Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

Identity is the sense of self, providing sameness and or likeness. It is the individuality, personality, distinctness, uniqueness of oneself which makes everyone of us different.

Within a country, there should be a unique country identity, but thanks to globalizing, this identity of a country has being infused with other countries identity and is no longer unique to own country with the exception of some countries.

China, Korea, Russia, India, Thailand, Malaysia, United States of America, European countries each have their own unique identity as a country and it is shared by all of the citizens.

They embrace and honor their respective nation identity, culture, values and beliefs in the form of religion and have faith in what their nation belief in.

Singapore on the other hand, is on the verge of losing our own unique Singapore identity. Gone are the days of the kampong spirit, friendliness. The present us, are all confine and closed up thanks to the lack of privacy in home designs thus neighbours close doors and contribute largely to what we have today, employees who do and not talk thus it is more like a mundane life as compared to the past.

Being a garden city in the past, with such large investments from overseas companies, are we losing our identity? Where is the garden city? It is becoming more and more like a city of another developed nation with nothing more than commercial buildings, earning profits etc.
Not much focus has to thrown on religion, culture, which is our strength but all this is under valued in terms of commercial profits. We are losing our multi-racial identity which to globalization and losing it to just commercial purpose.

What does Singapore has to offer to tourist? There’s nothing unique of Singapore if it doesn’t focus on your multi religion identity and the ability to work, trust each other regardless of race, language, religion or culture. We allow cooperation and helping one another, but obviously this is what is lacking.

Tourist are paying money just to see what they can find in other countries, Formula One race track, casinos, buildings, all these are just solely for commercial and tax benefits only with no unique identity for Singaporeans. Are we duplicating other countries success at the expense of losing our own unique Singaporean identity which cannot be duplicated in any other countries for obvious reasons?

It is an expensive identity that we are losing and it is heavily neglected and thus giving tourist more reasons to by-pass Singapore if we were to continue with whatever the decisions the tourism industry is thinking.

Even cultural identity is losing, why the local religion and culture are losing to religions thanks colonization during war times. The focus should be local religion and there we have so many locally born Singaporeans embracing religion from overseas. It should be the Singapore Experience and not something which can be seen, duplicated in any part of the world. Fatal mistake!!

Investments should be pumped into showcasing Singapore’s rich
bio-diversity of various religions and cultures staying to our roots.

It is the relationship which we are bonded to by birth which we should stick to and not to embrace other countries identity like what majority of people are converting to other religions from our own roots.

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Festival is an event staged by local community centers on the unique aspect of the community.

There are many types of festivals across the globe, from religious to arts, food, entertainment and seasonal festivals. The most talked about regardless of nationality will be the various religious festivals of respective countries.

Time and time again, religious festivals have being board cast on television shows numerous times and showing different types of religious cultures and festivals. Christianity and Buddhism are the most commonly featured on the media due to the yearly festival across the world.

Media telecast of religious festivals is to neither a good nor bad thing, it’s just another piece of news and allow people to get updates for people to follow up with.

Buddhism has quite a number of religious festivals that has being shown on television and in other media channels. With its deep roots and influence from all around South-East Asia, all the way from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and in Singapore. With different religious practice and worshiping of different gods, generally we are all from the same roots, Buddhism just that our way of celebrating festivals might deter from among ourselves.

The scale and magnitude of how a country practice their own religious goes to show how united they are actually. I’m not trying to promote any religion here, but just that I was watching a Chinese show this afternoon and it help me understand the importance of culture, generations, unity,

Celebrating festivals is good way to build bonding, unity and getting to know one another of the same belief. Example like what I watched in the show, the dragon boat festival also known as the 端午節(Duan Wu Jie) is a good way to let people among the community interact with one another.

Dragon boat festival is especially successful in this aspect. Due to the involvement of lots of people, competition among respective dragon boat teams (different communities pit against each other) thus getting to know and understand respective cultures thus encouraging mutual understanding.

With a common celebration, it is not limited to a small group but it is done a big scale. Making of the dumplings in the kitchen increase the family bonding when the cook, and the assistance on a small scale.

Within a community, the village will work towards preparation for the dragon boat festival, all the festive practice; beliefs will be passed down to the next generations with participation and involvements thus strengthening the bonding among them.

Beyond community level, they cheer each of their own community to spur each other community to fight for the dragon boat championship thus increasing the tolerance for other communities with a common goal united as one.

Organizing a festival is hard-work but the rewards far exceed the cost of the festival strengthening themselves with their own country’s identity, culture and unity.

