The Singaporean super-featherweight lasted four rounds against Tanzania’s Fadhili Majiha before securing the victory at the main event of Roar of Singapore II at Resorts World Sentosa on Saturday (May 27).
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SINGAPORE: Singaporean boxer Muhamad Ridhwan “The Chosen One” has become the country’s first professional world title holder.
The 29-year-old beat Tanzanian World Boxing Association (WBA) Pan African champion Fadhili Majiha via KO after four rounds, to win the Universal Boxing Organisation (UBO) world super-featherweight (58.97kg) title.
Coming into the title fight with seven wins in seven fights of his pro boxing career, Ridhwan overcame the odds in a tough battle against 23-year-old Majiha, who had 20 wins, eight draws and four losses prior to the bout.
His victory in the main event of Roar of Singapore II at Resorts World Sentosa means that Ridhwan, a three-time SEA Games bronze medallist, has now won his second professional title belt in seven weeks.
The Singaporean pugilist also won the World Boxing Association (WBA) Asia super-featherweight title last month, after beating Indonesia’s Waldo Sabu at the Singapore Fighting Championship’s “Combat Redefined” event at Foochow Building.
SINGAPORE — Like any Singaporean male, Mr Alexander Franklin Alrivers served National Service (NS), as an infantry machine gunner, and even worked as a Police Coast Guard for 14 years.
(Above: Alexander Franklin Alrivers, 50, holds up a plaque he was presented with while he was in the Police Coast Guard. He had been stateless all his life until his application for citizenship was accepted this year. Photo: Nadarajan Rajendran/TODAY) But 50 years was how long it took for him to receive his pink identity card (IC) — the result of family circumstance and one bad mistake.
The Eurasian, who was born here in 1967, was one of over 1,000 stateless people who are living in limbo here due to their unusual and complicated legal status.
The ICA declined to comment on how many stateless people go on to become citizens or how long the process takes. Its spokesman said all citizenship applicants are assessed based on prevailing eligibility requirements, with each application “carefully assessed on its own merits”.
On May 21, Mr Alrivers joined some 140 new citizens at a Citizenship Ceremony at Bukit Batok Community Club. As he sang the National Anthem and recited the National Pledge, he choked back tears at finally being able to call himself a Singaporean.
His immediate goals — to purchase a three-room resale Housing and Development Board flat and start a family with his 32-year-old Vietnamese wife.
The 50-year-old and his two sisters were born to two former Prisoners of War who met at Changi Prison during World War II. Their father was a Polish navy serviceman who was captured and interned by the Japanese after his ship got bombed. Their Malay mother was a nurse from Malaysia, caught for helping the British.
After Singapore gained independence, the couple were classified as stateless permanent residents who had lost their foreign citizenship. While their oldest child, born in 1954, was able to obtain citizen status with proof that she was born here, their two younger children, born post-1965, took on their stateless status.
The younger Ms Alrivers applied and received her pink IC at age 22, and Mr Alrivers was offered citizenship too when he turned 21 after serving NS.
But he turned it down on the advice of his elder sister and brother-in-law who were planning to emigrate to Australia.
Mr Alrivers, who had been living with them after his father died in a hit-and-run accident when he was 10, said: “I had no choice. I didn’t have a house or job at that time, so I said I would follow them wherever they go.”
The O-Levels certificate holder spent the next 29 years trying to undo that mistake as their plans failed to materialise, and he remained a stateless permanent resident in Singapore.
After more than 10 rejections and failed appeals with various Members of Parliament (MPs) to gain citizenship, in 2013, the security guard spent three months and S$2,500 to obtain a Workforce Skills Qualifications certificate in operating theatre support with the Institute of Health Sciences.
With that, he managed to secure a better-paying job as an operating theatre technical assistant at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and he reapplied for citizenship in 2014 with a renewed sense of hope.
In January this year, he received a letter from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) notifying him that his application has been approved. He took his Oath of Renunciation, Allegiance and Loyalty at ICA on Feb 14, and finally received his pink IC from Bukit Batok MP Murali Pillai on May 21.
At the new citizens’ ceremony for Jurong Group Representation Constituency and Yuhua and Bukit Batok Single Member Constituencies, Mr Alrivers was the only person jubilantly waving his documents on stage.
