I was thinking if a chart would make for easier comparison. So here it is.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/16525240

Note that the figure for Kenya was a proposed number, because the PM there actually rejected the offer of a pay rise!

That was in 2010, I’m not sure if the increment had finally taken place in Kenya.

There were some other reports which puts our country’s number at $3.8 million (excluding bonuses) instead.

For the fun of it, the maths geek in me also tried to see how many other countries I can fit into the number of $3.8 million.

Can’t remember if I ran out of patience before I ran out of countries.

http://sgblogs.com/entry/david-marshall/387925

I’ve got nothing against money. I’d like to have money myself! I’d like to have a house and a garden and dogs and a car and a chauffeur but, look, I’ve got a flat. I’ve got a swimming pool attached to the flat. I’ve not
even got a car but I use taxis. I have a dignified way of life without
being wealthy.

I don’t see the necessity of owning a Mercedes-Benz and a swimming pool and a couple of mistresses. I think we’ve got our values all wrong.

You know $96,000 a month for a Prime Minister and $60,000 a month for a minister. What the hell do you do with all that money? You can’t eat it!

What do you do with it? Your children don’t need all that money.

My children have had the best of education. In fact, I’m very proud of them. One of them is a senior registrar to two major hospitals in Oxford.

Another of them is a consultant in European law to the Securities and Investment Board in the United Kingdom. They’ve had their education. There are no complaints.

I never earned $60,000 a month or $90,000 a month. When I was Chief
Minister, I earned $8,000 a month.

Look, what is happening today is we are encouraged to and are becoming worshippers of the Golden Calf.

We have lost sight of the joy and excitement of public service, helping our fellow men. The joy and excitement of seeking and understanding of the joy of the miracle of the living the duty and the grandeur. We have lost taste for heroic action in the service of our people.

We have become good bourgeois seeking comfort, security. It’s like seeking a crystal coffin and being fed by intravenous injections through pipes in the crystal coffin; crystal coffins stuck with certificates of your pragmatic abilities.

For the curious ones,  please Google “highest 30 politician pay in the world” and see the interesting results.

It was nearly midnight at Annapurna base camp. Minutes ago, I was outside the lodge, trying to photograph the night scenes from the open field.

The conditions were perfect for night photography. The lights from all the lodges were switched off, causing the cloudless sky to burst with countless sparkling stars; the snow-capped mountains below were also clearly visible in the moonlight.

The fact that temperatures had dropped to around -10 degrees did not really bother me.

The geography of Annapurna base camp is such that it is surrounded by a ring of mountain ranges, so nearly every angle was a potentially good composition. Some hours ago during sunset, the colours in the skies went crazy, as did many photographers. I forced myself to wake up in the middle of the night as I was looking forward to a particularly good session of night photography.

Base camp at sunset

My friend was still recovering from a bout of cough, so I did not bother to wake him.

The open area behind the lodge was a good place to start. Night photography usually requires long exposures of minutes, I set the camera on the ground, triggered the shutter and counted off the seconds happily.

Then the growling started.

As my ears were covered under a beanie, so I was not immediately sure if the sounds were due to the winds.  While I was trying to figure things out, the snarling suddenly intensified in its menace. Apparently, I was not alone.

It was not so much that the snarling was disconcerting, but that I could not make out the exact location of the dog in the darkness around me. Even more important, I could not ascertain the size of the mystery dog.

I stopped the camera, facing the dilemma of whether to carry on taking pictures or dash straight back to my room. The dog proved to be the more decisive one between us when it moved quickly towards me, and I caught its eyes in the lights of my headlamp.

Okay, mystery solved, it was a rather big dog.

What happened next was honestly a blur, all I remembered was nearly slipping on the ice (twice) and trying to catch my breath in my room ten seconds later, causing my friend to awaken from his sleep.

I related the short-lived photography session to him; then I was hit by the terrible realisation that I had left my camera behind during the hasty retreat.

“I can pass you my torch.” he suggested. I passed on the offer, unless it was a light-sabre in disguise, I was not sure how that would help.

“How about a big stick?” he tried again.  I was pretty convinced the dog was not hankering for a game of fetch; so sorry, nope.

The situation was getting desperate, the dog could be peeing on the camera while I sat on my bed and considered the options.

