Category Archives: Musings

What if I Won the Lottery?

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Earlier this week one of my colleagues sent around an email asking if we were interested in pitching money to play the lottery. This is one of the biggest draws of the year and most people in Singapore, even if they don’t gamble at all, try to put some money for the Chinese New Year draw. After all, who would not like to win big with a small investment! This year’s Hong Bao draw () prize has now snowballed to S$13.9 million and the draw is later today…

I’ve been imagining on and off what I would do if I ever won the lottery. I am not so greedy, so I never dream of winning really big (think billions or even a few millions), but I’d really love to win a million (or even a few hundred thousand!)

So with the assumption that I’ve won a few million, here are my top things to do if I won a lottery….

  1. We don’t have a lot of debts with housing and car loans the biggest ones. So one of the first things I’d do would be to pay off my housing loan and if there’s anything left over, use that to make the down payment for a new flat which I will use as passive income stream. If the win is serious money (talking about 10 million and more), I’ll probably use it to purchase multiple properties (housing and commercial) as investments.
  2. I would also love to buy a bigger house, my dream home, one with a minimum of 6 bedrooms, one each for us, BB, GG, my parents, my in-laws and guests, each with its own ensuite bathroom, a large kitchen and living room and rooms for our domestic helpers. Since it’s a dream home, I’d want the house to have two granny flats – one for my parents and one for S’ mum and aunt, both featuring a small mini kitchenette and a living room so both sets of parents live with us, but are independent at the same time.
  3. Spend some money in doing up the houses in what would be my version of a dream home – including having a dedicated space for the loads of books I will own!
    Set up education funds for BB & GG so that they are able to study what they want and where they want without feeling that we cannot afford it. I’d also invest in getting good coaching for them now while they are still in school so that they are able to make the points in achieving their dream careers.
  4. Invest a good chunk of the lottery money. I don’t have great knowledge on this, so I’d probably hire someone to go this for this. This would secure not only our present, but also our future and retirement.
  5. Leave my job and become a SAHM as we can now afford it! Take time to really spend quality time with my family.
  6. Splurge on nice holidays for my family (including parents and in-laws) and see the world. I have extended family literally across the globe and have made so many plans to visit them, but the fact that for a family of 4 adults, any holiday (even to a nearby destination) becomes expensive and travelling across the globe is something we need to budget for, so a fairly large travel budget will be really god sent! I’d also love to splurge some money on first class travel for my family, parents and in-laws.
  7. Invest in a private trainer for my family so that we become the healthiest we can become. This will also include investing money in hiring a great cook, who can whip up tasty and healthy food for us.
  8. Spend some money on splurges for my family (including the extended ones) so that they can all buy some things which they’ve always wanted, but probably can’t.
    Buy S a new car, hopefully his dream car, but if not that, maybe one that he loves more than our current one.
  9. Lastly, I’d want to give back something to society. At this point, I don’t know what and how, but I do know I’d love to give back to the lesser fortunate, especially children. Since I’d not need to work for a living, I want to volunteer my time as well as money.

Well, it’s all wishful thinking at this point, but it was nice writing this post dreaming of all that I’d get and do should I win a few millions in the lottery!

What are your top wishes if you won big?

The Greatest Single Bane of Today’s Society – Corruption

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CorrSingapore has been named the 8th least corrupt country in the world and tops the Asian rankings. It received a score of 85 out of 100 in the Corruption Perception Index which is issued by Transparency International which measures perceived levels of public sector corruption worldwide.

CPI2015_global_ENWorldwide two-thirds of the 168 countries which were tracked actually scored below 50 on a scale from 0 (perceived to be very corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean)
The top spot went to Denmark for the second time in a row with a score of 91. The top ten countries are in the order of rank – Denmark, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway (joint 5th with Netherlands), Switzerland, Singapore, Canada and Germany

So what made Denmark score so well? According to Transperancy International, top performers share key characteristics: high levels of press freedom; access to budget information so the public knows where money comes from and how it is spent; high levels of integrity among people in power; and judiciaries that don’t differentiate between rich and poor, and that are truly independent from other parts of government.

Somalia and North Korea ended the list at the bottom with a score of only 8. The other countries in the bottom ten were Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela and Guinea-Bissau. Conflict and war, poor governance, weak public institutions like police and the judiciary, and a lack of independence in the media characterise the lowest ranked countries.

CPI_2015_AsiaPacific_ENSo how do countries closer to home stack up? Hong Kong which is seen as a competitor to Singapore in many aspects was at 18 as was Japan. Singapore’s nearest neighbor and the closest ASEAN country is at 54 with the other ASEAN countries much below Malaysia. Thailand is next at 76, followed by Indonesia at 88, Philippines at 95, Vietnam at 112, Laos at 139, Myanmar at 147 and Cambodia bringing up the rear at 150.

