culture

A Happy Ending

By robin on August 18th, 2010

This may not mean hope for humanity but at least the prospect of occasional good news to distract us from our despair.

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Superstitious Singapore

By robin on February 15th, 2010

Singapore is a modern city but many of its citizens remain strongly influenced by beliefs from the past. You can live here a long time and be completely oblivious to this reality.

For the most part, superstitions seem to be simply quaint cultural vestiges from an ancient time. But to treat them as irrelevant and benign is a mistake.

I learned this fact under very sad circumstances when the death of a loved one exposed the detrimental power of these beliefs.
 

After struggling two weeks in ICU with a drug resistant infection, my best friend’s mother – who is Chinese – finally passed away before the first light of the lunar new year. It was 6am which according to Wikipedia was the tiger hour of the tiger month of the tiger year.

The family and a couple of close friends gathered at the hospital to make final arrangements. One friend could not tell her family where she was lest she be accused of bringing bad luck back home during an auspicious time.

“I just can’t tell them,” she said. “My father is very superstitious, and so is my aunt. If anyone were to fall sick after this I would get the blame. It’s not worth it.” She snuck out later that day to attend the funeral under the pretence of ‘visiting’ – the new year tradition of calling on friends and family.

At that early morning hospital gathering, the siblings decided they would not hold a wake. Many of their friends would not want to come and they didn’t want to cause a dilemma for them and make them feel bad. They made arrangements to have the body cremated later that day.

There wasn’t even room at the church for a service. A combination of it being a Sunday and the first day of Chinese New Year meant there wasn’t a single Catholic Church island wide that could accommodate a funeral.

So less than 10 hours after my “auntie’s” death, a small group of us gathered for her funeral service at Mandai Crematorium.

There may be no good time to die but I can tell you dying on Lunar New Year’s Day is probably the worst possible time if you are Chinese. It’s the epitome of bad luck.

 
I am very sad that due to these superstitions, my friend was denied a time of public mourning she really needed.

No doubt the superstitions came from an era of disease and plague when it was more than just bad luck one could carry back from the house of the sick or the dead. But now the perpetuation of these old beliefs only serve to deny comfort and compassion to the bereaved during their time of need.

They are pointless and cruel.

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The Stoli-Pepsi Barter Deal

By robin on July 6th, 2009

In 1972 Pepsi became the first foreign product sold in the then USSR. However instead of selling their product for cash, Pepsi entered into a barter trade agreement with the Soviet government and took payment in the form of Stolichnaya “Stoli” Russian vodka.

Stolichnaya VodkaAt the time, the Soviet Union had limited access to foreign currency because they were not a major exporter (such capitalism was at odds with the communist ideology).

Typically, Pepsi would have set up bottling plants and sold their product for Rubles which they would have taken to the central bank in exchange for dollars. However the USSR, without access to dollars, was reticent to approve the sale of foreign products. The barter trade eloquently got around the currency issue and enabled Pepsi to secure exclusive rights to the Stolichnaya name in the US, not to mention establishing themselves in the massive Soviet market.

By 1990, the barter trade reached a value of $3 billion with Pepsi trading its product not only for vodka but also for ocean going freighters and tankers which were earmarked to be sold as scrap. By this point, Pepsi Co was not just selling syrup but was expanding in the fast food business via its Pizza Hut franchise.

The barter agreement carried on through the end of the cold war in the early 1990s. Then, after the break-up of the USSR, there were various disputes over who had the right to use the Stolichnaya name. Ultimately the courts ruled that Pepsi would retain the exclusive rights to the name in the US.

Pepsi was not, however, able to maintain exclusivity in Russia. With the Soviet collapse, Coca-Cola was introduced to the Russian market and captured a significant market share eventually overtaking Pepsi in 2005.

..

Factoid: It is worth noting that Smirnoff, unlike Soli, is produced in the US and is not a product of Russia.

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Happiness: Squeezing the Lemon

By robin on June 1st, 2009

The Atlantic looks at a long term study into the nature of happiness. Run over 70 years and led by George Vaillant, the study offers profound insight into the human condition as well as the man himself.

The formulaic conclusions of Valliant are straightforward:

What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.

What factors don’t matter? Vaillant identified some surprises. Cholesterol levels at age 50 have nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, its significance diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.” Vaillant sums up: “If you follow lives long enough, the risk factors for healthy life adjustment change. There is an age to watch your cholesterol and an age to ignore it.”

The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises. Regular exercise in college predicted late-life mental health better than it did physical health. And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.

However more touching and much more profound are his insights into the struggle to live a life:

Only with patience and tenderness might a person surrender his barbed armor for a softer shield. Perhaps in this, I thought, lies the key to the good life—not rules to follow, nor problems to avoid, but an engaged humility, an earnest acceptance of life’s pains and promises. In his efforts to manifest this spirit, George Vaillant is, if not a model, then certainly a practiced guide. For all his love of science and its conclusions, he returns to stories and their questions. When I asked him if there was a death that had affected him, he mentioned Case No. 47—“Alan Poe”—an inspiring, tragic man, who left many lessons and many mysteries, who earnestly sought to “squeeze that lemon.”

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