Author Archives: Ian Tan

About Ian Tan

Ian worked in the media industry for a decade, focusing on communications, photography and technology. He now works in the IT industry, permanently plugged into his PC and Facebook.

Steinhart Apollon : More than meets the eye

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The difficulty about choosing any watch is that it will usually never meet all of one’s criteria for a perfect timepiece. For quite some time now, I’ve been searching for the one watch that fits my personality and my aesthetic tastes. The unintended consequence is that I’ve amassed a small collection of watches (mostly Seikos and G-shocks) that excel in one or two aspects but left me wanting that little bit more.

None of my current watches cost more than a few hundred dollars, since I still cannot fathom why so many premium watches cost the way they do (in the tens of thousands) for the way they are designed (often surprisingly plain to anyone who has a design background). I’m not the kind moved by status or brand power, but by functionality and design. A quick disclaimer is that I’m not a horological expert, but just a guy who likes good gadgets and timepieces are the oldest form of gadgets around.

My criteria for a perfect watch in this phase of my life is pretty straightforward. The watch should be masculine, classical (or rather, timeless), sporty, unique, well-crafted and unpretentious. And I finally found these qualities, give or take a few caveats, in the Steinhart Apollon watch.

Steinhart is a German watchmaking firm that has attained a sizable following in recent years. They released the Apollon late last year, with the unique selling point of offering three interchangeable bezels – stainless steel, bronze and black – in a classic automatic watch design.

At the same time, the watch strap is easily swapped out thanks to the allen key-type screws that is also used for securing the bezels. You can find aftermarket straps at any local watch dealer, but I prefer to go online at Watch Band Center from Germany where the selection is mind-boggling, the prices are reasonable, and it costs less than SGD20 to ship over to Singapore.

So if you are into customizing the look of your gadgets, the Apollon offers an amazing experience in modding that is as easy as putting together a Lego set or Gundam model. In other words, the Apollon is like a Transformer among watches, and you don’t even need to know how to dismantle a watch to get it looking the way you desire.

My friends know that I’m a big fan of modding anything from Xbox chassis decals to my Ninja 250R motorcycle.  Now of course, there have been moddable watches in the past, but few offer the high quality parts like the three bezels that come with this watch.

To complete the package, the Apollon checks all the major boxes for an automatic watch under SGD1,000 – sapphire glass, Swiss automatic movement (ETA 2824-2), Super Luminova on dials, a brushed titanium body, and 300m water resistance. Everything is manufactured with high standards, and it feels and looks way more than it costs.

I purchased it for SGD800 from Gnomon Watches in Singapore, a little high considering the euro SRP of the watch is 440 euro (SGD704) from the Steinhart website. You can order directly from Steinhart itself but do factor in shipping costs.

My favorite bezel, without a doubt, is the bronze piece. Until I purchased this watch, I knew little about the properties of bronze. Then the bronze bezel started to tarnish from the third day and I learned that it was developing “patina” which is a layer that helps to prevent further corrosion. What would we do without Wikipedia?

Patina also imbues the bronze product with a unique vintage look over time, so I guess no two Apollons will look alike after a year. In the photos posted here, the bronze bezel has already developed some patina “stains” and is not as shiny as when I first installed it, but I’m perfectly cool with it.

The bronze form of the Apollon also reminds me of the original Pantheon in Rome, or Mjolnir, Thor’s trusty old hammer. As a big fan of classical sculpture and art, this watch nails it.

My second favorite bezel is the stainless steel piece. As you can see, the watch takes on a completely different look – more like a warrior shield from The Immortals or Captain America’s shield in The Avengers. Coupled with the massive height of the watch (17mm) and the brushed titanium body, the stainless steel Apollon is not unlike the pure chrome Mark II of Iron Man’s armor. It will also pass off as a diver design in this form.

As for the last black bezel, I’m very lukewarm towards it. There are those who like the sports watch look, and this bezel does an okay job. However, it makes the Apollon look a little like the majority of Seiko sports watches out there and does not have the oomph factor in my opinion. This black bezel is not coming out of the dry cabinet anytime soon.

