 There are global connections here on Think Tech. We don't know enough about Singapore. We need to know a lot more about Singapore. And for more, we have to keep on learning about Singapore because Singapore changes. It's usually ahead of the ballgame. It's usually ahead of, you know, Hawaii and lots of places in the world because it's really smart. It's been smart for a long time. And speaking of smart, we have Harman Cowgill. She's on the hookup today from Singapore. And she joins us and she's going to tell us about her life in Singapore and how Singapore is doing. And I hope we can, you know, check in with her from time to time and find all the changes in Singapore. After all, it's one of the most important places in Southeast Asia. It is in Southeast Asia, right, Harman? Absolutely. It's not part of China. It's part of Southeast Asia. We're at the tip of the peninsula. Okay, let's look at a map. So everybody gets oriented. Here's a map. And our staff is going to zoom in on Singapore. Okay, so where is it? And what is it close to? Then do you feel, do you have vibes from all those places? Well, it's at the tip of that peninsula, so right down south there. And it puts us in a very strategic geographical position, right, historically from the trade routes, which is what we benefited from in our early days. And still today, right? And do we feel, yes, I think, you know, we are a very small country of five and six million people. Out of that, 3.5 are actually local Singaporeans. The rest are foreigners living in Singapore, and that's the uniqueness of Singapore. We are very close geographically to Malaysia, Indonesia. And, you know, we don't take our geographical strategic location for granted. You know, there are a lot of things that we are mindful of in terms of our vulnerabilities that I'm happy to talk about as we go. But, you know, things like, you know, our water dependence, our security, these are things that we are very mindful of, you know, our founding fathers and mothers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, it was top of mind for them, just knowing how vulnerable we are given our size. Let's talk about him for a minute. We got a picture of Lee Kuan Yew, because we can hardly talk about, oh, there he is. Yeah, you can't talk about Singapore without Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, it's a diverse place. There's a lot of, you know, racial and cultural influences in Singapore, and Singapore has, you know, has created a multicultural environment that really works well for its economy. And you, I get the feeling you're kind of a multicultural person yourself. Give us the significance of your name, Armin Borgill. What's that about? So, I am, yes, I am in, I am a minority living in Singapore from an immigrant background as well, as we all are. Singapore is a very, we're sons and daughters of immigrants, right? And that kind of gives us that drive. And it's not too far back in our history, as far back as, so my grandparents were immigrants from India, from Punjab, and they came here. My parents were born here. And it was time for those two generations. And many Singaporeans have the similar backgrounds, right? And so, I was born in Singapore. My name is derived from a Punjabi name, very much Punjabi name. It actually means Golden Temple, Harminda Core. So, Harminda means Golden Temple and Core means princess. It was put for all Sikh women to kind of, you know, to take away the caste system so that we're all equal. So, yeah, quite a symbolic name. What a nice thought. That's a wonderful, wonderful name for you. So, let's talk about your training in your business. You know, you have a, you have a place in Singapore. You're not just hanging around. You've been in business. You're the chair and the founder of a significant organization there, a nonprofit. Can you talk about it? Sure. So, just before that, I was in the banking industry for 15 years, and I was a banker at Goldman Sachs. And I left in June to really pursue my passion and purpose around building a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem for women. So, I, along with my board members, we started, we just started, we've just launched, we're just about to launch a nonprofit called Women Venture Asia that is going to focus on unleashing the potential of women entrepreneurs. The reason for it, I think, you know, a lot of people know, women get 2.3% of the capital funding globally. That's just 2.3%. It's not very different in this part of the world. And there are many reasons for it, but the opportunities are abound and that's what keeps me excited. You know, the economic benefits of women getting full participation in entrepreneurship are immense. It's a $5 trillion opportunity. Globally, if women participated as entrepreneurs in the same way men have, we could see a $5 million increase in GDP from 3% to 6%. And beyond the economic benefits, it's what I'm most excited about is the new products and solutions that women entrepreneurs bring to the market, right? I mean, I would say this and it's a joke, but imagine where we would be without Spanx. I mean, Spanx is founded by women. It's a solution. It's a viable business solution. And it's a solution that we need. Just the other day, I was reading about this group of design designers, technology designers, women who produced an app at home or a device at 2 that way you can actually get your kind of like a full mammogram kit done on a phone. And that's amazing. I mean, we're in 2022 and it's just brought to the market. Imagine that women had full entrepreneurial participation. You'll be bringing all these