Review on Good and Great Leaders in the World

Everyone is a leader in their own way be it self-leadership, servant leadership or entrepeuneur leadership. But of course, those who are outstanding will be acknowledge by people either as a great leader or a good leader.

A good leader leads others with a motive driven by correct moral values. A great leader is someone who has the ability to lead others and motivate them to do something, regardless of his motive.

Take for example, Hitler motivated the Germans to fight and take revenge against the 'allies', who defeated them during the World War 1. His motive is to take revenge and to wipe out the Jews.

World War 2 has killed many innocent people, separate many families and it is appparent that Hitler's motive of starting this war is wrong.

However, we must admit that Hitler had been a great leader. Although his motives were not right, it is true that he managed to motivate and lead the people to success when they are all very discouraged and depressed after the World War 1.

Singapore has many both good and great leaders. The most prominent one being Lee Kuan Yew.
He has confidence - the value that made people respect and trust in his decisions.

He persisted in his decisions and actions no matter how many opposed it. When he decided to construct the MRT system, many opposed it, insisting that Singapore was very small and there was no need for MRT system and that Lee Kuan Yew was just copying the other countries.

Now, people praise the MRT system, saying that it brings tremendous convenience to the people to go to school and work, providing a fast, cheap mode of transportation around the whole island. Lee Kuan Yew definitely had extraodinary vision and foresight, did not listen to other's complaints and carried on with confidence his plan, because he knew it will one day benefit the people.

There are too many good and great leaders and I shall not list them all.

Formalities or true determination?

Our school had its 90th Anniversary Dinner yesterday. It was a big event, 10000 + came and there were countless performance but I will only discuss about one today. It is the Tai Chi String Orchestra performance.

Everything seemed smooth - sailing at first. Then, when the performance just started, it rained. It seems ordinary as we had white tentages sheltering us from the heartless drops of rainfall.

However, the Tai Chi performers, who were mostly elderly people, majority old Hwa Chong students around 50 -60 don in white traditional "Chinese Uniform", were out in the open performing under the rain.

There was nothing to shelter them at all. The hosts seemed reluctant to go on with the performance(my observation of their expression). After all, they are frail, elderly people. But there was something strange about the performers.

They all seemed determined to go on with the performance they have prepared for months. Only a minority of us saw and understood what really happened. When I asked my classmate for his opinion, I insisted that it was actually a formality that the performers had to abide by: they had no choice but to follow with the scheldule.

Formalities or Determination? I would rather chose the latter. After all, they are elderly people. What can the host and organizing team do? Force them to get wet under the heavy downfall and fall sick? I doubt so.

Though cold, wet and uncomfortable, they still perservere to the end to bring us a good show. This reflected our school motto: 自强不息 very well.

Determination. True determination. That will be the watchword for me today. It actually relates back to real life, doesn't it? Only the ones that persevere to the end with determination are the winners at the end of the day.

Importance of Chinese

Recently, MM Lee started a campaign to raise Singaporeans awareness of the importance of speaking Chinese.

In his speech, he pointed out that most young families nowadays are speaking English. He also stated that if one parent speaks english, the other chinese to the child, he will grow up speaking more English than Chinese as the local environment is predominantly English speaking.

This topic has cropped up now and then, with some saying that we shouldn't "lose" Chinese as it is our heritage, with others saying that it is useless as English is still the International Language. As for me, I agree with the former, but with different reasons.

Due to the present U.S. recession, many countries are financially-weakened, with the most serious crisis in U.S. It is obvious that U.S. will no longer be the world leader in terms of finance. Who will be the next leader or the financially-strongest country?

Look at your toys now. Where are they made from? Perhaps a year ago, they are "made in Japan", but most toys now are made in China. A research show that amidst this financial crisis, the most resistant and unaffected country is China.

The rise of China - the country where opportunities lie, the emerging market that will overtake U.S. It is just a matter of time.

This is the land of hardworking and efficient people, where are ancestors live and work. Have you watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics? It strongly presented China's potential and strength.

No wonder MM Lee, the founder of modern Singapore, started this campaign. I believe a man of extraordinary vision has his reasons.

Of course, we still have to put more effort in English, but don't forget Chinese. We have seen many cases in which entrepeuners found success in China, why? Because a long time ago, MM Lee(then PM) started a bilingual programme in schools that continues until now.

Don 't forget Chinese. Listen more attentively to Ms. Lee.

我是个华人，
奕鸣， Jonah

Hypocrisy of Man(continuned)

Hi all, I am going to express my feelings and opinions about human hypocrisy. This will be informal, continued from my last post for those who have not read it. Hypocrisy of man. This can be summarized by a truth: People go along with ideas and things unless it becomes personal, in which to their disadvantage.