So what’s not to like about this watch?

Firstly, I’m not thrilled about the blue second hand. While the blue color lends the watch a taste of the modern, the watch would have truly gone to the next level had it been a plain chrome or gold color to reinforce the classical look.

Also, the default 24mm wide strap made of Nubuck leather that comes default with the watch is very hard to maintain – the velvety texture ensures that it gets stained a different way each time the watch comes into contact with water. The grey-green color of the strap (you can see it on the Steinhart website) also brings the watch design to an understated level

Luckily, my purchase of the Apollon at Gnomon Watches came with a free 24mm strap and I chose a black leather Rios. I’m still mulling on the Apollon titanium strap that will go very well with the bronze bezel, but it’s pricey at 95 euros.

Finally, the watch is really heavy at 137 grams and I can feel my left elbow developing some extra muscle. The Hulk-height of the watch also means that I have to be careful not to knock it against other objects, and I found my violin string rubbing against the thick strap during practice sessions.

Still, the pros outweigh the cons of the Apollon. My search for the right timepiece has come to an end…for now.

It’s a strong foundation that counts

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This letter is a follow up from my original letter “Standards are unrealistic” and a response to the Ministry of Education’s quotes in Today’s news story “Primary school maths: A vicious circle”. I have sent this to Today Voices editor, hopefully it gets published  and it has been published here.

Dear Voices Editor,

I refer to the story “Primary school maths: A vicious circle” (Today, 8 May). I thank the Today team for following up from my original letter and sharing a range of views on the issues in local education.

After my letter was published, it was shared widely on social media channels and I took some time to read through the numerous responses from other parents. What was disheartening to read was a common thread that our opinions would fall on deaf ears.

The Ministry’s responses ranged from (I paraphrase) “PSLE  mathematics has not gotten more difficult” to “subject syllabi is regularly based on widespread consultation”, driving home the point that Ministry may not have grasped our grievances and is all too quick to dismiss public feedback.

Now, it would be challenging for the layman to dispute the Ministry’s stand that mathematics standards have not changed over the years, given that we are not steeped in pedagogical methods. What we do see clearly is a gradual destabilization of the education system as it shifts responsibility for learning from schools to tuition centres. This opens up a massive divide between those who can afford tuition, and those who can’t.

Such a situation can’t possibly be meritocratic in any sense.

I do not disagree with providing a small proportion of challenging problems to help determine the cream of the crop. I have aced my studies, won a scholarship and taken on numerous challenges with the relentless drive to become the best in my cohort. I know what the MOE is driving at because I am a product of its system (and my mum’s constant nagging).

However, I do remember being drilled with a strong foundation in the basics in primary school. The glaring difference today is that so much emphasis is placed on learning how to answer the “tough” questions, the students end up with shaky basics in arithmetic, grammar or second language.

If you look at the English curriculum, students are encouraged to memorize and use flowery, pretentious sentences simply for the sake of doing so. As an ex-journalist with a decade of professional writing experience, this goes against every principle of concise communication skills. There is no point writing a dozen complex sentences when you can express the same idea with one simple phrase.

A local university professor remarked to me recently that the standards of his students’ communication skills have actually dropped over the years. How did that happen?

As a parent, I can only hope that the MOE is able to accept our honest feedback and be willing to take a good, hard look at the system. I do fear for our children as they get haplessly caught in this vicious circle that has no end in sight.

 

Ian Tan Yong Hoe

Crippling Learning With Unrealistic Standards

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I was reading a past-year Primary Three mathematics exam paper this evening – with all its ridiculous problem sums – when I decided to write this long-overdue letter and send it to the newspaper forums in Singapore. I also posted it on my Facebook page. The Chinese translation comes courtesy of a good friend.

The Today newspaper published it here, and Lianhe Zaobao published it here. Thank you to the editors who deemed it fit to be published, and to the many parents and readers who shared it across social media. The Straits Times rejected the article as it wanted exclusivity on the piece and it found out Today had published it.

