I took away from the Mr Brown Show that Singaporeans weren’t happy about the ministerial pay hikes. That’s quite a lot of cash for a civil servant. I do agree with the argument regarding paying an incentive for anti-corruption (although it could also be achieved by increasing the penalties.. e.g. being beheaded), but I think the basis of determining the figure by pegging it to a bucket of top salary earners is extremely flawed for one of many major reasons. This relies on a key assumption that all ministers are top performers.
Here’s why. A CEO of a top company is responsible for bearing risk relating to the success of the company. Their pay is usually pegged to their performance. But if we only take the top earners as the benchmark, that’s like saying your bank will pay you the rate of return of the top 10 best performing stocks of the stock market. If anyone comes across a bank that does that, let me know so I can short-sell their stock because they will go bankrupt very quickly.
Long story short. If a CEO performs well, they get good pay and go into the ‘Top Salary Earner’ bucket. If a CEO performs badly, they’re sacked and out of the ‘Top Salary Earner’ bucket. If a minister performs well, they get their ‘Top Salary Earner’. If a minister performs badly, they get parked as ‘minister without portfolio’, and they still get their ‘Top Earner Salary’.
No risk, all reward.
But hey. What do I know. I’m not ‘IQed’ enough. *hmph*
Ok. Meeting about to start. Enough ranting.