amazing products and services that actually benefit not just the small pool, but benefits everything, everyone. So, you know, the strong belief is that when women enter the workforce, women participate fully in the economy and as entrepreneurs, the economy thrives and society thrives, all of that stands again. So I'm really excited. There's a lot of work to do, but we're pushing ahead. We're launching in October and, you know, we've got a number of programs in the pipeline to kind of build this more robust ecosystem. So if I go to WDA, Women Venture Asia, I'll find a website there that'll describe. Oh, there it is. There it is. There you go. All right. So a couple of things you mentioned, I'd like to drill down a little bit. Number one is where are these women coming from? Are they all from Singapore? No. So, you know, that's a great question. Singapore is now, the other reason why I'm so excited about this is because Singapore is so well positioned because of our regulatory framework, among other things, our stability, you know, the way of life here that a lot of funding and fund managers are coming and businesses are coming to Singapore to use this as a base to tap into their whole ASEAN or the Southeast Asia market. So there is this whole ballooning and it's just amazing, this whole exciting scene around VC funding and entrepreneurship. So you would find that, you know, we are going to start with Singapore, but we're well positioned just like all the other VCs to expand this across Asia. We want to include Indonesia on women entrepreneurs from Indonesia. That's a huge, huge exciting market there, really around the region, but we're starting with Singapore, a base that we know, and then we're going to want to expand out. Oh, that answers my next question, which is, you know, it relates to Singapore, doesn't mind traveling. The people in Singapore really get around. I surmise you get around. And my friend John William Friedman, with whom you are acquainted, he certainly gets around all over the place. Singapore is a place which is not shy about traveling all through Southeast Asia and everywhere. Am I right? Absolutely. And that's exactly the other reason why businesses set up here, right? It's so accessible. It takes, and I'm not exaggerating, we've got four amazing airports, which are best in class in the world. And, you know, when I land on a good day from the time I leave the plane, I disembark the plane, and this includes getting my luggage to coming home, 45 minutes on average, 45 from the time that's really fabulous. We should have that here. If you're a business traveler, if you're a business traveler, that is just amazing. It's so accessible. It's so efficient. You never have to stand in queue either getting out or getting into the country. And that was, and that's linked back to, you know, I remember I'll like leak on you. The first thing he said was we were building from nothing. We were a settlement of squatters in the 1960s, bare land squatters everywhere. And when him and the team were planning, you know, the plans to Singapore, the first thing he said was the airport. And so when you drive from the airport and you come down the airport, the roads are immaculate. Because he said when people, when business want to invest in Singapore, they're going to look at our infrastructure and first impressions come. And so from then, that is kind of been the founding bedrock Singapore. It has to be accessible. It has to be efficient. I think I'd be stuck actually coming to Singapore, getting off in that airport. I probably want to live the rest of my life in that airport. You could. You should see our new airport, the new terminal duo. It's three story slides, waterfall, fountains. It's amazing. So the women that you're with that you're going to work with, you know, your colleagues in this. Are they all bankers like you? What is their background? And what qualifies them to participate with you in these ventures? Yeah. So, you know, there are two levels of participation. I have a fellow board members and they are working very closely with me to launch this and get the show on the road. And so they are not bankers and it's deliberately so. So I come from the banking background where I was part of that ecosystem in a different way. And my other two co-founders are founding board members are women entrepreneurs themselves. There you go. So we've got Sandesh Sri Ram and she's an up and coming, amazing woman entrepreneur. She's broken both barriers in terms of being a scientist, which is a very underrepresented sector. And also, an entrepreneur, she's working on state-of-the-art technologies to solve a lot of our food insecurities around stem, around a cell-based, creating cell-based meat. So she's one of our founding board members. She's a rising up and coming, very successful entrepreneur. And then we've got Deborah Vijaya, who represents women in the further down the spectrum. She's a deputy CEO of a listed public company in Singapore, a very established one. And she brings the perspective of women who are further down the spectrum managing bigger organizations. So we each represent different sectors of the segment that we want to target. And so that's the board level in terms of women that we want to work with. We're sector-agnostic. We want to cover all. And we go from growth, from startup stage, right all the way to public listed companies. But we divvy them up in three different growth phases. Yeah, Singapore is very good at raising the capital. My recollection is that it's able to raise capital. It does raise capital from everywhere, including