The primary school education system in Singapore has been the point of much debate among educators and parents for a long time now.

As a product of the system in the 1980s, and now a father of two children in Primary One and Three, I fear that the system has become one of irrelevant and unrealistic standards. And I come from the perspective of being someone who has excelled within the old system, yet have always questioned the relevancy of the content we were taught in real-world settings.

Sadly, the situation has only gotten worse.

Let’s take primary school mathematics as an example – why are students being asked to solve questions of higher level logic at such a young age? Does it make them more creative in problem-solving? Does it help them when they are faced with heuristic problems that even adults don’t have to deal with in the workplace? No, it only leads to more rote-learning of – ironically – heuristic methods. The vast selection of assessment books and tuition centers that teach heuristics is testimony to this claim.

Another observation is that school teachers sometimes do not have the opportunity to reinforce the basics of simple arithmetic, and are forced to make their students do sums that are more useful in weeding out mathematical geniuses than genuinely impart knowledge. Within the cramped periods of each school day, it is simply impossible for teachers to cover all the bases in today’s punishing curriculum.

It’s no longer a matter of excelling in class, but to simply pass Mathematics today, it is mandatory to have tuition to fill the gaps that school teachers sometimes struggle to fill. If so many students require tuition, then it means our education system has failed in its basic goal of imparting the correct skill sets.

My wife, a university honours graduate, gave up her job to coach the children at home, but is herself exasperated at the standards required of students today. I have yet to observe any beneficial efforts of pushing children so hard at the primary school level apart from high stress levels and sapping of intellectual curiosity.

Apart from removing the joy in learning, another side effect of today’s education system is that my children hardly have time to enjoy childhood. They have less time to play outdoors, to read their favorite books (which is a great way to improve one’s English), to explore new hobbies or simply to learn about the world around them. All because they have so much homework to do.

I could go on about the other subjects, but the scenarios are the same. The schools are not teaching less, nor are the students learning more.

Ian Tan Yong Hoe

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And here’s the Chinese translation as done by a great friend. This goes to Zaobao.

不切实际的教育标准：学习的绊脚石

长久以来，新加坡小学教育制度是导师和家长们热烈辩论的课题。

我出身于80年代的教育制度，现在已是两名就读小一和小三孩子的父亲，我担忧本地教育制度已是个不切实际并与现实脱节的制度。尽管在当年教育制度下考取好成绩，我当时已经质疑校园所吸收的知识在现实生活中能有多大用处。

遗憾的是，这种情况每况愈下。

就 拿小学数学作例子。为什么学生们必须在年幼时就学习解答更高年级的逻辑习题？这是否真能协助他们以创意思维克服人生障碍？让小学生面对这些成年人在工作 上都无需接触的启发式问题，是否真对学生们有帮助？矛盾的是，这只会导致小学生用死记硬背来学习启发式演算法。课外教材泛滥，补习中心如雨后春笋冒出，足 以证明这一点。

我观察到的另一点是，小学教师往往没有机会着重灌输数学演算法的基础知识，而被迫让学生解答高难度习题。与其传授实用知识，这些深奥习题更像是为选拔数学天才而设。在学习时间有限的学堂，期望教师们在教导现今艰难的课程时面面俱到，是不可能的任务。

今时今日，让小孩子补习，以补充学校教师有时无法或没有时间传授的知识是一个必要。家长这么做，不再是要孩子名列前茅，而只为了让他们能够数学及格，仅此而已。如果这么多学生需要补习，这意味我们的教育制度在传授正确技能这个基本目标方面，是失败了。

我太太是大学荣誉毕业生，为了在家督导孩子而放弃事业，对于小学生面对的严苛考测标准，她感到忧愤。在小学水平就要学生们面对严峻学习挑战，除了带来高度压力，削弱孩童学习好奇心之外，我至今仍然看不出有什么好处。

浇灭学习乐趣不说，现今教育制度的另一个副作用是我的孩子已没有时间好好享受童年。他们没有多余时间进行户外玩乐、或阅读心爱书籍（这是提升语文水平的好方法）、或尝试新嗜好、或只是单纯探索身边周遭的一景一物。这都归咎于他们有太多功课要完成。

对于数学以外的其它科目，情况也是大同小异。学校并没教得更少，学生同时也没学得更多。

陈永和

Dealing with our transport woes

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Photo from Yahoo Singapore

Our transport system is hurting on many levels and it has reached a point where the average Singaporean doesn’t really know where to turn to for a better alternative.