India’s score of 38 made it at number 176 along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bukina Faso, Thailand, Tunisia and Zambia. India’s closest neighbours fare as follows: Sri Lanka and China at 83, Pakistan at 117, Nepal at 130 and Bangladesh at 139.

The results are not that surprising given Singapore’s strong stance on corruption. The country publically names and shames those, especially civil servants and those in high office who are accused of corruption. They also employ legal proceedings against them and sentence them. Hence the high score, which, given how corruption is dealt in the country, could also be higher!

Now, in the other countries in South and Southeast Asia, corruption is a way of life. Corrupt economies do not function as well as non-corrupt ones as the very fact of corruption prevents the natural law of economy from functioning well and freely.
Many people just automatically add the cost of corruption to whatever they need to pay for, especially when dealing with government officials. It is due to this that most people do not have any faith in their public servants, elected or otherwise. Implementation of public services suffers as those need to be paid for, even if they are the basic essentials which every citizen is entitled to. Another casualty is justice as more often than not, justice is either delayed or denied as some of the judiciary may be in the pay of the offenders and let them go scot-free.

Corruption also leads to a loss of growth in that country’s economy as many investors would be reluctant, rightly so, to invest in the country, leading to unemployment or underemployment, lack of infrastructure and development of regions which need them the most. This in turn leads to regression of female empowerment, gender imbalance and female infanticide.

Reading the last two paragraphs make me realise all these are hallmarks of countries which have low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the most commonly referenced figure which covers the national economy of any country and which is used to determined to estimate how wealthy or poor a country and it’s people. Click here and here to understand GDP and GDP with Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) which explains the concepts so much better than I can hope to…

CPI2015_map and country results

CPI2015_map
So where does your country stack up?

If I had a Superpower…..

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superpower

The other day I was dilly-dallying around bedtime, trying to sleep, but not succeeding. I was trying to watch a Youtube video on SAB TV which is an Indian television channel. The show was about a family of aliens who come to earth to look for their missing son who had been lost to them. Since the family is of an alien race, they do have powers which seem like super-powers to us humans and in that half drowsy frame of mind, I started thinking about super-powers. If I could get any super power what would that be and why?

I actually want multiple powers like this. The first would be the power to freeze time and turn it backwards. This is something I’ve thought about multiple times in my life. Imagine you take a decision and this then bites you back. If you had the power to turn time back, you could do that and in the process take the right decision. But then the question that begs you is what the right decision is? Will this new decision be actually the right one? Will turning time do you good than harm?

Another superpower I’ve been hoping to get, especially the days when the traffic is horrendous and the crowds in the train seem to push me inside without any effort from my side is the ability to teleport. I wish I could just imagine it and get to wherever I could go to. Just imagine the speed at which we could travel – we could travel to distant countries as weekend jaunts and traffic or jet lag would be a thing of the past!

Another one (gosh I am on a roll!!) is the ability to instantly learn anything. With this, I will know anything and everything I am interested in (and I want to know lots of things!) and good grades will be a cinch….

maxresdefaultSo what’s your superpower wish and why? I’d love to hear from you all….

An Unforgettable Trip

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While in India, one of our smaller trips was to Bangalore to meet my maternal grandmother who is nearing close to 90 and also to meet an uncle who is suffering from a double whammy of Alzheimer’s as well as Parkinson’s!

The four of us plus my mum were supposed to be taking IndiGo both ways, with us taking the 12:30 flight from Mumbai, reaching Bangalore around 2:15. The new airport in Bangalore is very, very far away from the city and to get to anywhere in the city is at least a 90 minute drive, this is assuming the horrendous traffic that Bangalore is famous for is clear and non-existent at that point! We’d planned for a two hour drive to my aunt’s place which is in one of the outer suburbs, the other side of the airport and which should take around 70 – 80 minutes at that time of the day and had expected to reach latest by 4 pm. We’d also arranged for a taxi to pick us up at the airport.

In the morning, while getting ready to leave, I got a message from the airline that the flight had been retimed to an hour later than it was supposed to leave. Though it was irritating, we shrug it off and changed our plans accordingly. We left around 10:30 which should get us to the airport around 11:15, which would be well in time for the 1:30 pm flight. On the way to the airport I received two messages from the airlines – one after the other, which now changed the flight’s departure time to 4 pm!

I was thus, quite upset when I reached the check-in counter. The person who checked us in told me that it was a technical problem and he could check us into the next flight to Bangalore which left at 3:45 pm. When asked, he said there was no guarantee that our scheduled 12:30 flight would make it at 4 pm, but the 3:45 flight was assured to leave on time. So we did the change and spoke to my dad. My dad was by that time not interested in us going to the city, he wanted us to cancel the tickets, get a refund and return home. My mum, on the other hand wanted to meet her mum, sisters and brothers-in-law. Around 3 pm, when we were waiting to start the boarding process, I got another message from the airline saying the 3:45 flight had now been postponed to 5:30 pm.

