Great World City Experience

I spent the morning at Great World City today.

I went to Toast Box for breakfast. It was then that I realised that the people in front of me were Japanese. Yet, they managed to converse in English to the auntie who was serving them in Toast Box. After eating some really great nasi lemak at Toast Box, I proceeded to walk around Great World City.

While I was passing by starbucks, I noticed another pair of Japanese. I looked into starbucks and couldn't help noticed that there were hardly any locals at all.

At Cold Storage, I couldn't help noticing that majority of the people there were expats or foreigners. Even the staff did not look like they were from Singapore.

It felt pretty weird shopping around in a place where I was literally the only local around. (Okay, I must be exaggerating a little). Perhaps there were a few other locals around.

Oh well, with 5 million people in our country, I would expect to bump into some foreigners. But to bump into an entire shopping centre that is filled with them makes me wonder whether we are a segregated society where certain groups of people can only be found at certain places.

The Untouchables

In Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" book, he talks about the untouchables, the creation or finding of the new middle class, whose jobs would not be taken away by the every hungry Chinese and Indians.

The author simply puts it as this:

Globalisation 1.0 : Countries had to think globally to thrive or at least survive.
Globalisation 2.0: Companies had to think globally to thrive or at least survive.
Globalisation 3.0: Individuals have to think globally to thrive or at least survive.

The old saying that our parents used to have was this:
" Boy, finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving."

In Globalisation 3.0, we as parents should be saying this to our children:
"Boys and girls, finish your homework. People in China and India are starving for your jobs."

The problem is that doing your homework alone is not going to help you thrive in the new flat world. One must be doing the right kind of homework. The key to figuring out how to thrive in this flat world would be for an individual to make themselves "untouchable". These are the people whose jobs cannot be OUTSOURCED, DIGITISED or AUTOMATED.

Welcome to the flat world!

Can you current job be outsourced, digitised or automated? Are you an untouchable?

The World is Flat

I have been reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman the past few months. It seems like I just cannot complete reading it. Too many distractions in life and too may things that crop up whenever I pick up the book to read.

There are 635 pages and I am only at page 207 now. Because of my start-stop start-stop reading habit, I often forget what I have read before that and have to go back to reading the previous portion again.

Anyway, Thomas Friedman suggests that the world is flat and the flattening of the world is enabled by certain flatteners. These flattening forces worked together to create an almost flat world where people are interconnected together.

Lately, I experienced this flattening of the world personally. Here is my story:

I was trying to set up a wireless network at my place. After fiddling with it for sometime, I had no choice but to call the help line from the router company. I was directed to a call center that I believe is located in the Philippines!

After giving verbal instructions for close to half and hour, the operator decided that the problem was not being solved and directed to me to hand over control of my computer to him for him to fix it. Wow! So there was I sitting in my living room while I watched the mouse cursor moving all around the screen as the operator from Philippines gave an account of what he was doing to fix it.

The problem was fixed in the end and I can only say that I am amazed at how flat our world is today. Years ago, the solution would have been for a technician to come down to my place personally to settle the problem. Today, everything can be done online. Even the person fixing the computer can connect to your computer online. Simply AMAZING!

I can only concur with Thomas Friedman. The World today is indeed flat. Very FLAT indeed.