Europe, including the UK, of course, because it has relationships with the UK. So where does WVA hope to raise capital? Is it going to be limited to Singapore? Is it going to be limited to Southeast Asia or Asia? Is it going to be limited or unlimited? Is it going to be global? Yeah. So we are a nonprofit. So we are not going to be raising capital for women entrepreneurs, but we will be the bridge. And given that we're a nonprofit, our fund raising, because of Singapore laws and regulations, it has to come locally. But what we want to do is we want to be the conduit for these women to access the funding. So we will bring people to the table, right? But we will, but we will not be administering the fund itself. We are not a fund. Of course, of course, that's the intention of my question. But we'll be working within the very vibrant ecosystem to be that bridge and to be able to give access to a robust network, which is what women entrepreneurs need. You'll help people connect, you know. Exactly. Into a robust network, yes. And speaking of connection, going back to the point about your relationship with the UK. I mean, gee, for most of your recent life, I mean, as Singapore, you're very closely connected with the UK. And I assume that you are now. I mean, they don't, you know, on the street, everyone speaks English, right? Not Punjabi. Although I suppose it's a fair amount of other languages, including Mandarin on the streets. But query, you know, we were, we were completely fascinated, if not obsessed with the television coverage of Queen Elizabeth's death and funeral. And I have a feeling that you had the same coverage and you, I say you, I mean, Singapore had the same coverage and you were also completely obsessed with that funeral. Am I right? You're right. I think the whole world is obsessed, right? The Queen range with so much grace and it was just remarkable, right? So I think the whole, I don't think it's particularly particular to Singapore. You know, and I think also, well, even if you wanted to look away, you couldn't, it's everywhere. It's in all your social media. I don't watch TV anymore. But it's everywhere on social media, right? And good and bad because social media and some of the press seem to be picking up, you know, really mundane things about approach, for example, which is fine. And then there's more symbolic coverage as well. So I think even if you wanted to look away, you couldn't. But, you know, I think by and large people are very, here are very respectful of the Queen. And, you know, it is of interest to us, but I don't think we're obsessed about it. Okay. Yeah. We're going on with our lives. And we're trying to do that here. Yeah. I mean, you know, what else is there to, yeah, but, you know, it's, it is, it makes for a good entertainment. And like I say, it's, there is a lot of respect for the late Queen. And, you know, the varying degrees of obsession about it. Yeah. I don't know what Charles is going to do. Charles is not going to be able to top the funeral of his mother. I don't think anyone will like, you know, I don't think anybody will. And, you know, what's remarkable is I was just saying that the ability for the UK to plan these large scale events, I know it was decades, but, you know, they did the Olympics, given just, you know, the, the area size of London and how, how, you know, it's just so busy and they're able to do the Olympics, able to do the Jubilee, you know, the Queen's, it's just amazing how British precision, right? To be able to organize all of this with such pomp. Yeah. You know, Harman, you said you didn't watch television anymore. And I, I'm, take a wild guess and say you're really tired of hearing about Trump and all the, all the political controversies in this country. Is that the reason or is there some other reason? And in any event, what do you think about all the political controversies in this country? You know, well, let's talk about the easier one, why I don't watch TV anymore. I'm just, I think TV just doesn't, I think the content and social media is just kind of taken over our lives, right? And we spend more time on social media versus TV. I would say that I know, I have a screenshot every time on my iPhone, every week telling me how much time I spend on social media. And I can tell you, my TV is on maybe one hour a week at best, right? So I think it's because we spend a lot of time consuming so much information on social media, good and bad. So that's, that's the simple answer for why I don't watch TV anymore. I find the stuff on social media news and otherwise far more interesting. And then, you know, I will share my personal views about the controversies where I don't see Trump a lot anymore because he's largely banned on social media. So that's why I don't see a lot of women. It's not a bad thing that I know, but, but I think what, what America has been left with and, and I think, you know, some of that does surprise us. Sometimes I was personally very shocked and disappointed with where reproductive rights are in the US. And it's not my position to opine. I'm not an American citizen. But, you know, what happens in America reverberates through the rest of the world, right? And it has an impact on, you know, women's rights and human rights everywhere in the world. So we have a stake in it. And we have to be, we have to feel for it. So I was, and it's just reflective of how I think we view America right now, there's, I believe in America, personally, I believe in America preeminence. And I think it's here to stay for the next couple of decades. But I also know that America is going through its own