Saturday, March 21st 1998

We're pleased to be with you on this update. We're glad that you've taken the time to be with us. We're in Singapore. We've relocated down the South China Sea and we're going to give you our impressions of our very first visit to Singapore, a city of 4 1/2 million people. Over the next two days we'lllearn and experience Singapore, which is a delightful thing to do, to come to a new place and make new discoveries. I think we should orient you, just as we have done ourselves, as to where we are. My personal digital assistant, PDA, which our son Joseph and daughter Carol have one, and Terri has a palm, tells me we're 10,000 miles from the Midwest. The PDA has a feature on it for the vital statistics for your home city and the vital statistic for a visiting city, so I'm able to tell exactly what time it is in the Midwest by pressing a button. I'm also able to tell what time the sun rises and sun sets and what the distance is from the visiting city to the home city. So I know, because my PDA tells me, that we're 10,000 miles from the Midwest. And I'll certainly never forget that the earth, at the equator, is 24,000 miles around. So we're almost halfway around the earth. Singapore is one of those places you hear a lot about but you're not quite sure where it is, so let me orient you, as I did myself on our way here. I think for those in North America it would be easy to understand if I say we are south of Vietnam, the Vietnam peninsula is to the north about an hour and a half. We're west of the Philippines, the Philippine Islands are about two hours to the east, and we're north of Australia, almost on the exact same longitude as Perth, Australia. That should illustrate the distance that we are, Perth is the furthest most city of the Australian continent to the west and as I look at a map, if we almost went due south, southeast, we would be in Perth. The distance, however, is quite staggering, it's about 2500 kilometers from Hong Kong, it's about 10,000 kilometers to Perth, so it's a long way, another five hours I think to get to Perth by air. Now if you look in other directions, the Bay of Bengal, India, Thailand are all to the north and to the west. That gives you an orientation. We're far, far away, and through the magic of telecommunications we can talk to you. My impressions about Singapore: we arrived late in the evening and have awoken this morning to a magnificent sunrise. It's warm and humid here. The temperature is in the 90s, the humidity is in the 70s. It's very, very tropical. I don't think there will be any cold fronts coming through here. So dressing for the tropics appears to be the right thing to do. That must be quite a contrast with the Midwest weather at this time of year. Our visit here is going to take us from Singapore to Pinang, which is a major city on the Malaysian peninsula. We're going to learn more about Malaysia, but I recall that there's 12,000 miles that make up Malaysia. I want to describe to you my initial impression of Singapore because it is very impressive. I would describe it as being similar in appearance to Tampa, Florida, the skyline, however the buildings here are taller. There is a Westin Hotel here with 75 stories. It is a very clean city. It reminds me of Kohler, Wisconsin in its cleanliness and its orderliness. But what's so stunning is, of course, is it's a major urban city. It has the smell and atmosphere of a port city like Boston or Los Angeles. It's an area with contrast. When you arrive at the passport/immigration service, they have a little candy dish and they offer you a sweet as you wait to have your passport inspected, contrasted to when the airplane was on approach to Singapore. They made an announcement that the importation or transport of drugs is subject to the death penalty and execution. So you know they're pretty serious as we have heard and is our perception. Terri has uncharacteristically come over by me, here by the telephone, which I think she's giving me the body language that she's eager to give her update. So let me, because there are a lot of fun things that come from her comments and give her the telephone. Let's listen to what Terri's impressions and thoughts are on this Saturday morning from Singapore.

Terri - Good morning from Singapore. Actually the truth of the matter is that our daughter, Mary, told us that Don was talking too long. So that's why I'm trying to get the phone from him. It may not stop him, but it may give you all a little break anyway. Don's talked about the location and a little about Singapore. I thought it was the most amazing thing last night while I was taking a bath, the entire bathing area is a series of windows and the view from the bath is like nothing I've ever seen before. To say it's a clean city is an understatement. There are very, very substantial fines for throwing even the smallest piece of garbage on the ground. Gum is not notoriously sold here because they don't like the refuge from it. It's a very interesting and unusual place to be.

What I'm going to do is give you a little background on what one of our days consists of in one of these CEO Universities. Today we'll have our breakfast and a 9 o'clock we'll leave. We're going to be going to many civic and historical districts in Singapore. Some of the highlights are a subway ride on the world class MRT system. From there we'll go on a boat along the Singapore river to a Hindu Temple, which is the oldest Hindu Temple located in the private Chinatown. Then we'll do a walkabout Chinatown and then go to the National Museum. From there, we'll go to Little India, the Arab Quarters and then we'll be going back to Raffles, which is a very popular restaurant here for a much needed Singapore Sling. After that, we'll be going tonight to the Alcoff Mansion, which is a recently restored mansion that sits on top of the hill overlooking the harbor, so it should be just an absolutely beautiful evening and a very entertaining time. Singapore in the 1920s is sort of relived in this Mansion so we're really looking forward to doing that. Tonight we'll have the traditional Indonesian dinner. We're here with about 30 other people, so it's a small group, it really pretends to be a very wonderful, a very exciting time with lots of different experiences and I think this is a place from Don and my first impression that we'll definitely put on a list of places to come back to. I'll give you back to Don and wish you all a healthy and happy day and talk to you tomorrow.

