Daily Oil Blog

To go from high fossil consumption city to low fossil one takes lifestyle changes:

a)Buy energy efficient appliances eg..airconditioners and fridges that’s energy efficient if possible use fans instead of air con in your homes

b)To recycle paper-use double side paper for printing

c)Take shorter showers to conserve water

d)Use public transport to minimize carbon output and helps to cut one’s budget in high oil society

e)Recycle one’s clothes to give them away to salvation army as not to waste natural materials.

The above steps seems easy but actually take personal efforts of each of us living in a big city of more than 3 million.Eco city is a pipe dream if all of us do not take initiative to change our ways of high consumption.

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America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

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Hi guys,

Just got back from Hong kong last week and like to share some of my thoughts of the commercial city .Singapore tends to be more sterile compared to HK for their buzz and thrill of the street life. It’s been more than a decade since I first step into HK and so the changes are more obvious.Transportation of trains and buses definitely have improved and is comparable to Singapore.

Crude decline may change HK in the coming decades, as declining populace of local HK chinese finds it more challenging to support a high cost consumer society bringing in more mainland cousins to fuel the habit, it’s been already been opening up for skilled labour I guess.

The HK model of property and financial services may not be a strength in oil shortage era.As the two industries tend to be linked with abundent and cheap oil in the last century.Can the future HK meet the challenge and change into a sustainable economic model?

The transition would take discipline and creativity which HK is stronger in the latter and Singapore stronger on the former.

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I’ll be flying off to hongkong for a week , will be back next thursday evening.Wonder will the weather from Hong kong will be as fickleminded?

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I went to a dental checkup to do some scaling and polishing of my teeth after many years of lapse visits.By right one should at least do a routine yearly visit and I decided to make it my priority starting this year.

After years of neglect from the dental treatment, the dentist spent more time vibrating my teeth and gums, need less to say blood from the gums flowed and the pain tends to be intensified.This helps to prevent gum disease and cleanse the tartars from one’s teeth.

Luckily the the dentist I visited was more patient person so it puts me more at ease with the treatment.So for all those who have not make dental visit a yearly routine, please do so.Your teeth will be cleaner, gums healtier and less prone to bad breath.

Even though crude oil cannot relieve the discomfort of cleaning your teeth and gums for now, at least it will not increase the pain  by using manual instuments rather than employing  vibrator.

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Living in Asia I came to look upon Japan as an economic model for the rest of the region here, indeed the japanese have outdone the rest of us in GDP per capita, high tech development , lower crime rate compared to most industrialised countries worldwide.

The export oriented success for Japan became the recipe for south korea and now China to follow.Consumer living became the norm for the japanese after her post war ascent to an economic power.However it changed the traditional family unit to a more individualistic western outlook in life as more educated japanese women joined the workforce delaying marriage and child bearing.

What’s startling about Japan is that the society is rapidly greying without the fertilty rate to replace the retiring workforce.There seems to be a lack of institutions in Japan compared to the west in allowing married women to work and the space for raising children.And many younger women is choosing not to married in pursuit of lifestyles unlike the ways of their mothers and grandmothers.

Demographics is destiny and with the land of the rising aged in Japan coinciding with the high cude oil of this century, the maintainence of japanese position as an economic powerhouse will posed many challenges like foreign immigration and a move towards a more sustainable economy.

But a rich country like Japan will have the luxury of time to ease the transition towards an older lower populated society but whether it will compromise her prominence in the world stage remains to be seen.

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Kind of strange that the weather in June is stormy in certain days and I’m living on the equator of the planet!

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Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau

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Rice price seems to move up this recent months causing some households here to stock up prompted thailand to assure that there’s enough rice for all to ensure price stability.Indeed with rice as the food staple across Asia, rice production has become the talk of the town lately when Thai PM  suggested a rice cartel to be formed with her neighbouring countries.

Nothing concrete came out of that but the mindset to move towards a similar structure like opec with oil does raise some concerns.Fears of a small group will control the rice prices dictating the fate of billions of rice eaters will set off a series of fierce debates in the near future.

Thailand seems to think the low rice exports and expenisve oil imports is unfair to her and upset her trade balances and in a way the rice cartel will offset the imbalances.But there are serious issues on the table before any real talk of a rice cartel being form.

First, thailand must have the co operation of the countries which to form the cartel and also top importers of rice like china and japan. Both are big players not only in asia region but also the international stage of world trade.

Even if the external influences is solved, she must be able to control the supplies of her domestic output of rice farming which is not really possible in the forseeable future.With all the problems yet not overcome, rice production and prices will be open for business as usual.Politics aside, the filling of the stomach of the world populace comes first for better or for worse .

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19th of May is the celebration of Vesak day here in Singapore.For those in the west who do not know what’s a Vesak day is, it is the celebration of the birth and enlightenment of buddha.

My family though buddhists are never strict vegetarians but surprisingly my mum cook vegetarian meal today.Why the blues you may asked?The cyclones in Myanmar and earthquake disaster in PRC that killed tens of thousands ,the death toll is still rising.All this coincide with the Olympics 2008 held in China which is in Asia.

PRC military are rushing in but even then with the massive scale of human catastrophe in Sichuan china , the resources at their disposal may not be able to cope.Foreign rescue teams are allowed to help in the excavation efforts to save remaining people who survived but trapped under the rubbles.All this is being done when our crude energy are not being yet exhausted.

I’m never much of a religous person but after 911 my search for the meaning of life intensified, and the answers is never an easy one. Buddhism on the surface seems like a fatalistic faith , much more of a philosophy of life than a religion.Maybe that’s what life is all about, the fragility of men and coming to terms of one’s mortality.

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