I stood up after a while : “I can’t be defeated by a dog. I’m going to settle this, mano o mano. ” The sudden bravado was met with silence from my friend, who was either asleep again or at least doing a good job of pretending to.

Minutes later, I was outside the room again, peering cautiously into the semi-darkness. The temperature seemed to had dropped even further, the moon had risen higher and the mountains were now glowing.

It was such a beautiful sight, even more than before; and I was the only one among all the trekkers who was awake to witness it; it was all the more painful when I realised that I would not be taking any more pictures of it. Everyone else was asleep; well, everyone except the dog.

Ah, the dog. I tried to refocus. As lightly as I could tread, I made my way to the back of the lodge where I left my camera; straining my ears to pick up any sounds that might give away the position of the dog.

Menacing silence.

Rounding the corner of the building, I saw my camera, lonesome and cold in the open area where I abandoned it. I scanned the surroundings and lifted my beanie to allow my ears to hear better.

Still no dog.

With a few long strides, I left the sanctuary of the lodge and reached my camera. That was when I caught the familiar growling again, coming from my left.

Are dogs capable of ambush?

Still, I was more prepared this time, I flashed my headlamp at its eyes while making a quick grab for my camera. That confused the dog, which was enough to allow me a running head start.

Soon, I can hear the pitter patter and scraping of paws on ice behind me. It was catching up fast. In those Indiana Jones movies, there was always some giant rock chasing Indy after he made away with some sacred object from an obscure cave. The cheering part was that Indy always lived to tell the tale.

The dog continued barking for nearly three minutes outside my room, thankfully, I was already on the other side of the door.

I was still panting when my friend murmured. ” So you got your camera?”

I looked at the LCD of the camera for my only successful night shot of Annapurna base camp.

“How was it?” he asked.

I think I could get away with “breathtaking”.

It was after lunch, we were making our way towards Kimrong. The original plan was to take a less establish path for a while until it rejoins the main route.

The strategy seemed to pay off during the early stages as we enjoyed long spells of scenic walking without bumping into any other trekkers. However, after several junctions, doubts of whether we were heading in the right direction began to surface; and I tried to make sense of it by referring to the map again.  When I looked up, I noticed that my friend had stopped at a bend ahead.

“The goat had just given birth.” he pointed to a goat when I caught up with him. Next to the bleeding goat, a small fuzzy pile of white fur was already struggling to its feet. Around the pair were about five other goats, bleating and biting leaves off low lying branches.

“Ah… thats cool, but we better get moving.” I replied, trying not to sound too unimpressed.

“No, you don’t understand. I did try to get past,” he sighed, ” until I was chased back up by one of the male goats.”

We were not really sure if the unexpected show of aggression from the goats was due to them protecting their territory or the newborn. The small herd eyed us suspiciously, and that was when I realised how eerie-looking the eyes of goats can get. Somehow, the yellow slitted eyes seemed ill-fitting for such a (usually) docile animal. Anyway, the herd did not seem all that docile during this encounter.

“Oh look! Reinforcements.” I attempted to joke as three more goats joined the fray.

After a moment of hesitation, I gingerly started to make my way pass the goats. While I was met with little resistance, I was not prepared for what was around the corner. I still remember the exact words to my friend: “You are not going to believe this.”

Around the bend were fields and roads dotted with countless bleating white dots, with twice the number of menacing eyes.

The good news was that it was impossible for so many goats to be roaming unattended, and there would be a herder nearby. And sure enough, we found him among the bushes whistling commands to the goats.

We learnt from the the herder that he and his young assistant were in charge of nearly 500 goats. He also provided the sobering confirmation that my friend and I had missed the turn-off to our intended trekking stop. We have reached Ghurjung instead of the intended Kimrong.

Fortunately, Ghurjung turned out to be one of the more charming places we stayed at throughout the whole trek. Being off the main route, the area was relatively free from the chaos of large trekking groups; and most lodges were ran by family members.

We spent the night having dinner while watching an English movie dubbed in Thai (our first television in weeks) with a lodge owner, her aged parents and the family cats. With our limited knowledge of Thai, we translated snippets into English to the lodge owner, who then explained the proceedings to her parents in Nepali. I can’t tell if we got the translation right, but the interest shown by the elderly pair was quite evident.