At this point, I completely lost it! The boarding gate area at this point was resembling a small town bus stand with passengers all over the place. The domestic airport didn’t even have decent places to eat and we were hungry, bored and super angry. I then went to the airline counter and spoke to one of the supervisors. What she told me was a completely different story from what the check-in guy told me. Her story was that since all their flights originate in the northern part of India and that part was fogged up, all flights were running 3-4 hours late, there was no technical problem at all!

Then me and another lady who had to get to Bangalore also urgently spoke to her and when I told her what I was told while checking in, she decided to get it reconfirmed. That was a lie I was told initially. Then that sweet lady (I did write down her name, but now I can’t find the paper) told us she will put us back in my original flight (the 12:30 one) which was now going to land shortly and depart for Bangalore at 5:30 pm.
We (the five of us plus the two of them) then were led out of the security area and had to re-checkin for the 5:30 flight. Clear security once again and then start the wait all over again. We finally got in the bus to get to the aircraft around 5:15 pm and when we reached the aircraft, we saw that all the passengers had not disembarked. What we saw made everyone on that bus comment again! We saw groups of people who used the gangway to take photos and selfies! This sheer selfishness of people really threw me away! These people have also been delayed by 3-4 hours and they know this flight has to go to another destination, yet they spend, nay waste precious moments taking pictures that they can do outside the plane.

We finally boarded and the flight left around 6 pm. We reached Bangalore around 7:15 and got to my aunt’s place at 9 pm! What was roughly a 6 hour journey door-to-door became an almost 12 hour one!

The return journey was nothing like what I wrote above! It was a breeze and what IndiGo is renowned for and we made it home by 3 pm (We had taken the same 12:30 flight from Bangalore to Mumbai)!

This is one trip that none of us are going to forget in a hurry I am sure!

Memories: My First Day of School

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I was struggling for something to write today when I came upon this prompt – the first school memory. I have a really rich memory of my first day in school and thought of writing it down before I get real old and forget it!

This is also apt as this India trip, I am going to take my kids down and show them my school, which I have never done before – shame on me right!

In Mumbai, we start school either in Nursery (age 3) or Junior KG at age 4. When I was three years old, my sister was an infant and so I was not sent to school then. However, I remember pestering my family to be sent to school and probably thinking my mum will have some peace with me away for a couple of hours a day, I was sent to the school next to my house for a ear. This school put me in a class one year above my age which worked to my favour later. My father studied in another school which was literally 50 steps away from our home, but my mum was adamant that she wanted to send us to my school, which was a girls school and which other children in my building went. This was against my grand parents wishes who wanted us to go to the school my dad, uncle, aunt and assorted cousins went to, especially as the school was a Tamil school and the school my mum had zoomed on in was a Parsi school! Anyway, my mum got her way and I was soon taken to the school for an interview. I don’t really have any memory about the interview, but according to my parents I aced it and got admission not only in my school, but in another convent girls school nearby. Usually for Junior KG, the children are interviewed with things like name, what is this (insert object), alphabets, numbers etc. Since I had already done a year of this class, it was a breeze for me!

Also, when we were studying, we’d enter the school in kindergarten (Nursery or Jr. KG) and only leave after grade 10 which is the equivalent of the O levels. So most of my classmates have known each other from the time we were 3 or 4 years old, which make for very old friendships!

The first day of school in my memory is noisy! Some of the children came in from the nursery, but most joined with me. I remember a particular friend who cried non-stop for almost a week before she settled down. I also remember my neighbour who was in grade one when I started school would come down during recess to make sure I ate what was in my snack box! I mostly remember my teacher – Mrs S. She was already old at that time, maybe close to retirement (really and not from the perspective of a four year old! She had white hair) but was such a gentle and sweet lady! She made sure all the children learnt their three R’s and was so soft spoken that we still remember her, so so many years later!

School used to be half day for the kindergarten class and we would be dismissed at lunch for the primary and secondary sections and I remember queuing up for the bus, holding the bottom part of the uniform of the girl in front of me!

My school changed the kindergarten or the Infant department as it used to be called uniform some years back. When I was there, everyone, from the littlest infant to the school head girl, all wore the same uniform – the only difference being the shirt collar. In kindergarten and primary, it used to be a peter pan collar while secondary used to be shirt collar. Oh and the Friday uniform too – in my school in term 2 or the term after the Diwali holidays, we wore a special uniform on Fridays. Infant and Primary students used to wear something like a dress or frock and Secondary students wear their school uniform shirt with a white skirt. We didn’t wear it in term 1 as that term coincided with the monsoons in Mumbai and imagine wearing white and getting wet and dirty in the rains!

I am getting real nostalgic about my alma mater while writing this post and am really eager to meet her as well as my friends from school! I am super excited to introduce her to BB, GG and my sister’s kids next week!

I hope you liked reading this post as much as I did writing it!! More from India….