Cars have become exorbitantly expensive again, with COEs reaching S$92,000 this month. To put things in perspective, my 3-year-old Toyota Corolla Altis cost me S$49,000 including the COE when it was new. Today you would have to pay about S$120,000. So if you’re buying a car, it doesn’t make sense to buy anything but a luxury model since you’re going to be wiping out your bank account anyway. One can understand the need for restricting the car population, but poor management of the system over the 2000s by LTA led to an unrealistic availability of COEs and increased jams. We’re now suffering the shock effects of patching the system to reduce the car population.

To make things worse, the ERP road pricing system is broken too. At 830am in the morning, cars are still travelling on the Central Expressway (CTE) regardless of the toll fares that you would have to pay. The alternative of taking a detour back home is even more frustrating because of the peak-hour jams. What I find annoying is being charged on the way back home (twice) to Bishan because I happen to stay in the north and the CTE has always been heavily utilized. People staying in the other parts of the island don’t get charged for taking the AYE or PIE home.

The bit that really grates me is that ERP prices can vary over a period of 5 miserable minutes (eg. 8.00am to 8.05am). Seriously, LTA, does it really make a difference? I don’t step out of my house with clockwork timing. Nobody does.

The SMRT train system appears to be suffering from recurring cancer. Ever since the major breakdown occured last December, the breakdowns have only gotten more frequent (3 times in 3 consecutive days this past week!) even on newer lines. It is like the infrastructure is protesting against its owners. I don’t dare to take the SMRT to work any more, lest I get stuck with thousands of people trying to get on a bus bridging service that doesn’t know where to go. It’s a perfect storm of system overload, poor future planning and poor maintenance. Who’s suffering? Millions of passengers, while the ex-CEO is happily blogging about her past achievements at SMRT and has quickly gotten a new job at Lippo.

Taxis, ah taxis. Possibly the world’s most complicated taxi surcharge system is in place, and you still can’t find a cab when you need one. They keep raising the fares, but one never sees an improvement in availability. I find it ridiculous that I have to pay over $10 for a short trip through town. I have a very low opinion of the taxi companies in Singapore – they really don’t put the customer first, and no longer regard themselves as public transport providers. The way they run the companies in turn influence the behavior of the taxi drivers in Singapore, many who see themselves as being part of a business rather than providing a necessary service.

Public buses used to be my main mode of transport when I was a student. However, it can be immensely frustrating to wait for a bus these days as the clogged roads mean that your bus can take 30-40 min to arrive. The Govt is pumping over a billion dollars to buy more buses for the privately-run bus companies (I know, it’s our tax dollars funding private companies), but the net effect is probably less crowded buses and more road congestion. And since they took out most of the seats in today’s modern buses, I do dread the standing and squeezing between people just to get out of the exit door.

Now amid all this hand-wringing, I do give thanks to the SAF for forcing me to learn how to ride a motorcycle back in 1996 as a recce trooper. It opened up my eyes to the joys of riding. Most Singaporeans will not even consider riding a motorbike due to the high accident rates, and it is often stigmatized as a mode of transport for low-income folks (“Who me, ride a bike?”) and despatch riders. There is no doubt that riding bikes (be it motorcycles or bicycles) is risky in Singapore where many car drivers have poor road manners and driving skills.

However, riders who have driving experience for many years do find it manageable on the roads as long as you don’t ride like some of the hell-riders on the streets who weave in and out of lanes recklessly. Unlike 99% of riders, I pile on the protective gear like gloves, full-faced helmet and armored jacket for every ride.

