Service with a Smile?

While it has been a while ago since National Day Rally 2005, I still ponder from time to time on our PM address at University Cultural Centre on 21st August 2005. Why isn't there any mention of NUS being top 20 university in the world? Why the emphasis on polytechnics and ITEs? Is there going to be a reverse in trend with this new PM's policy as compared to his predecessors? How much of these are actually linked back to the integrated resort?

Recently, with the numerous conflicts I'd had with one of the local bank, I was suddenly reminded of another part of his speech: "Improving our service culture" (You can find the full transcript of this year's National Day Rally, along with two interesting clips entitled "Tao Gay Not Enough" and "Tao Gay Never Enough", at http://app.sprinter.gov.sg/data/pr/2005082102.htm)

In his speech, he'd remarked that we don't have a natural service culture here in Singapore. This is in contrast to countries like Thailand, Japan, India and Australia, where everywhere you go, the local service personnel would first greet you in their own tongue, before getting onto business. In Singapore, they go straight to the point. “How can I help you?” Or if you're not so lucky, “What you want?”

He believed that in order for our service standard to reach the world class standard, the problem have to be identified at three levels: One, the companies have to have that focus. Two, the service people have to have that focus. Three, we who are served by the people have to have that culture too.

While I hold deep suspicion about his motivation for emphasizing change of service culture in Singapore **cough cough** IR **cough cough**, I think that he'd indeed hit the nail on the head by highlighting the existence of this problem of lacking in service culture in Singapore. And while his solution is identified too ambiguously to make any immediate changes, it have at least reminded companies that there should be improvement somewhat. Or so I thought...

Well, what is service anyway? Is service just as simple as the person standing behind the counter, selling you stuff or rendering whatever services they're offering? Or does service extend beyond just physical contacts?

Look at it another way then. If you were to make a hotline call, how long do you have to wait? And would you still be so delightful when a customer service officer finally connect you after 3 minutes of holding, and in less than 15 seconds ping-pong you to another officer from the "correct" department after another 3 more minutes of holding? What if the hotline is for insurance claim, when you're already feeling down due to accidents or baggage lost? How would you feel then?

See, I do agree with our PM that there is indeed a certain mentality that have to change, in order to render better services. But where do we even begin to adminster that change?

Centralisation of services have removed excess counter staff of bank branches, in order to cut down the operation cost. What replaces that are simply non-personal touches and dial-tone. This, to an average kan-cheong Singaporean is considered most disturbing and even rude. Yet, would the companies ever reverse this trend of centralising, for the sake of services? I doubt so.

In fact, this centralisation have move up one level of facelessness, now that internet is so rampant. More and more banks are "encouraging" people to do internet banking, and numerous organisation establish e-portals, all for the "convenience" of the people. While it does cut cost somewhat when everything is going right for the company and the customer, when things do go right, would there be an easily reached service personnel to render the assistance the customer need?

Systematics and postmodernism

The will of order is strong within all of us. Facing with a chaotic world, we'd come out with all sorts of systems to classify and to instill order to it. In science, systematist come out with classification systems to relate one organism with another. Hence, while Felis concolour and Felis sylvestrie are both under have similarity to warrant them as members of the feline family, the classification is at most an academic exercise, for both the panther and the dosmetic cats won't behave as if they're from the same family and coexist together.

In arts, we look for ideas and group them together, as though they're part of a certain movement. For instance, we have happily dissected classical music into different eras - medieval, renaissance, baroque, classicalism, romantics, 20th century, contemporary - based on the temporal factor, as well as the dominating trend. However, a thinking composer would not limit his/her expression to comply to that dominating thought, and works across styles are commonplace. Yet, because of systematics, we insist that those works are the "abnormal" few, and simply insisted on our perception that the composers oughtand should conform to the norm.