Don - As I'm looking out the window, we see the Port of Singapore. The city wraps around the Port. There are palm trees about. You realize you've moved to a tropical setting. Malaysia is an Islamic country, though I get the impression Singapore is where the cultures of Islam and the East and the West country meet. Mandarin Chinese is the dominant language. English being the second language. So there's really a confluence of cultures going on here and I'm sure we're going to find out of the specifics about the history of the culture in the region. I want to make a few points and I'll finish up the report for those who fall asleep - many people listen to these reports late in the day and if I carry on, they either hang up or they fall asleep, and I wouldn't want that to happen to you. I've had the notion of people's ear on the phone, or even on the web saying come on, get on with it.

We've received some E-mail in the last 24 hours from Tony Ahern. Tony, we are pleased to be your very first international E-mail. I must say one of the reasons we carry out this form of communication is that we have discovered that, like religion or any new experience, it gives purpose and reason for people to use the technology. And I am so pleased to have this opportunity for us all to be together. And for Tony Ahern, it was his very first international E-mail and we all remember our first of anything. From Mom Jones, whom I'm told by my brother Bob is listening, we send you our love and tell you that I'm glad to hear you're able to join us on the journey. And, Bob, Lynda and Cody, we say hello to you. Our daughter Mary at South Bend has just informed us by E-mail that she was appointed to a national honor fraternity. My recollections is Phi Alpha Honor Society. Congratulations to Mary, who was also named to the National Honor Society earlier in the year and she's really worked very hard as she's now about to finish up her college experience. She's going to be sending out her invitations and she's doing an internship at St. Joseph Hospital in South Bend. We're very proud of Mary's hard work and effort. She's now going to be looking at what her opportunities are in the future. We thank Peter for the news and update of the Hopper home, which he's looked at and all the other news that he's shared with us. So that's a brief comment about E-mails, which are reaching us with the speed of digital bytes and it couldn't be coming to a more important place. There's something very important happening in this region, Singapore, with information technologies. Bill Gates has been here for a couple of days, and we'll be talking, on another report, about what he's up to. Mr. Gates has a presence in this part of the world, in Beijing and Singapore, and I get the sense he views this region is the next important phase of the development of Microsoft and maybe evening thumbing his nose at North America because of the backlash to success that's being experienced there. So Gates is on television here and giving speeches to thousands of people in standing room only rooms. And he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Singapore government that I think has enormous implications. The front page of the local newspaper , this is the headline story, this is not some back page or deeper in the newspaper talks about how they are modifying the local curriculum in the local schools. The essence of it is they are reducing the amount of time for school, which apparently is very burdensome for children, but they are refocusing on basic skills. As one of the skills in the school system here, they have included information technology. You think about this - reading, writing, arithmetic, information technology. Core curriculum for children in all schools in this region. They are building an entire new city, a multimedia super city for information technology and we hope to learn a little bit more about that.

Well, as we paint these magnificent pictures, let me tell you about a few realities of this region. On the list of problems for this area, is fresh water. Fresh water comes up repeatedly as an emerging problem. We take that so much for granted because it doesn't occur to us that fresh water might be a problem. In this region of the world, it's on the list of worries. We're staying at a Ritz Carlton hotel which is suppose to be upscale and one of the nicest, in the form of service and customer care, but again, in traveling you have all sorts of experiences, here's sort of a gross one. We're in a high rise, 35 story building and there's an odor in the room. It's not a very pleasant odor and when you track it down, the bathroom has a floor drainage system for run off water in this marble expansive bathroom. What's happening is that in essence, sewer gas is coming back up through this floor drain and you consequently get the same odor that you would in an outhouse. I think I'm being very accurate when I describe it that way. So we're in sort of an outhouse odor environment in this magnificent, modern hotel in this extraordinarily modern city of Singapore. So I don't want you to feel sorry for us knowing that we have to endure this awful smell. We close the doors and isolate it, but it's just a subtle reminder that things are not perfect everywhere.

That's a good account of our situation here on Saturday morning, still Friday afternoon for all of you and the weekend is coming up. Weekends in this part of the world mean just as much as they do to us in the Midwest, although the work ethic here is six days a week. Whether Sunday has the same religious meaning, I've yet to ascertain, but I doubt if it does. I do want to make a couple of business reminders for my professional friends. The economics in this region shift very, very fast and in watching and listening and gathering information about macro economics, here's the impression I've gotten in the last 24 hours. The bottom for the Asian woes was thought to have been about two months ago. There are signs in the last 24 hours that Indonesia is coming around to the IMF demands. The Singapore and Hong Kong stock markets yesterday increased 4 and 5%, respectively and there's talk about lower interest rates and consequently, I think there's optimism and confidence being restored into this region. What that means for North America and the United States, I do not know. I suppose you could think through that if our markets were taking somewhat of a joy in the woes of this area, saying their bad news is our good news, you might maybe make the connection that if there's good news here, it might have bad news implications for North America. Sort of contrarian thought processes. With that I'll leave you to ponder and think about it. I think I will make the point, as I finish up, that we can no longer think about our circumstances in isolation of the rest of the world. What happens here does affect us and will affect us. It's just very difficult, I think, to know or to try to figure out what that affect might be. I can assure you that the social/economic events of this part of the world have enormous implications for our part of the world. That's both an opportunity and something to think about as we organize our lives and try to make the best judgements. I think I'll finish with that. It's been an absolute joy knowing that we can be with you this way and that you care enough to be with us. To all of our family and friends and to those who, through word of mouth, have become new friends, we say so long from Singapore.

Back to CEO Page

Voice: (920) 923-6336
Fax: (920) 923-4369
info@spiritenterprise.com