divide. And sometimes, and, and reading that sometimes from the outside is just, sometimes it's painful, right? Sometimes it's, it's more than painful, it's worrying, right? So I think America thought, our perception about America seems very divided now. I don't think you're the only country you see that in parts of Europe. And I think Singapore's approach has been, I think Singapore is very good in that we, we recognize that we need to learn. We watch this and we say, okay, how can we learn from that? And how can we avoid some of this, right? And in the way that I'll give you an example in the way that we approach the LGBT issues in Singapore, right? So we've recently repealed 3778, all right, which was an amazing step in the right direction. And some people would say it's not enough, it's taken too long. But let's just think about, you know, it took America 20 years from the time it repealed something similar to marriage equality. So it does take time. And I think our approach was very calibrated in that it actually avoids divide because Singapore is, I think, in the middle of you have groups that actually feel it shouldn't be repealed, you have groups who feel it should, businesses who feel it should. What does it represent? What is that? What is that it? You cited a statute just now. What does that represent so we can understand? So 3778 is something we inherited from old British common law. And as we inherited a lot of our laws from the British system. And this one was something that was legacy law that prohibited sex between men, not women, men, just men. And for a long time, it was, it wasn't being enforced. But still symbolically, it had to be removed. And it was only this year, a couple of months back, that it was removed because it was being challenged in the higher courts against our constitutional rights. So, you know, the government came out and said, it's the right thing to do, we should repeal it. But, you know, they stopped short of say, but then they said they wanted to enhance our constitution to ensure that marriage between a man and woman wasn't going to be threatened. So that was kind of Singapore's way of appeasing the people who felt very passionately that it shouldn't be repealed on the page. People felt that it's about time. And it avoids, my personal opinion is it avoids extremism on both ends. It's going to be a journey. If you swing too far, either ways, you get a divide that's not healthy and not productive. So I think I personally think that the approach is right. Personally, I feel it could be faster, but I understand why we do things this way. And it's because we are learning from other countries. How about abortion? Abortion in Singapore is legal. And reproductive rights, you know, I think to a certain extent, we have a good level of reproductive rights on other areas. So abortion is still legal in Singapore. And that is why I, it was very worrying to see what happened in the West, right? Because that is a fundamental human right for everyone to be able to choose her, you know, what happens to her body. Having said that, in Singapore, we still have some ways to go in terms of other reproductive rights. For example, in Singapore, it's still, you're not allowed to get donor AIDS. So women, some women here have to travel overseas to get donor AIDS if they are, if they're not able to concede, for example. So that's kind of the middle ground where Singapore kind of strikes that balance. Well, it sounds like Singapore takes a close look at what's happening around the world and finds a course of action that would be appropriate for, you know, it's electorate. And speaking of which, what about voting rights? You know, we have all kinds of issues. I'm sure you follow it in the United States about voting and people who would like to suppress voting and people who would like to, you know, exclude a lot of people from voting on racial grounds. What about voting in Singapore? You know, it hasn't come up to be a big topic. Voting in Singapore, by and large, everyone is able to vote above the age of 21 in Singapore. You know, our last elections was, I would say, during the pandemic, so maybe two years ago. So there isn't much of an issue around voting rights in Singapore. I haven't heard much of it here. What about guns? You know, it's the number one thing that, you know, that's the thing that when people talk about America, that's, you know, all the good stuff. And then there's guns, right? It's something we, intellectually, we understand why it's so hard to get rid of it. But we just, on a different level, we just, you know, we just, we just can't get past that. And it's sometimes why people think twice, should I send my child to the U.S. to study? I worry about, you know, the presence of guns, right? In the U.K., it's, you know, it's, it's dabbing in the U.K., in the U.S., it's guns. And we feel we don't, you don't even stand a chance. Some people tell us it's the pockets, but that is top of mind for us. In terms of, you know, I think that's around the world. People are shocked by the violence and children. And, you know, it's just, it's just so sad. What did you think of the insurrection and all the investigations that have followed it that are going on right now? I mean, an insurrection isn't something that happens in a Commonwealth country. May I, may I call you for the moment a Commonwealth country? But, you know, that's, that's not part of the Commonwealth, you know, political infrastructure to have insurrections. And we were aghast, but I wonder how the people in Singapore reacted. Jay, tell me a little bit more about why you were