That is something which we all can learn from, to understand each other’s religion and practice instead of condemning and trying to stir up conflicts which results in only more signs of trouble etc.

Tolerance and mutual understanding is the way which we all should work towards together as a whole. Like wise in business, instead of trying to cut each other’s throat with reducing profits, getting into a price war competition, why not work together, spilt profits, and have win-win situation?

At times, when I read and watch news and getting to know businesses trying to fight for a bigger slice, it just amuse me to know how much they lack in terms of mutual respect and cooperation.

Most businesses outside are just dumb in my personal perspective, why can’t they learn a simple thing like cooperation like the politicians, government, helping one another? Although it’s true that businesses are making much more money than politicians, but they are killing each other instead of helping one another.

Businessmen should instead learn from entrepreneurs who are successful than businessmen themselves.

Festival is the way to go, respect, tolerance, and understanding is needed to build a relationship and a mutual beneficial business for profits and not losses seeing red figures.

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Tension is a strained relationship between both parties between individuals, groups or nations. It is the disagreements which both parties fail to come up with a mutually beneficial terms causing the relationship to be stretched and the bonding goes from thick to thin with each escalating issues surfacing.

It creates emotional strain, intense anxiety among everyone among those affected by the disagreements.

Tensions are everywhere, from average person walking on the streets to businesses, and even nations. All the way from the smallest average people like you and I to the biggest most powerful nations, all of us are living in a tensed up society these days with lots hidden unhappiness stored inside each nation waiting for eruption like a volcano. Each new failed or sour business relationship between two countries is like the sill of the volcano, the unhappiness among both countries is like the large magma chamber.

When a failed sour business caused relationships to take a slight turn for the worse, causing job losses in businesses affecting large scale especially among different countries, a parasitic cone is formed with lava flowing out from the parasitic cone slowly increasing the damage as it waits for the magma chamber to erupt with time.

There are so many examples to look at among different nations.

First up most frequently appeared in news media is China US bilateral ties issue which goes a long way, and is made worse with white house support Google from getting bullied by Baidu who is protecting the China identity at home and online.

Next up is US versus Iran, the quest to sweep the root of the terrorist clean and flush them out but it still has a long way to go. USA once missed the chance to plug out Osama Bin Laden as reported in one of the news reports last time, wanting to silence the ring leader, father of the terrorist who was personally trained by the US themselves.

Up next will be Thailand politics chaos situation, with the red shirt versus the yellow shirt. Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who made billions upon using his politics influence to increase his wealth, avoided paying tax and accused by current prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva who is constantly digging for new evidence to upset and reduce his influence in Thailand wanting to silence the opposition the red shirt but has yet to see any improvement, in fact he made the Thailand economy worse following the recent demonstration just in front of the Thailand airport causing it to be closed for a day, out of business suffering huge losses.

Up next closely is Korea, North and South Korea always appear in the news yearly due to tensions between cross-border with communist and democratic country respectively with the display of their military might and protection from strong nations from Russia and US respectively as backing.

The rest that follows are just minor national tensions purely for profits and tourism competition that not as important as those above.

Tensions arise for many reasons, without early antidote, it will escalate bigger and bigger over time like a volcano, once erupted, serious damage will be felt and casualties and business losses of people who live around the volcano area suffers.

Tensions are just identical to our health. A cold may be a minor issue which can heal and thus often overlooked, but it is leaves any after-effects, it will lead to serious complications, as cold, flu and cough are the minor symptoms.

Health is the core problem for individuals. Business tensions is the core problems for countries while politics and military related concerns affects the whole world if not at least the surrounding countries when there’s a surge in military might with purchase of weapons.

The next time you get into any disagreement, solve it instantly if not as soon as possible, else it will escalate into another business war whereby companies lose, profits reduced and only the consumers benefit from business battle. If it’s individual, sooner or later there will be more stares, arguments before turning to catfights or business sabotage depending on the genders.

So handle any arguments addressing right to the root of the problem, look at what caused the problem, don’t solve it only from the surface which will not help.

If you need examples: Look at hospitals around the whole world, the patients get sicker and more illness especially terminal and expensive illness find their way onto the patients increasing their burden. Have you ever heard of patients suffering from TCM, not even once at all since history?

Look at the difference, which medical practice should you seek help from, answer is obvious, if you want to save more money, choose TCM, but start early, and it will save you mountains of money bit by bit starting from young as TCM is all about healing all weakness of the body that cause a illness to surface, while western drugs only help heal the illness which has surface and not the root of the problem.

Understand the cause and effect, and entrepreneurship will be a breeze for those who understand it, building a strong mind with the right foundation as basics.

Good habits start from young.

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