For dinner, the vegetable noodle soup was exceedingly fresh tasting, possibly because the ingredients were plucked from a garden just outside the dining area.

Still, I was nursing an unexplained craving for kambing soup.

700 meters below, the city of Pokhara bustled along, I can still hear the car horns on its busy roads, although now at a mercifully more bearable level. Phewa Tal- the 2nd largest lake in Nepal shimmers and beckons on its right.

It was a fascinating sight, and I could not wait to jump straight into it. Literally.

And so I met my paragliding guide, Jamie, who greeted me with a totally unexpected question.

“Do you get giddy when you read a book inside a car?”

“No? Good.” he smiled, as he adjusted my harness.

We prepared ourselves for the one-hour tandem paragliding; Jaime’s harness would be attached to mine, and he would be doing the steering, while I would take charge of the gawking.

Perhaps it was down to the skills of Jamie (who I learnt is ranked among the top 25 paragliders in the world), I found that it was surprisingly easy to start off the flight; all I remembered taking three steps down a slope before getting airborne.

Not long after we took to the air, more paragliders were launching themselves off the slopes. If you listen carefully, you can hear the little shrieks and screams of surprise, not unlike sounds made by fledglings on their first flight.

For a long time, the whole group were using the rising hot air to gain altitude; that involved spinning around in a vortex, a lot of spinning actually. If clothes can speak, they will tell you its the same feeling as the spin cycle in a washing machine.

After nearly 15 minutes of spinning, Jamie revealed that such maneuvers had caused a number of people to vomit, which explained why, when we first met, he asked me if I am prone to giddiness.

“Should we go higher?” he asked. Realising that somebody’s breakfast might be raining down on us at any time, I agreed enthusiastically.

We finally found ourselves in open space after a few minutes of hard spinning. Even after half an hour of flight, my mind was still struggling to process what I was seeing. It was totally surreal to see the mountain ranges at eye level and the fields and buildings below your feet. Somehow, it felt like watching a 3-D movie on a screen.

To complete the strange picture, we were joined by a pair of eagles (I forgot their names) that circled below with their 2-meter wingspans.

“We need to follow them,” Jamie noted,” the way the birds glide will tell us where to find the best wind.” And so in a strange role reversal between man and birds, we flew above the pair for a few exhilarating minutes.

Time flies when you are having fun (sorry, irresistible pun), and we were soon navigating towards the landing point next to Phewa Lake.

In the more predictable winds towards the end, Jamie generously allowed me to steer the paraglider.

He had one last surprise in store when he took back the controls.

“Hang on!” he laughed. Suddenly, I found my body parallel to the ground and the rushing wind forced my eyes shut. Just like being in a roller coaster, I had no way of telling which direction was up or down, or whether it was time to vomit or scream.

The strip of grass field was about 5 metres below us when I finally managed to open my eyes and orientate myself.

“Well done! ” congratulated Jamie, “You have one of the stronger stomaches compared to many I have seen.”

The landing, like the take off, was a pleasant surprise. After my feet touched the ground, I took only three steps forward before I stopped.

Mortal again.

It was definitely a wonderful trip, possibly the best of the year, barring the unfortunate situation of a corrupted memory card that contained nearly 700 photos.

As of now, fingers crossed, the chances of salvaging the photos seemed pretty good.

Till then, we’ll have to make do with this little clip. I’ve used the low resolution version to speed things up, there’s no point viewing in full screen, things get pretty blur when the action starts anyway.

In case you are wondering, no….I did not scream. Its quite impossible when the stomach is in the mouth.

And with an ever increasing frequency, I got asked by my friends on my plans for the next year.

Honestly, I did enjoy teaching in school and I left the profession mainly because I decided that I would like to travel more when my health still holds up.

So will I be going back to teaching? Well, yes and no. I have decided to be a full time tutor, for a subject that I had enjoyed both as student and a teacher- Chemistry.

I had create a simple website to advertise for assignments but realised that it would not rank too highly among search engines.

And so I include the link below; if there are any students whom you believe would benefit from my help, please feel free to pass the information to them.

http://atomosinchemistry.com

For those who are wondering about the name -Atomos; the boring truth was that the first word that popped up in my mind when I was thinking of meaningful names was, well……atoms.  So I apologise to those wishing for a good exciting story behind the name.

If the link does not work, try the link -”Marcus Tan Chemistry Tuition” to the right of the page, under Blogroll.