(Alexander Franklin Alrivers, 50, poses for a photo with his citizenship certificate. He had been stateless all his life until his application for citizenship was accepted this year. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY) The teary-eyed man told TODAY: “Maybe for other people… this business doesn’t really mean much, but to me, it is a dream come true after struggling for so long.”
He had dressed for the occasion by donning a tie, the first time he did so outside his wedding, and secured it with a Republic of Singapore Air Force Black Knight F16 tie pin that he had purchased specially.
Although the ICA declined to comment why Mr Alrivers’ application took so long to be approved, for the 50-year-old, all his struggles are water under the bridge now. As a citizen, he can truly begin life anew.
(Alexander Franklin Alrivers, 50, photographed in the rented room he lives in with his Vietnamese wife, before he received his citizenship, as they were not eligible to buy a HDB flat. He had been stateless all his life until his application for citizenship was accepted this year. Photo: Nadarajan Rajendran/TODAY)
He intends to purchase a resale HDB flat and move out the S$400-a-month cubicle that he and his wife of 13 years had called home for the last nine years. They also want two children and a pet dog.
As a stateless PR with a Vietnamese wife here on long-term pass, he put off having children for fear that their offspring would be caught in limbo like him.
He could not even visit his wife were she to return to Vietnam to give birth, as he said the Certificate of Identity, a Singapore-issued travel document for stateless individuals, has not been recognised by Vietnamese authorities for more than five years now.
With his red passport, he no longer needs to worry. In fact, he is making a trip in July with his wife to visit her parents in Ho Chi Minh City.
“This is my home now, and not just some place I am renting… This is where I will have children, die and be buried,” he said. “Best of all, I no longer owe anyone an explanation on why I am a Singapore PR even though I don’t come from some place else. Now I am just Singaporean. Full stop.”
A Stomp reader was in Hougang on May 25 when he saw police officers smash the passenger-side window of a car parked near Block 965 along Hougang Avenue 9 because the driver was unconscious with his head on the steering wheel.
A spokesperson from the police confirmed the incident, and told Stomp: “On 25th May 2017 at 11.17pm, the police received a call for assistance at 965 Hougang Avenue 9.
“A 52-year-old male car driver was subsequently arrested for drink driving. Police investigations are ongoing.”
In the three-minute long video contributed by the Stomper, a police officer can be seen making repeated attempts to smash the passenger-side window of a car with licence plate number SGY2833K.
The officer eventually succeeds and they help the intoxicated man out of the vehicle.
Said the reader: “The police had to break open the window to enter the car. The man’s car blocked the road and no car could pass through.
“His head was resting on the steering wheel and throughout the whole time he was there, the vehicle was honking away.”
SINGAPORE: I often get asked how large banks like DBS can foster breakthrough innovation within the organisation. My answer: “You may get lucky with an unbelievable invention from left field, but the more likely course is iterate, experiment, fail, learn, pivot, repeat.”
The same experimental journey was taken by many successful social media companies we see today. LinkedIn started as a dating network; Facebook as a site to rate the attractiveness of individuals. Both experimented and morphed over time.
Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix are widely acknowledged as leaders in innovation. What sets them apart is their ability to constantly experiment, scale and rapidly bring new features to market.
LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for US$26 billion in December 2016. (Photo: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)
REWRITING THE CORE OF BUSINESS
When DBS started on a digital innovation journey, we resisted the urge to feel like a kid in a fancy store with new toys to play with. We knew that innovation is not about acquiring the latest gadgets.
It is about embracing an innovation mindset. I am deeply passionate about empowering people to embrace the culture and habits of digital native organisations.
Such a paradigm breaks away from what bankers are used to: Namely, the need to have all the answers upfront, or the need to have certainty of outcomes.
Instead, uncomfortable though it is, we have been shifting to an environment where it is perfectly okay to not know if something will work.
What this translates to is the need to foster a culture of experimentation. The thinking is that if we are able to increase the surface area of ideas springing up within the organisation, there is a higher probability that some of them will be the great success stories of tomorrow.
We also seek to cultivate a financial technology (fintech)-like culture among our 22,000 people. We believe that innovation is not just the mandate of our innovation group; but we are rewiring the core of the bank so that at every level, and across every department and team, people are energised and equipped to come up with new ideas and initiatives.
Since 2015, we have run over 1,000 experiments across the bank, and in this way, a culture of innovation at DBS goes broader and runs deeper than at many organisations.