We love to classify things. Not only that, once we have establish a certain classification, we remain resistant to changes or suggestions that would or could make the current classification obsolete. It's perhaps our folly in the first place to think that the multitudinal aspects of the world could be pigeonholed nicely, to instill order in chaos. And perhaps our yearn for security makes us all the more resistant to this seemingly orderliness. A very modernist notion Imust say.

Yes, most of us are modernist. We reasoned things out and established thoughts that make sense of the world; forming knowledge of truth to our world. Yet, how many of us actually bothered to question about this knowledge that we'd gained through our reasoning? Have we questioned about the legitimacy of these knowledge, that's constructed on certain fundamental truths? What are these fundamental truthsanyway? Why should we assume these are the truths anyway?

I'm never a fan of mathematics, but non-Euclidean geometry has been an awakening call to postmodernism to me. Similar to Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry follows the postulates that Euclidean geometry follows, except for one - the summation of the three interior angles within a triangle does NOT equate to two right angles. It's amazing that a change of one building block, resulted in proofs that detract so much from the Euclidean geometry, so much so that Pythagorus theorem does not surface at all. A small challenge on the assumption of the truth that Euclidean geometry based upon, resulted in a whole field of non-Euclidean geometry that's useful in calculation of the surface of a globe, and for pilots to calculate the shortest path viaflight from point A to point B.

Postmodernism is not exactly a movement. It's a thought that have sprout out simultaneously in numerous field, questioning the founding principles which we based our knowledge upon. Whether it's an "-ism" in the first place is quite debatable. However, the spirit of postmodernism is simply the questioning of things we'd always taken for granted, take it down to elements, understand it, and put it inplace all over again.

Sounds senseless? Yes, it does. But a microcosm of a microcosm, enable us to see things even more clearly. It also makes one more cynical in things, and complicated live pretty much. Hey! If it's not hard, it'snot worth doing isn't it?

It's funny...

It's really funny, that all the sudden, I was thinking of someone I'd not talk to for a long time. And when she responded, my day just seems to brighten up instantaneously. The droning work I'd engaged myself into doing is no longer boring; and the lazy Wednesday afternoon become all rosy and cheery! Wonders...

The Remote State of Art in Singapore

It's rather interesting to gather feedbacks from a fellow photographer with regards to the earlier project "Say what you say" (which is still in its pregnancy stage). He'd informed me that someone have already conceived a similar idea using a writing board instead of the card that I'd in mind. On one hand this is an exciting aspect knowing that someone else have the similar idea; on the other hand, it's saddening to know that the inauthentic project faced a possible competition! I shall not speculate any further with regards to this like-minded photographer which I'd yet to meet. However, I shall focus more on the other aspects that was brought up by the feedback, i.e. the remote state of art in singapore.

The Remote State of Art in Singapore
There are always people who claims that Singapore is a cultural desert. Yet, time and again, works of art have been produced by Singaporean or a result of the environment in Singapore. For instance, I was particular pleased to see a children's book illustrated and written by a RGS girl on Chek Jawa a coupla of years back. The contents may not be polished, yet the sincerity and passion illuminated through her unassuming book. A spark in the cultural desert definitely, if Singapore is indeed a cultural desert.

No, Singapore is not a cultural desert; Singapore is just a place where artistic inclinations are drowned off with the pragmatic spirit which is present in any urban landscape. All of us have this artistic inclination in us, and there's really no difference whether you are from Singapore, Paris, London, New York or Beijing. Everyone could see things artistically and represent them out in one form or another, be it in visual, music, performance or poetry. The problem with Singapore really isn't that people aren't artistic. The problem lies in the non-emphasis on art, the lack of tolerance for radical artforms, and the lack of sphere in which artistic inclinations could groom. These problems resulted in a remote state of art in Singapore.