Classes should start at the end of December or early January.

hmmm….. maybe there is enough time to squeeze in just one more trip before the bell.

For fighting the good fight.

And for never going down to your knees.

We do remember.

MY WAY

And now, the end is near,

And so I face the final curtain.
My friends, I’ll say it clear;
I’ll state my case of which I’m certain.

I’ve lived a life that’s full -
I’ve travelled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets? I’ve had a few,
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course -
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew,
When I bit off more than I could chew,
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried,
I’ve had my fill – my share of losing.
But now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that,
And may I say, not in a shy way -
Oh no. Oh no, not me.
I did it my way.

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself – Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

Yes, it was my way.

Performed by : Frank Sinatra

Written by: Paul Anka, Claude Francois, Gilles Thibault, Jacques Revaux

I’d heard that there were some demonstrations against the Chinese government intent to curb the use of Cantonese in Guangzhou and Hong Kong; but if this was the locals’ way of protesting, it was pretty weird to me, because the crowd was not chanting in Cantonese as one would expect, but Korean.

Admittedly,my proficiency of the Korean language is pretty limited. Samsung and Jang Jung were the two Korean imports I can pronounce easily. It is only lately that I added a new word to my vocabulary- anyhowsayeo.

Used in a sentence, it goes like this : “If you are not sure of the facts, please keep quiet, don’t anyhowsayeo.”

Back to the mob, I soon realised that they were actually surrounding a group of foreign looking guys. The really weird thing was these guys really looked like each other – with fair skin, big eyes and dyed hair. I could not really tell them apart, but I guess it was due to my untrained eyes, I would bet my last Hong Kong dollar that my ex-students would identify them faster than they can solve a pair of simultaneous equations. Priorities, priorities. Who’s to say?

I surmised that these guys were some pop stars from Korea, and the crowd of fans were singing/screaming out their latest hits. I also noticed that once in a while, the Korean stars would try to steal a glance at the amazing Hong Kong harbour view behind themselves; they seemed torn between being polite to their fans and having a moment to themselves to appreciate the sun setting among the distant skyscrapers. Well I’m sure they can afford to charter one of those helicopters for an aerial tour if they really fancy it.

Just before it got really dark, the group decide to pack it in and leave the place, with their entourage and screaming fans in tow.

It was then in the relative silence that I realised that someone was playing the violin in the distance, but that is perhaps another story for another day.

They say that you’ll never know which famous faces you might bump into when you walk down the Avenue of Stars. Well, its true in a way, I still didn’t know who those famous Korean faces belong to. Perhaps you might think that its really is a sign of age when I couldn’t recognise the hottest entertainment artists of the day. To that I say: ” Aiyoh….Don’t anyhowsayeo.”

By force of habit, the first thoughts that came to my mind were not of the risks of the typhoon, but instead how interesting it might be to experience one itself. Thankfully, good luck eventually prevailed and the threat of the typhoon did not materialise.

Then there was the warning of a heavy rain, poetically named Black Rainstorm, which was issued  when very heavy rain (exceeding 70 milimeters per hour) was expected. Black Rainstorm- you can appreciate how dire the situation was when a warning level is named after some Steven Seagal movie.

During a Black Rainstorm,

1) employers are advised not to require their employees to go to work

2) people who are already at work should stay where they are unless it is dangerous to do so.

Point #2 was definitely why my friend observed the weird phenomenon of workaholic employees leaving their offices for home a few hours ahead of time that day.

Apparently, the employees chose right, because the Black Rainstorm did fall, and it fall hard it did. It wasn’t just the cats and dogs, but perhaps the entire zoo.

Stranded temporally at the pier,  it was no exaggeration to say that it was the heaviest rainfall I have ever experienced. Within minutes, the nearby massive buildings had magically disappeared behind a shimmering grey curtain. The smaller drains were struggling to cope with the influx of water and turned into fountains, churning their contents back onto the feet of the scurrying passerby.

Waiting out the storm, I caught the surreal sight of a group of skyscrapers on the opposite side of the habour and then without much thinking, I hopped onto the next ferry to get a closer look. Leaning over the boat’s railings, I managed to get a few decent shots before the water droplets overwhelmed my camera lenses.

Sometimes bad weather can be great weather.