Ah, to give it all up

Whenever people tell me what makes them happy, it gets me thinking about what makes ME happy.

Apparently not much. Surrounded by those whom I love, great friends, a satisfying job that pays more than enough, good health, some time to exercise, good food, etc, that should be great. Free from the worries that plague other people, like financial or health, and definitely in a position that I am sure many others would readily swap places with in a heartbeat. Not that I am boastful, but just appreciative of my circumstances.

This is the perfect life. If you want steady stability, this is it. A permanent secure job with a blue chip employer who pays you (for what you do and have experience with) much more than the market equivalent, so you can basically settle down here, and follow the crowd, i.e. work hard at the career, get a promotion every couple of years, buy a house, a car, have a family, etc. Get a pet dog. Excellent.

So why is it that when I read Bryson's books, every single time, I will end up re-examining the above lifestyle? I don't think there is a problem with the lifestyle itself, but geez, I do so want to hike the Appalachian trail too! And I do so want to travel around Europe, and stuff like that. I guess that's what good writers do, put those kind of thoughts in your head. It's not impossible for me to do so, but it IS impossible to straddle both at once; after all, what kinda job would let you go off on a multiple month sabbatical to 'discover myself" or "see the world" etc. We've got to be realistic. Of course, at this stage, some people will go, why is dreaming so unrealistic? What makes THIS realistic? Isn't this an artificial cord we tie around ourselves and hence we can never takes risks and let go and THEN in 30 years we'd look back at this pivotal moment and go GODDAMN if only...

Anyway, I won't prattle anymore. But his stories and the settings do appeal. I would never hike the trail alone, of course, as I'm too cowardly, too inexperienced, too ill equipped and way too imaginative, but it'd be nice to hike around a bit within my limits, and exercise my imagination. Was this spot ever a resting place for a tired Mohican? You know, fanciful stuff like that. Perhaps THAT spot over there was the scene of a dramatic parting between 2 lovers of the rival Cherokee and Iroqois tribes? Ahh...But I could never do Europe backpacking the way he did it. Sure, it holds its appeal, and I'm sure plenty of travellers vouch for it.

But I'm old, pampered and petty, and I shall make no pretenses and be the type of backpacker who isn't really a backpacker but just wants to do certain elements of it just to say they backpacked across say Scandinavia. Nah, either you do it properly and call yourself so, or you don't do it or don't call yourself so. At any rate, I want nice hotels, nice travelling conditions, and certainly, not much alcohol. All I'd reallly like is warm jackets, scarves, music player, notebook, camera and a nice thermos to store hot beverages.

Trust yourself

People say one should always have a positive attitude and demeanour. Agreed. People also look at successful people and say, well, so and so was a positive person, hence he is successful.

Really?

How hard is it to be positive when one is successful? By that point, you can say anything you like. How about those who started off being positive, tried to remain upbeat despite less than positive circumstances, but still didn’t end up achieving the ideal outcome they wanted? Does positive attitudes really lead to success? I find it hard to believe that people can isolate 1 trait and pinpoint success down to 1 factor. A positive attitude definitely helps, but only in tangent with other attributes, will it be tangibly beneficial. One should always try to be positive, but when things are not going well and one finds one’s well of optimism is drying up, don’t let that turn into a domino effect.

When things are not running well, what does one do? Does one lose heart, lose hope? Well, one should trust oneself, right? That one is making the right decisions, have faith in oneself. As Eric Musselman says, are you willing to bet on yourself? When the going gets tough, are you willing to bet on yourself? If you are a leader, you must be willing to bet on yourself – or else, how else will you influence others to follow you? Are you willing to place your money on your decision making skills? You never know what will happen. A lot of times you just make the best analysis you can with the given info you have, made the call, take a risk, and see what happens.

But we have to trust ourselves, and our instincts. As Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Blink, said, we’ve got to trust ourselves and our instincts. Too often, people doubt and don’t trust themselves and their intuition, preferring instead to rely on so called logic and facts. But sometimes, our intuition is running completely opposite to what the logic is telling us. So what do we do? Is it that much harder to trust ourselves?

The value of hard work

I am going to draw again upon yet another parallel between sports and real life.

How many of you, in the course of your daily life, have encountered people more talented than you, but delivering mediocre performances, and vice versa? Are they luckier? Are they more ‘suited’ to something? Or are they simply more hard-working?