Remote state of art in Singapore in this case meant the lack of communication between artistically inclined individuals in the similar field. The experience I'd related to (in the first paragraph) simply typefied this. If there were indeed a place or a sphere that could effective gather like-minded individuals, wouldn't the whole art scene move forward more? If people were to come together to incubate ideas and to execute projects together, rather than in isolations, wouldn't a whole movement be created, and effectively rid the accusation of Singapore as a cultural desert?

Unfortunately, I have nothing much to offer with regards to the remote state of Singapore at the current moment. My personal feel is that it would take a concerted effort from many groups with effective communications, in order to solve this problem in the remote state of art in singapore. This is extremely difficult especially, since the problem is probably too vague anyway. We could end up complaining about this and that, and nothing moves on.

However, having said that, I do see some potential in terms of bridging the remote state. Potentials that are not well-tapped unfortunately. They are namely: the internet communities, cafe, shops opened by enthusiasts and galleries. Still, these would at most resulted in a small community and not a artistic sphere that's opened to all.

Budget Records

One of the main reason why I'd even joined myspace.com was due to an active group that discuss about Steve Reich's music (which sadly I'd yet to participate, since there's this unreasonable rule of preventing people to post in forums for 7 days after joining myspace.com). Being mildly addicted to message boards/ forums of any kind, I was recently seeking high and low in the cybernet, looking to take part in intelligent discussions on contemporary classical music. However, most of the results from google search churn up with classical music forums that rarely touch on 20th century music; and even for those which do, they don't really embrace the multitude of music that came out in the twentieth century, like neo-classicalism, serialism, atonal, polytonal and minimalism music. The discussion on 20th century music in those forums, to my dismay, are concentrated most exclusively on the late-romantics like the music from Mahler and Rachmaninoff. One thing is constant in all the forums though: the composers from the much earlier era are held in much higher regards than the more recent times.

While I do think that the masters from the romantic and baroque era have really set the groundwork for music as a language we could associate with today, I'm concerned with how people are resistance to the styles that have evolved through time. If the whole classical genre is seen only as music based on those era, isn't it sending a strong signal that classical music, unlike music that's accessible to us these days (pop or otherwise), is unchanging and inflexible?

It's in my opinion that there's a misconception stating that people prefer classical music to distinguish themselves as individual with "high class" taste, as opposed to the average radio listeners. This misconception should've easily proliferated especially amongst those who doesn't listen to classical music. However the 20th century, as opposed to the previous centuries, seen a diminishing importance of the stratification system. In fact, in most part of the world, class was totally threw up, and replaced sadly with other denominations that I shall not touch in this case. Anyway, the diminished class status importance, also created a whole generation which is intolerable to anything deem different or elite. Just think about it, would you consider a person a snob, just because he/she prefer to go to opera instead of movie theater; or one who prefer to go to a orchestra performance instead of a 'live' Brittney Spears performance?

Is classical music for elitist snobs then? I really think not. The impression of this class thing is really a misconception, for music is music afterall. The misconception could primarily also be traced to the impression of the inflexible artform, for if an artform is an ever changing and adaptable one, one would definitely not attribute it as "high-class". For instance, while still life paintings, like Van-Gogh is considered high-class, the more famous Campbell Soup Can painting by Andy Worhol isn't; while the abstract surrealistic art of Picasso is considered high-class, the work of Lichtenstein isn't. So, if people were to understand the contemporary music as one which is changing with times, and challenging the concept of music as an artform, like how Warhol and Lichtenstein challenges the visual artform, this misconception of "high-class" music would definitely be removed.

However, there's a problem here. Why are people more familiar with works by the masters from the earlier centuries, than the composers of the twentieth century? For one, historical figures that are signficant in setting landmarks would always be more celebrated than any other figures seen in recent times. For instance, most people will know about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln when one talks about the presidents of the United States of America. How many then would remember Reagan, Carter, Roosevelt and Hoover? Hence, it make sense that people know about geniuses like Amadeus and Ludwig, instead of Dmitri Shostakovich or Philip Glass.