And largely unseen to most of the driving population, there is a large group of middle to high-income folks who ride bikes for pleasure. You don’t see them unless you look out for them and their hot rods.

One thing that does stop people from riding is the sheer ordeal of getting a Class 2 licence if you want to get a nice model above 400cc. I skipped owning a Class 2B bike because they are underpowered and are largely skimpy-looking. I really like my current Kawasaki Ninja 250R (Class 2A) but it does need a bit more oomph in the torque department.

One has to take three tests (Class 2B, 2A and 2) and wait at least three years (if you don’t fail any of the tests). It’s extremely painful if you don’t have much free time and thus it is unlikely that Singapore will become a bike-riding nation soon. It’s better that way anyway, since so many young men do not have the maturity to ride with proper road etiquette or care for their own lives.

So with all this issues at hand, what are we to do? Isn’t it ironic that in a small country like Singapore, we are finding it difficult just to get around?

Notes to myself

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Jotting down a few thoughts and advice dished out recently by great people before they disappear from my mind and my Facebook timeline. I will keep updating this so I can pass this on to someone else :)

  • There are few things more important than having a clear mind.
  • One must always find time to think.
  • Choosing what not to do, is as important as choosing what to do.
  • Repeated success teaches the smart that it is ok not to fail.
  • “Who remembers what quota you hit in which year?” People remember you by the legacy you leave behind, and by your professionalism.

 

Why I don’t feel sorry for Kodak

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It was all over the news today – Kodak has finally filed for bankruptcy protection.

Nobody was really surprised. Kodak has been on a decline since the beginning of the 2000s as digital cameras began to supercede film cameras. Unlike the recent passing of Steve Jobs, I haven’t seen many people on my social media networks lamenting the loss of the company that popularized photography. Looks like people just aren’t shedding a tear for Kodak.

While I do feel sorry for the Kodak employees and pensioners who face an uncertain future, they had little say in how the company was run to the ground by their management over the past few decades. Yes, Kodak film allowed for the creation of millions of amazing images, but in my lifetime, Kodak didn’t care for the consumer very much.

I’m normally a very nostalgic guy, and I will always remember walking past the bright yellow decor of film-development stores that were sponsored by Kodak in the 1980s. It was always fascinating to see how long strips of negatives would pass through the innards of the gigantic machine which would spit out 3R-sized color photos.

However Kodak left more of a bitter taste in my mouth than nostalgia is worth. Let me tell you why.

1. Film was ridiculously overpriced.

When I started getting into photography in the late 1990s, it was such an expensive hobby. If I remember correctly, it was $5 per roll of film, $10 to develop a roll of film and 30 cents to print each photo in 4R size. So to shoot a roll of 36 exposures would easily cost you $25 before inflation.

That’s not counting the cost of batteries as film cameras were power guzzlers – remember the sound of film being rewound in a compact camera? Today you can shoot thousands of photos without considering the cost – it costs just about nothing on the digital platform. But we always had to consider the cost of reloading each roll of film.

You can argue that it forced us to become better photographers when we didn’t waste film, but I can also argue that Kodak profited handsomely from enthusiast photographers.

Kodak and other film makers never really sought to lower the cost of film. The centuries-old method of using silver halide worked for them until digital overtook it with dazzling speed (actually it took about 5 years for digital to go into the mainstream from the time the first decent digicams appeared in the early 2000s).

2. Kodak never understood digital, and still doesn’t

As a tech writer in the mid-2000s, I always groaned when Kodak’s PR agency would pitch their latest digicams for a review. Compared to current models of the day from Canon and Olympus, Kodak’s digital cameras often seemed like backward and ugly cousins. And their image quality was never up to par. I could be wrong, but they were probably re-branded OEM digital cameras. For a company that invented digital cameras, they put little effort and money in advancing the technology.

As film development stores began to shutter down rapidly, I didn’t see Kodak doing anything significant to save their retail partners.The shopkeepers were helpless as the landscape shifted and so was their principal supplier.

