More Rambling.
This is what Singapore wants us to do:The Straits Times
July 11, 2008
Grooming tech grads with business skills
By Sumathi V. Selvaretnam
.......
Spring Singapore chairman Philip Yeo, who helms the school's advisory board, said
that many fresh graduates in science and engineering have a strong technical
grounding.
However, they lacked equally important skills in other areas, such as training,
managing and retaining staff, for example.
'We want future technical people to become CEOs of start-ups,' he said, calling MBA
training a necessity, not a luxury.
.......
I will make it clear: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN BECOMING THE CEO OF A START-UP.
Training, managing and retaining staff - yup I will need those skills; everyone needs those skills. But that doesn't mean that I have to become the CEO of a start-up.
If you are interested, good for you - go sell your astariximab, astaravir or astarozipam, or the new machine that can make proteins like PCR, whatever - leave me out of the whole business and politics thing please.
When they start asking me 'so, when are you going to create something of economic value?' (apparently yes they asked the PhD students [in Oxford?] precisely that during a lunch meeting), it would be the time for me to start preparing myself mentally to leave. This is not something that I can 'hope' won't happen to me - anyway their idea is not to create a strong academic centre like Hopkins or Cambridge but START-UPS that will generate economic revenue.
Though I don't understand how do you create start-ups that produce good and respectable products without a critical mass of good and respectable people supporting those stuff that are going to be sold. That means you will have to first create a strong academic centre like Hopkins or Cambridge (a bit of history: most biomedical companies set-up in the 70s in the US came from the Bay Area and Cambridge, MA).
It annoys me when I think back - I decided to join A*STAR because I preferred research over clinical medicine (since I do not have an option to do both then), it is as simple as that, because the world of an 18-year-old is simple.
Well, as the world becomes more and more complicated as it reveals itself - there is nothing I can do about it because of the contract; and it annoys me even more when I realised that the only way to stay happy and contended is to continue to blatantly ignore things that you find out along the way so that I can still live in the world of my 18-year-old self. Unfaltered strong and unquestionable loyalty to the government of the Republic of Singapore will definitely help too, especially when my values do not match theirs.
Unfortunately I do not ignore things that happen around me - worse I THINK about them and sometimes too much. It is not always bad, it made me decide to follow Christ, but sometimes it really makes me worry - how do I reconcile my bond obligations and my vision of my future? I do not have an unfaltered strong and unquestionable loyalty to the government of the Republic of Singapore either - if I do, there will not be any problem at all, because I will still be happy even if they ask me to sell laksa in the Biopolis foodcourt.
And the government of the Republic of Singapore is not like God: they do not have plans that are definitely the best for you. They have plans (amendable at any instant) for you that are definitely best for THEM - come on, believe this, economic development and investment return is paramount, so they have to follow corporate rules...
(Singapore DOES NOT EQUAL TO the government of the Republic of Singapore - in case you still do not realise.)
So how? Since God always has the best plans for us, I actually do not have to worry - whatever will happen will happen right? All I need to do is to let go and trust him...
I know. Tell me a better option if you have one. Breaking bond is out of the question.
Labels: Policy and Politics, Studies and Career