The other culprit, sadly, is budget records. A friend of mine mentioned to me a fortnight ago that record companies are killing classical music by releasing records at bargain prices. For example, more and more compilations of the greats are sold at 2 for 1 disc price. So, for a shopper who have no concrete idea of what he/she wants to get, given a choice of getting a contemporary CD or a bargain price CD of a great, the choice would logically be on the latter. It's makes all kind of economical sense. However, it also means, sadly, that the people are still not exposed to contemporary music, and hence enhancing the image of inflexible classical music.

I do doubt that this situation would improve much, since even as I'm typing this, EMI just announced an new release of 25 Encore edition CDs at bargain price. I think any attempt of proposing a solution here would most likely fall short. However, I do have the following recommendation to make.

For me, contemporary music is just as inaccessible a fortnight ago. However, the wondrous of the net provide some interesting internet radio that play solely on contemporary-classical pieces. One of such station, which I tune in everything I get broadband access, is Contemporary-Classical station. That's where I got exposed to serialism music from Berg, Webern and Shoenberg, neo-classical works of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Britten, the eastern-influence of Tan Dun and Tekemitsu, as well as minimalism works of Glass, Riley and Reich. Best of all, it's free!

Rethinking Creativity

Reich shares Stravinsky's belief that real compositional freedom comes only from having to work within severly restrictive, self-imposed musical boundaries.

I'd came across this line from a Steve Reich's CD that was recently purchased from Border's Singapore, titled "Steve Reich/Bang on a Can's New York Counterpoint/ Eight Lines/ Four Organs". While this line would definitely not ring a bell to anyone, it have effectively brought me back to a month ago, when I was having this interesting, yet unconclusive argument over creativity with my friend.

The argument then wasn't exactly on music, but the basis is similar, for we were debating over the preference of two US-based cartoon series, South Park and the Simpsons. Both shows, we concurred are definitely works beyond just animations for entertainment sake. They are interesting forms of art that rely what the creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as well as Matt Goering wabted to convey. However, I prefer South Park to the Simpsons, for I felt that the creativeness shown is definitely one notch above the latter. My friend, however felt that the creativeness of South Park is a bit too obvious and even "vulgar", while the Simpsons isn't any less, if not more creative than South Park ever would be. His reasoning was that the creator for the Simpsons self-imposed restrictions by focusing on an average american family. No matter how far fetch the whole story could turn out to be, the messages are always subtly put across, and the sequences of events are often logical, if not as closed to the perceived typical entertainment logic. This really put South Park in shame, since anything and everything could just occur for the sake of making an appearance, like Mr Hanky, UFOs, genetically-modified mad turkeys, etc. etc. I wasn't convinced at that point of time, for I really felt that South Park was way cooler than the Simpsons, and I still think it does!

Anyway, just when the whole issue was almost totally out of mind and out of sight, the above-mentioned line in Reich's album writeup got me in a rare thinking mode again. What is this creativity that we oft speak about? Is creativity really about inventing or re-inventing new and unique concepts in any means? In other words, is it the South Park-kind of creativity, where anything and everything goes, as long as it's original? Or is creativity really about innovations and re-invention within certain limitaions, to provide new insights to things we already thought we knew all about? In other words, is it the Simpson-kind of subtle creativity, where we are constantly challenging stereotypes that we thought we'd seen the last of?

Up till now, I still haven't have an answer. However, I'm slanting towards the idea that probably both kind of creativity are just as valid, and it's probably just different ways that people are comfortable with. I'm of course a fan of anything outrageously new and unique (which explains why I'm even digging into minimalism music right now!), but I'm beginning to see things differently now. There's indeed certain value in people who keep on toiling on the same things, having the same limitations, and yet come out with things rather original everything, like Hot-Rod makers, computing geniuses, audiophiles and *gosh* Blink182!?!?

Err... I think that's a bit too much... Blink182 definitely still deserve a trashing! Think I'm not a complete convert afterall! :)