I remember it was so expensive to request for film negatives to be converted to a digital format. I tried it for a few rolls after a professional shoot and the quality of the scan was not fantastic. Where was Kodak then? Still trying to sell more Portra film to professionals, and over-saturated Gold label films to clueless tourists.

If you read any business story on Kodak’s decline, you’ll see so many other ways that they failed to capitalize on the digital tsunami. It’s not that they didn’t have the money to invest,  (especially at their peak in the 1990s), but like many legacy companies, they clung on to the past desperately and turned their noses at consumers. We just wanted a better solution instead of having to panic every time our film canisters or strips became accidentally exposed to the sun.

I embraced digital photography the minute I discovered it, and was over the moon when digicams finally reached an acceptable level of quality compared to film (that was about 2007 if I remember correctly, while dSLRs achieved that about 2004 with the Canon 1D Mark II). When I used the Canon 1D Mk II, my first 1GB memory card cost a whopping $400, but it paid for itself quickly – that card was approximately the cost of 16 rolls of film (or 576 exposures) and I shot thousands of photos in a few weeks.

It was sad at first to see how Kodak failed to change itself for the times (in contrast to its greatest nemesis Fujifilm), but after a while, one didn’t care for the company at all. It looks like after this bankruptcy protection, Kodak wants to focus on digital printing. That’s another silly move – everyone in developed countries are gradually moving to ebooks and Zinio mags on tablets, and we’re now sharing photos on Facebook folders…thousands of them, all for free. Who will pay for digital printing in the future?

Like the cliche goes, change is a constant, and we have no choice but to embrace change. If you work in a company that doesn’t embrace change, please take a look around and see if you can get out before the company becomes obsolete by its own choice or ignorance.

Kodak may emerge from its bankruptcy protection a better company, but the young people of today don’t even know how iconic it once was. Perhaps I should be sad for the past, but that feeling just isn’t happening.

Presentation Power – Yes You Can!

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A few years ago, I attended a company course called Presentation Power. Its main objective was to teach people how to make more powerful and impactful presentations. I’m going to distill the entire course (or at least what I can remember of it) into one single sentence:

“What’s in it for your audience to listen to you for more than a minute?”

You can be speaking on any topic on earth, but as long as you know what your audience is interested in listening to, and you know how to tell it that way, you’re already a powerful presenter.

I write this post because recently, I sat through an awful presentation. The presenter spoke English well (he’s a native speaker) and he had interesting things to say. Unfortunately, it was on a topic I had little interest in, and I was made to believe before the meeting that we would be discussing about something else.

I gave it my all to be as polite as possible and listen to what he had to say (why, maybe there might be something I could learn or benefit from this), but then it was Death by Powerpoint for nearly an hour. Look, I might work for Microsoft and I do use the Office Suite a lot, but I can tell you that with a great program comes great responsibility – Powerpoint is very easily used for the wrong purposes.

To make it worse, the Powerpoint deck he was using, appeared to be designed for another audience and objective in mind, but the presenter had deemed it okay to re-use it on me. To cut the long story short, by the end of the presentation I was really tired and not really interested in finding out more.

Not everyone can be a good or great presenter, and I think I speak too much Singlish to be a great orator. However, I can share with you a few tips I learned from the course, my journalism experience (where I met hundreds of good and horrible speakers) and my work in Microsoft.

1. Be very clear, both to yourself and your audience, what you are going to speak about before you even begin. Otherwise you’re mismanaging expectations. I often dread attending church when their most boring and longwinded speaker is giving a sermon, and ironically, he gave a sermon called “Are you wasting your time” a few weeks ago.

2. Give a good summary page/overview of your presentation, so your audience has a chance to tell you which segments they might want to skip to. Or just get to the point and expand upon it from there.

3. Use as few slides as possible. Some people have learnt how to cut down on the number of images and text paragraphs on their slides, but it’s still not enough. You have to distil distil distil your slides until it contains the barest minimum of information and visuals. Let your mouth do the talking, and not have people staring at the slides all the time trying to read reams of information.