Like I said in my last post, MacDonald's claims itself to be a environmental - friendly company, yet it clears few hundred hectares to build chicken farms for chicken nuggets to be produced. Actually, we don't have to look at such big examples. Small, everyday examples will do.

Last month, my uncle's boss told his department: "Times are bad, we need to work even harder for the company, try to save as much money as possible for the company and you will get back your rewards accordingly." However, when he went for a business trip the following week, he took SQ airline first class. During the working hours, the boss has been noticed to take time every now and then for his golf games.

Last week, at my friends barbecue party, I saw a very prominent sign "No littering". A cleaner nearby was sweeping the floor. My kind friend, who saw him perspiring profusely gave him a tissue paper to wipe off his sweat. He instructed us not to litter on the ground during our party, which we listened to. An hour later, after the barbecue party, we saw that the cleaner has left, litter on the ground was not cleared by him and on the pile of rubbish lay that tissue paper...

Yesterday, I saw a sign "No smoking". A police was leaning on that sign, smoking away...

May the force be with you,
Jonah

Analysing of The Lottery of its relevance to the modern society

Read the full story here - The Lottery

The Lottery, in many ways is relevant to our society today. In my post, I will briefly discuss about how this story is relevant to our modern society and does our modern society display the themes in The Lottery.
Frist of all,the hyprocrisy of our modern society can be clearly reflected through The Lottery, in which violence is accepted until it becomes personal. In the passage, Tessie Hutchinson had not complained at the previous lotteries, yet she complains when it is she who is going to be killed.
This is found in our modern society too. Many companies are going green, which is a new trend, yet the CEO drives a car that consumes a lot of petrol - way beyond the environmentally friendly benchmark. Macdonald's claims itself to be environmentally friendly, yet it clears hundreds of hectares of forest, destroying thousands of animals' habitats, just to build chicken farms killed to produce chicken nuggets for Americans to consume.
Secondly, The Lottery shows the gradual neglection and elimination of old traditions and rituals. Many people in the story and I feel that the lottery ritual is pointless. This seem to be the general trend in the modern society - people being more practical and disliking ancient rituals, which are based on superstitions and replacing them with new ones that are more practical. For example, Chinese New Year, I feel, is becoming colder every year and it is slowly becoming something that has lost its meaning, that people do just for the sake of quickly finishing it and going back to their lives.

Ultimate Stealth

I promised to share my discoveries with you all every week. Basically, it is about the bigggest thing in stealth at the moment, the F-22 fighter jet, which a weapon expert, David Humbling named it "The Raptor".

Some of you may be familiar with the F-117 Nighthawk, which was the U.S. top military leader in airborne stealth combat but it waas retired in April 2008 and was replaced by what I am going to talk about today-the F-22 Raptor. So what's so amazing about this new plane? Read on.

First of all, it has the new Radar Cross Section which is comparable to the size of a marble appearing on the enemy plane's screen. There's still more.

The Raptor's smart designs include:

• twin supercooled turbine engines that enable it to jump to Mach speeds, which is the speed of sound-1,225 kilometres per hour without using fuel-guzzling and position-revealing afterburners.




• intakes aligned with wing edges and nozzles that deprive longer-wavelength radars of a precise they could previously lock on to.




• all tracking and electromagnetic-emitting sensors.




• weapons contained inside the body, not bristling from the wings.




• is "Beyond Visual Range" combat ready, meaning it can lock to a target, fire and flee before the target even knows its a target.

Do you regret not joining flying club?

Actually, I personally feel that such are quite useless in as sense. These machineries of war are created to fight against one another. War is actually a very stupid thing to do. Not only does it kill innocent citizens and soldiers whon forced to fight, but also weakens the unity of us being part of this world. Actually, war has many motives behind it. A few years back, George Bush declared war on Iraq because he claimed that Iraq had mass weapons of destruction and wanted to bring justice. Just because of his very inspiring speech thousands, probably millions had to be mobilized and sacrifice their lives, breaking many families apart and what happened in the end? George Bush announced that he was sorry because he found out that there were no mass weapons of destruction in Iraq.

So, the motive of his war was clear - he just wanted either to get the land or natural resources from Iraq, or wanted to show off his military might to the world.

Over the years, war has evidently proved itself to be pointless. During the world war 2, Japanese invaded Singapore and South East Asia. Then, America launched a atomic bomb
at their city and they surrendered. Although in the end, everything seemed to changed back to normal, the process has already taken away the lives of millions - both invaders and those being invaded.

The F-22 is cool, but war is not cool, its something cruel.

May the force be with u,

Jonah