I went for the econs talk today at Nanyang Polytechnic, which resulted in me getting a lot of unneccessary exercise. I dropped off at Ang Mo Kio (because the street directory showed it to be the nearest MRT station) and walked for fifteen minutes to reach NYP, after asking around for directions. Then I had to circle the perimeter of the compound to find the gate, only to go across it again to get to the auditorium. Later after the event, when I was coming out with Hui Fen, I wondered why everybody was taking the escalator downwards in what seemed like the wrong direction--ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT IT LED TO A NICE, COVERED PATH ALL THE WAY TO YIO CHU KANG MRT STATION. (Gods, to think I was mystified when Hui Fen tried to give me directions over sms--she was probably wondering why I couldn't find the auditorium when it's supposed to be the first thing we see). Can you imagine? I dropped off at the WRONG MRT STATION, got in at the WRONG GATE, and almost went the WRONG WAY to the auditorium. I'm quite impressed with my own stupidity.

In light of this, I have just urged my mother to buy a new street directory.

Anyway, we heard three speakers--the first one was not bad, the second really awful and the third pretty impressive. He was this marketing director or something from SIA, to talk about competition in the airline industry, and it was quite humorous and enlightening. The pride he had for the company really came through; I guess in a way he had a big role in building up SIA.

I am actually quite optimistic about Singapore's future. I started out the opposite--Singapore was too small to make any impact, we could never compete in terms of land, talent pool, market size and resources; and we had already reached a plateau of growth, it seems. As I learned more about other economies and did further research, however, I slowly realised that every country has its own set of problems and limitations; ours, in light, are not as major as made out to be. Nor are they inevitable constants. If you're not convinced by this you should read up--really read up on huge emerging economies like China, and already established ones like Switzerland, instead of just mutely accepting the rosy picture of growth painted for us to worry about. They have their own worries too. In fact, when we come down to a recession, we have much higher chances of lasting it out, because all the contingency planning throughout the years of our growth--substantial reserves, good financial, social and basic infrastructure will give us greater manuveuring room in a crisis, allowing us to develop other sectors if necessary. Many great economies sink and stay there because they don't have this back-up, going into a cycle where they retain sunset industries yet lack the resources to become competitive in sunrise industries. If there's one thing I'm impressed about our government, it's this.