When I was growing up, various experiences led me to strongly believe that I was special, different, gifted, blessed, and more intelligent, could never fail and superior to other people. Of course, while growing up, these falsehoods were repeatedly asserted into me, and I lost that confidence, but remained much humbler of my capabilities and more respectful of others. However, eventually it dawned on me that there are others much more talented than me. And there was only 1 way to outperform the more naturally gifted than me in every arena: I had to outwork them.

Everyone has talent. What truly separates them is how hard they work. Michael Jordan was famous for having a practice regime that bordered on maniacal. Many can jump like him, shoot like him, drive like him, play O and D like him, but no one does it night in and night out, achieves the same level of stellar play on both ends of the court, and sustains it for as long as he does, and definitely not many people can reinvent themselves to remain dominant when their body starts to age. He did, and there was no blind luck involved. That is why he is the best.

When asked recently what makes someone a champion and not another, Arnold Schwarzenegger replied:

"It's drive. It's the will. There are certain people that grow up with a tremendous hunger and it's usually kids that have struggled when they were young. When you grow up comfortable and in peace and happiness, all those things will produce a very balanced person and a good person, but it will not create the will and determination and hunger that you need to be the best in the world."

The most successful people work hard. That’s the 1 constant. Their motivations might be different. Jordan grew up in a relatively financially comfortable family. His drive came from ego, wanting to be the best, and hating to lose. For Arnold, it was a relentless desire to be the best in the world. For others, it could be to escape an impoverished upbringing and to escape into a cushier future. It doesn’t matter the motivation. What is important is hard work.

After encountering a recent reminder that the true differentiator between the successful and non-successful is how hard someone works, I have decided to dedicate myself more to my job, just to see what kind of benefits I will derive. In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he mentions that 1 of the success factors of successful people is that they have spent 10,000 hours honing their skills to become top performers in their field. After looking at the statistics of world class athletes and the years of experience after when they arrived at the peaks of their careers, the numbers bear out this argument. According to Gladwell, this argument holds up well when applied to Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, etc as well.

This runs totally counter to those financial people who thrive based on who can use the least time to swing the biggest deals. Which leads to integrity, principles and controls being compromised. Which leads to the current economic and financial crisis but hey, that’s a story for another day.

You are not a quitter

When is it time to quit? How do you decide whether or not to soldier on at something? In my previous job at EY, I was presented with the option of joining my present company. It was a tough decision, and being slightly indecisive and wishy-washy, I agonized over the decision.

We will never know whether we have made the right decision. Some we know immediately after we make it, like ordering a dish and finding out it tastes bad. Some needs middle term retrospective inspection. Some are long term, by which point the consequences could already have affected your entire life and it is too late and most of your life is gone.

They say for a woman, the most important decision is who they marry, and for a man, it lies in choosing his career.

Well, choosing who I marry is probably the most important thing in my life too, but since I already know the answer, the part left unanswered is my career.

There have been occasions that I have never felt gladder that I was out of EY. Yet there have been times that I have regretted deeply. What’s right, what’s wrong, how do we know? The only way we can be sure is if somehow we are able to view our life and see how it pans out had we taken this or that alternative route, just like the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow.

A lot of people (like these) successful in their fields tried quitting, but ultimately gave it another shot and ended up excelling. How many people gave up before becoming excellent? How many people would not have been had they given up? Are people who quit really ‘quitters’? Is there an unproportionately negative response and stigma to the term ‘quitter’? Based on the connotations to the meaning of the word, should the word even exist? How many people have slugged on with mediocre results because of the fear of being labelled a quitter?

When and how do I know whether it is time for me to move on?

And the end goal is...?

They say near death experiences changes your life.

I’m getting to the age now (mid twenties) where it is getting more and more imperative to find meaning in my life. To find a passion, a direction in my life, that can inspire me. I want a career that I enjoy, that I am good at, and that is reasonably financially rewarding. I need to make my plans now. What will I be doing in 2 years? In three years? Where will I be? Why will I be there? These are all questions that every man has to answer. We cannot drift aimlessly around in life, not knowing that we want, not knowing where we want to be, coz we will end up with nothing in nowhere. For men who intend to get married or who are in stable and long term relationships, such certainty of knowledge is only fair to the other party. Knowing what their man’s plans are, knowing that they are aligned with hers, gives the woman a sense of security and provides her with an anchor and a perspective and context from which she can develop her own plans and expectations.