aghast by the insurrection, just so that I can lead up to that. Well, this is a sanctum, the sanctum, the critical sanctum of democracy is that building, the capital, where representative government has functioned for more than 200 years and usually successfully. And now we find there are people who would like to essentially tear it down. The building, the, you know, the people inside the building and democracy as it has been practiced for all these years. And that's why a lot of people I know, including me especially, were aghast. And we're aghast with the possibility that there are other, you know, that there are people in this country would like to do other insurrections. And that's very troubling. I doubt you have that or you have anyone who would advance that. No, we are like, you know, it's something that's just unthinkable here, right? Having said that, like I said, it goes back to my earlier point about how we try to maintain population that's not so divided, right? It goes back when you have a population that's divided. Then you have these extremisms and then, you know, it results in an insurrection, right? And which is why I say Singapore doesn't take anything for granted. It's something I can't imagine happening here for different reasons. But it's not like, you know, I don't think we're going to sit down and say, oh, it will, it's the chance is zero. We have to learn. We don't want to even anything leading up to it, right? It's symptomatic, right? There's symptoms before that happens. And those symptoms were present in the US before that happened, right? Yes, absolutely. It was a decade long of symptoms before that happened. So I think that is why I think we step back and we have the benefit of learning from hindsight, right? We step back and we're very open to learn. That is Singapore is a new country with everything we are today because we've been open to learn. And we're going to learn from that and we're saying the LGBT, what I brought up is just a very, it's, it's, it's significant, but it's very important for us to learn from. Their approach is again, it's how Singapore tries to maintain the stability. We are everything we are today. We don't have natural resources. We don't even have our own water. We started off without even having our own water, the fundamentals. But, you know, what we have is stability. And if you take that away, we're in a very precarious situation. So we must maintain that stability, which is why we're very careful to make sure that we are more or less a very cohesive population. Yeah. And of course, that also includes maintaining foreign, foreign relations with important countries that could be threatening. Your management of the relationship with China, for example, is critical to your stability. And I would like to have another show with you sometime when we talk about your relations in terms of trade, commerce, you know, you're famous for being a center of trade in Southeast Asia. But before we, before we go, I would like to talk about, you know, two things. One is the social safety net. I remember in my own trip to Singapore, I had a taxi cab driver who, who said to me that he had arrived from mainland China recently. And when he came, the government of Singapore gave him an apartment and they would draw down his, from his earnings, the money to pay for the apartment. And so the day he arrived in Singapore was the day he had a home in Singapore. And he was as happy as a clam. It was the best thing that ever happened to him. You know, it's the, the change from living in, you know, in China, a communist country was, you know, with certain restrictions and on personal, personal rights and so forth. And arriving in Singapore where it's all rational and, and, and mindful that the needs of the individual to have a reasonable quality of life. On the other hand, though, like every other place in the world, you have the possibility of homelessness, you have the possibility of, I don't want to use it old term, but vagrancy, you have the possibility of people who are unable to pay for food and shelter, because they're just in the wrong place of the economy. Can you talk about how Singapore handles that? Happy to. And before I, I, I talk about Singapore, how we handle that today, I think it's worth taking a couple of steps back to how we start it. Cause I think that parts form of the story, you know, and it wasn't very far back 50, more than kind of 50 years ago, like I mentioned that before, we were a settlement of squatters, you know, living conditions in Singapore with dismal in the 60s, dismal and fast forward 50 years later, now we have 90% home ownership and very good decent living conditions. That didn't come easy. It came from a, you know, again learning, we call the UN in to learn, have to get technical assistance. We learned from our neighbors, we learned from the world. And it also was derived from having to make very tough, difficult decisions that not everyone agreed with. Had we not done that, we wouldn't be where we are today. One of the decisions was to be able to acquire land and affordable prices. So in resettling people, we had to get rid of an old British law that was very, that sanctified land ownership is, you know, but, you know, we, for the common good, for the greater good, a tough decision had to be made to kind of repeal that law so that we could acquire land. That wasn't easy. Relocating communities and populations was not easy. You know, our founding fathers and mothers were chased, the officers were chased with, you know, blades and, you know, it was not easy. And I think third, the introduction