4. Learn to read your audience and adjust your presentation on the fly. Are they yawning? Are they getting stoned out? Are they playing with their handphone? What is the reason? The one thing NOT to do is to keep droning on until you get to say what you planned to say. The right thing to do is to engage them directly and start asking them questions. You get to know if they were listening, if they were interested or if their mind is already on another planet. The feedback that you get from them will allow you to decide if  you want to change topic, cut short your speech or just do something else.

Once you lose your audience’s attention, your presentation has broken down.

5. Give them a great reason (or many reasons) to listen to you with absolute rapt attention. Like I wrote earlier, what’s in it for them to bother about you and your topic? No matter whether you are a sales guy, journalist, teacher, doctor etc, your audience needs a good reason to keep listening to what you have to say. Does it benefit them financially or emotionally? Is it a matter of life and death? Will it change society as they know it? Can you say it in five minutes instead of fifty?

(Note to church preachers – you don’t need to fill up the entire 45min speaking slot you know).

Really, you don’t have to speak like a lawyer to be a great presenter. Just put yourself in the shoes of your audience and you can soon see the flaws of your presentation. Poor presentations are often the same in nature – they just don’t connect with the audience.

Sadly, many people are only interested in listening to themselves, not someone else, and that’s why they’ll never understand what an effective presentation should sound like.

You can avoid their pitfalls very easily – just recall all the bad presentations you’ve been in, or keep observing the bad one you’re stuck in right now – and ask yourself how do you avoid boring/annoying people like the guy on the stage.

A post on punctuality

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In the past few weeks, I’ve encountered three persons who treat punctuality as an unimportant and unnoticeable matter. In totality, they wasted about two hours of my time, which is very important and noticeable to me.

I write this post – which will take you less than five minutes to read – to tell you that you do yourself, as well as the people you’re holding up, a grave disservice.And that I won’t hesitate to tell you off right there and then. Perhaps I’ll be nice about it, but I’ll still do it. Also because you deserve it.

I believe most of us want to be upright and good, or at least perceived as such. The imagery of knights continue to inspire many young kids to heroism or at least gentlemanly behavior. Key attributes of a knight would surely include bravery, chivalry and a serious code of honor. But most people probably won’t associate them with punctuality. (In reality, the knights of old were probably a boorish lot.)

It’s unfortunate that King Arthur never spoke at length on getting jousting tournaments to start on time, and I find it even worse that there’s a modern English term “fashionably late”.

Fashion is never late, and late is never in fashion, people.

Punctuality frames peoples’ impression of you so quickly. Think about it, for every minute that you have yet to turn up without a good reason or forewarning, your reputation drops in tandem. When you do finally arrive, do you expect people to treat you with a smile or a scowl?

And conversely, for a person who is consistently on time for meetings and dates, people come to know him as rock-solid reliable when it comes to keeping time.

If you have trouble with punctuality, it might help to get a good wristwatch with fresh batteries.

I’m not sure at which point in my life did I begin to value punctuality as a virtue. But definitely before I started work.

Even as a journalist (where is the norm to be “fashionably late”, a terrible excuse for poor time management and slow typing skills), I abhorred being late for press conferences or interviews. What if I missed a great soundbite? What if I missed an awesome photo opportunity?

Yet the PR industry feeds this behavior by organizing events with the expectation that journalists would turn up 30-60min late. So I would be there on time, and yet have to wait an hour for anything significant to happen.

Times are a changing, folks. With greater workloads, more email and less work-life balance, every minute is more precious than ever. If you’re going to be late, at least inform your receiving party in advance with a quick call or SMS.

Don’t assume people have the spare time to wait for you, or that we accept lateness as a practice.

There’s nothing more rude than a person turning up late without any warning, and then when he does appear, he pretends that there’s absolutely nothing wrong.

I regret to say, I won’t let you continue to think that way.

Ok, my time is up. Thanks for reading.