The DBS Academy was opened by DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam in December 2015. It aims to build a strong talent pool that will help shape the future of the finance industry. (Photo: DBS)
What are some of the strategies we are using to embrace a digital culture?
1. EMBED YOURSELF IN THE CUSTOMER’S JOURNEY
To manage experiments, we adopt agile and human-centred design methodologies. We immerse ourselves in the customer journey before developing any products to understand what customers really need or want to do.
Then we prototype, test and iterate quickly. That way, we fail early and inexpensively to learn faster.
Our people learn what it means to be agile in an immersive way. You cannot lecture on digital innovation and expect people to change. So we started doing hackathons in 2014. Just in February this year, we were also the first bank in Southeast Asia to use hackathons to recruit top developers in Singapore and India with our Hack2Hire programme.
Through such platforms, employees are given a framework and tools to innovate. The teams have gone on to launch digital offerings such as DBS PayLah! and DBS Home Connect that you see in the market now.
In my first human-centred design session, I had to discuss with a colleague the journey of buying a gift for our wives. We had to consider the pain points we would experience and what would make our wives happy.
As you can imagine, the conversation between two men started out rather awkwardly because as colleagues, we usually do not talk about such personal matters. Often, we hide behind spreadsheets.
Talking about emotions, however, helps us develop empathy and uncover unmet needs. At the end, I had a lot of fun and learnt to see problems in a new way.
2. CREATE A PLATFORM TO BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER
Digital native organisations like Facebook are masters of creating globally scalable platforms that bring people together and integrate into their lives. DBS has begun thinking in similar terms. The job to be done is to deliver joyful experiences.
At digibank India, we built an ecosystem of partners comprising artificial intelligence (AI) experts, data scientists and developers. It is the country’s first mobile-only bank that is branchless, paperless and signatureless, and incorporates technologies like AI.
Our success means we could replicate this platform in other markets. We plan to roll out a similar offering in Indonesia this year.
3. WORK WITH FINTECH COMPANIES
We are actively finding ways to mentor, partner and support fintech companies, who we see as more of an opportunity to work with than a threat.
The rapid spread of fintech might indicate success, but the reality is that only a few have made it. There are three main reasons.
First, their solutions are unproven. Second, customer acquisition has remained a challenge – traditional banks are still seen as safer than online banks. And third, banks themselves have woken up to the threat of fintech and are rolling out online services for customers who might otherwise have moved to newer, nimbler players.
Traditional banks like DBS can leverage the best of both worlds. Banks still have existing advantages such as safety and trust, deep expertise in banking products, managing risks, processing capabilities and data pools. Fintech companies are customer-centric, nimble and agile, and are always innovating and experimenting.
Banks that can marry the two are showing the way forward.
DBS Group reported a first quarter net profit growth of 1 per cent year-on-year to reach a record S$1.21 billion for Q1 of 2017. (Photo: AFP)
For this reason, in Singapore and Hong Kong, we have been running a number of pre-accelerator programmes, which allow us to stay connected with new, emerging fintech; to have a first shot at any opportunities for partnership, and to forge a banking relationship with startups.
Where we can, we will also bring fintech into our platforms. Going back to digibank India, the offering combined a few startup products: the artificial intelligence technology was from US-based Kasisto, while the recommendation engine and the virtual key were products of two Singapore fintech companies Moneythor and V-Key.
4. CELEBRATE FAILURE
Getting our hands dirty is part of the process. A few years ago, I learned to build mobile apps. It was uncomfortable because the last time I coded was more than 20 years ago.
The interface I designed was not great, but this experiment has made me better able to guide our digital initiatives as a developer and user.
My teams are encouraged to be multidisciplinary, to experiment and accept that some projects will fail, especially if we set challenging “moonshot” goals. Celebrating failures may be hard in certain cultures. However, I believe it is the stretch goals that will help transform businesses.
At DBS, for instance, we set an ambitious goal to launch a mobile-only bank, digibank, in India within 18 months. We successfully delivered this in April 2016. A year later, we managed to acquire a million customers for digibank India.
I firmly believe if banks can be pivoted to operate like start-ups, we can secure our future in the midst of digital disruption.
Embracing fintech, integrating them and cultivating a fintech mentality are central to winning.
David Gledhill is DBS Bank’s group chief information officer. David is also recipient of the 2017 MIT-Sloan Chief Information Officer Leadership Award, which was presented by MIT earlier this week.
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