of the CPF, which is our compulsory retirement fund that is used to pay. And that, again, was not, you know, it's not an easy decision, but it was a decision that had to be made. It was not maybe popular at that time, but it is now. So these were all, you know, full site and very tough decisions that we had to make as I think, you know, government had to make and the population had to, had to agree with and, and understand it was for the greater good. And it got us to where we are today. It wasn't easy. Today, Singapore has 90 of our local population, we have 90% home ownership today, right? And public housing in Singapore is different from public housing in the US. Public housing here is very good. It's decent. It's where majority, the average Singaporean stays. And there's 90% ownership because as well, we want people to feel a sense of belonging to a country that's relatively new. We don't go back hundreds of years legacy with family names. We are all a country of immigrants, second, third generation. Home ownership ensures that we feel some kind of investment and some kind of belonging to the country. So it's very clever as well. And yes, 90% of us own homes in Singapore, which is great. So we don't, we don't really rent. We don't believe in renting. And the, the, but I would say all of that is a success story and it's because we all have compulsory retirement funds that we can use for this. So it's brilliant. The, there is another side. As you said, there, every society has pockets of poverty. And in Singapore, it doesn't present itself in the same way as other countries. So you will not see homelessness in Singapore, right? It's, it's depicted in different ways. I will, I will say that by and large, there's no homelessness in Singapore, but I would never say that there's no poverty in Singapore. There is, you know, I would, there's at least a hundred, so we're a population of 5.6, including foreigners. I would say there's slightly less than 10% who live below $1,500 a month, right? So that's, we have 100,000 people in Singapore who earn less than $1,300 a month. That's not enough for, you know, place like Singapore. And if you extrapolate that to their family members, you're talking about 200,000, 300,000 people, right? And so that's not an insignificant number of people. Having said that, so we need to do more. And I think we also feel the pressures of inflation, rising cost of living, you know, we have shelters in place for people who don't have homes. These are filling up fast again, because given, you know, the whole inflation pressures, we also have, you know, what we call rental flats to put people without a home. It's meant to be temporary, but it's hard to get people out of it. The living conditions in these flats are not ideal in these rental flats. They are small. You have three generations sometimes living in a very one room flat. It's not ideal to bring up kids. Having said that, it's meant to be temporary, right? So you get back up on your feet. It's hard. That cycle of poverty is hard. The system kicks in in Singapore, and I do believe in it. It's not, we're not a welfare state. Again, we've learned we are welfare is not an entitlement. You pass a means test, and the system will kick in. So no one's left on the street. The system kicks in, but the challenge is getting people out of that poverty cycle, which is hard to do. And I think it's a challenge right now. Very interesting. Makes me want to come over there again. You know, I'm friendly with a guy named Dwayne Googler. He's a physician. He's a research medical scientist physician, and he was able to establish infectious disease unit at the National University of Singapore, NUS a few years ago, with the help of Duke University. Duke has a big presence in Singapore. And he worked on a number of, you know, epidemic and pandemic kinds of diseases. I think he retired since. But I had the impression in knowing him and seeing his facility that Singapore was very good on medicine. And that if, you know, if you got sick anywhere in the region, quickly get to Singapore, they'll take care of you. That, you know, it's one of your strong points. At the same time, you know, COVID came from everywhere and it went everywhere. And I'm sure that, you know, you had an issue over the past three years. More and more, I find out, Harman, that COVID has changed our society. People don't talk about it that much. But if you go, if you drive down Bishop Street, which is the center of downtown Honolulu, you see a lot of the stores are boarded up right now today. And it's been almost, you know, two years plus going on three years of COVID here. Of course, the economy still works. We still have tourism and so forth. But it is changed. And I think there's a lot of places in the country that don't necessarily talk about it, where that similar process. So I wonder how COVID has affected you, especially given the fact that you have, you know, this sort of advanced medical community research community dealing with epidemics and pandemics. Yeah. You know, again, Singapore's approach is again, watch, learn, calibrate, right? At least that's my perception of it. And, you know, we started off, you know, with very tight measures around COVID, something that wouldn't get passed in the US. Again, we have that ability to make tough decisions and people understand it's for the greater good and people go along with it. And somewhere along the way, you know, we didn't, you know, we didn't, we didn't stop and say, oh, you know, we're going to go on with this because we started with it, right? We had started tough measures. We stopped and we said, we're highly adaptable and we're highly resourceful. And we are, I would like to think highly prepared. And again, we learned from our past. We never had water. Today, we're 40% self-sufficient from zero, right? So we are a nation who has to be resourceful and who has to be prepared. And with COVID, it took all of us by surprise. But, you know, we were the first. We were well prepared with ordering our stock of, you know, COVID vaccines. Everyone got a, everyone got a shot and, you know, people did not, you know, people were not, it wasn't like the lottery, right? It was accessible and we got it in time. We were prepared. We put in our orders way before, right? So that's the preparedness that's learning. And then our measures were also, you know, recalibrated. The government took a look at it and say, okay, you know what, we need to open up and we need to, we cannot go on zero policy anymore. And it was a very, it was, it was a humble approach to recognize that we cannot go on and it was learning, right? So I think because of all of that, we minimized the number of deaths that we had in Singapore. We have a very robust healthcare system that was, I would say it was pushed. There was a lot of pressure. We had, you know, it was a lot of pressure on our healthcare workers, but everyone banded together. And, you know, today we are at a place where because we took a very calibrated measure to open up, balancing the both sides. We have 10 people in ICU today from COVID, 10 people. And Singapore is roaring back. We have the, you know, we have the formula one happening in a few weeks. And as part of that, we've got the FOB conference. We've got 100 large-scale conferences that are around the F1. Singapore is roaring back. If you go out in the streets, the restaurants are full. Like it's like, you know, we are roaring back. So, you know, you don't, I don't, people have been impacted. It's been tough on the hospitality and FMB businesses, right? I won't say it wasn't. So that part did happen. But, you know, there's been a lot of assistance from the government side as well to prop things up. And now it's roaring back. I think our concerns would be more economic in the long run about inflation and recession and how that's going to impact. But again, I think there's, there's a lot of assistance from the government and they're trying to make sure that the economy can withstand it. How better recession will hit us? I think it will likely will, but how bad? I think it might be better than, you know, some other places. That brings me to my last question to you, Harman. This has been a great discussion. And if we could see the picture of Lee Kuan Yew one more time, I think he has cast a shadow. There it is. He's a great man in the history of the world, really. And he has created something, something really good out of nothing, as you said. So here's Lee Kuan Yew and his, I guess his son is now his successor in government. But, you know, it was Camelot. It was Camelot. It was so beautiful what he did. It was so just and egalitarian, democratic in its own way. And now it's been going on since, well, she's 50, 60 years. And the question is, can this beautiful Camelot that you described that I am familiar with, can it last forever? It's a tough question and no one knows the answer to that. But, you know, I think, like I said, as long as we continue to learn and want to be adaptive and learn from our past lessons, we'll be all right. I would say that it's not going to be a bed of roses. I think the next generation of leaders are going to find it very challenging because the situation, just because the world is changing and the issues are so multiple. Every country, the next generation of leaders are going to find it so much harder than the ones before for different reasons. I think our challenge in Singapore now and our focus would be geographical stability, right? And, you know, we didn't have this kind of issues 20 years ago. We didn't have them 10 years ago. Now we're right in between the U.S. and China tension, which is a whole day's discussion of itself. And I think Singapore's stability cannot be taken for granted. And I think it's going to be a challenge for the next generation of leaders to ensure that and a focus as well. And we as a society, we can't take that for granted. So I think just vis-a-vis the macro challenges that are happening, it's going to be tougher, right? To manage through all of that. But generally, I think the faith here in the establishment is strong. And I think it's on all of us, right? To have that. Like I said, we're actually going back. It's for all of us, for our children to understand where we came from. We're a country of immigrants. And that got us here. Lee Kuan Yew was able to work with that, with the effort of the population, the energy of the immigrant population, right? It's not just for our leadership. It's not for our government. It's for all of us to put it in, to remind ourselves where we came from, and to ensure the next generation with that same drive and that same effort to get us there together. And you're part of that, Harman. You're part of that. You're going to be there for the next generation of women, men, and for everyone. Harman Korgill, I've been a great discussion with you, Harman. I'm so glad we did this. And I truly, truly hope that we can circle back and have a further discussion on the geopolitical aspects of Southeast Asia and Singapore's role in all of that, and its importance in all of that. In any event, thank you very much, Harman. Aloha. Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.