The problem is that I don’t have much certainty yet. A lot of people are in the same boat as me, but that is scant consolation. I need to know what is it I want, and make a focussed, concentrated beeline for it, and not waver and beat around the bush wasting time. That will ensure that everything I do is accumulative and leading to my end goal. But what is my end goal?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who has survived pancreatic cancer, had this to say in a commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005:
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

I need to listen to my heart and intuition, and drown out all other noise, dig deep, and find out what I really want. Then, I can assure my partner, and we can both plan and align our lives to ensure that at the end of the day, we want and are working towards the same goals. That will give us a sense of security and peace, and allow us to happily feel that sacrifices are worth it, as we see ourselves inching closer to that professed joint goal.

Picking your moments

Often times, there are parallels to succeeding in sports and succeeding in life.

When in sports, we have to be able to ‘read’ situations. Situations in this case here means simply more than reading what is going on on-court, being able to read what kind of offensive and defensive schemes the opponent is trying to pull on you, and being able to react. You have to be able to sense and fear the mindset of your opponent as well. Is he intimidated? Is he selfish? Does he have a big ego? Will he be easily goaded into a 1 on 1 game, which is detrimental to his team? Is he disciplined and patient? These things translate into real consequences, and are as important as any physical or technical skills he may possess.

But the really useful skill to possess is killer instinct. This separates the champions from the pretenders. When you face certain players and teams, and you start gaining an upper hand, you move in for the kill. You can sense and smell it. If you are leading, you don’t let up, don’t release the foot from the pedal and you don’t take it easier. You push harder, increase the score differential, and drive your scores up. This will squish the hope from your opponent, and persuade them to give up, because the going just got harder, and the journey to catch up just got that much harder. You don’t let your opponent hang around; you finish them off, step on their desire and mindset and make them not want to fight back. You want them to think that there is no chance and that they can’t be bothered to fight back.

Of course, in the real world, that is what businesses do. When you sense you are gaining an advantage on your opponent, when you feel that a certain law can be moulded to your advantage, you seize it, and you use it to differentiate yourself from the competition. You use it to squeeze them out of the marketplace.

You can also apply it to your individual work environment. If you think that you are on a roll, and that you have done some good work that you think might impress your manager, you should show it to him. I used to think this was blowing my own trumpet, but as I mature, I realize, how else is he supposed to know what I am up to? If I was a manager, I wouldn’t go up to each subordinate and ask him what he has done recently. I should know on a day to day basis what they do, but any initiative and new ideas they have or want to implement would be unknown to me. The onus is on them to bring to my attention their merits and achievements.

Hence if you feel that you have done some good work, go ahead and step up and show him. Demonstrate your capabilities, step on the pedal, and while his impression of you is improving, take advantage of that, and push some more. Don’t let up. Of course, it takes savvy to do this, as it is not just a matter of shoving your achievements down his throat. You have to know when to stop. But if done the right way, once you see an opening, seize it and imprint in your boss the fact that you are a capable person. You will be amazed at the positive difference it makes.

Minority Report

In the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise, he had the ability to foresee who would become criminals in the future, and hence he'd arrest them first. I stumbled across an interesting article with a list of NBA players who have been arrested and charged before. It is an amazingly big list, with drugs/domestic abuse/drunk driving/carrying a weapon the most common charges.

If all these statistics could be analyzed across society, we could theoretically and statistically determine who are high probability future criminals, and monitor them closely. The only drawback is that this would make ME also a target, being young, male, and a baller.

There is no way to really tell who would become a criminal. Circumstances are fluid and dynamic, and circumstances really do determine our actions and fate. So if we could control our circumstances, knowing that our morals remain constant, that'd be the best way of ensuring we are getting the outcome we want.

Gosh, that might not make much sense. I'm tired, time to go home!

As I've always said...

...the safest jobs in the world are the ones whereby you are actually making something.

Well, no, not really, because the safest professions are doctors and farmers. Regardless, people will still fall sick and people still need to eat. But besides that, I have long espoused the importance and usefulness of a practical job, that actually delivers something that one can touch and see and feel and smell etc.

That is why I have never had much respect for professions that dabble in the virtual and intangible, though quantifiable (even the quantifiability is suspect, as virtual figures that can't be physically verified can be manipulated and massaged to reflect something other than what is is). Key examples of such jobs are those in finance and banking, professional services, etc. As is expected, in an economic downturn, those are the first to go. When push comes to shove and people want to tighten their belts, the first jobs to go are those that aren't necessary and don't add value to the economy in any real sense. I am wholly unsurprised by such a turn of events, and the recent news and headlines about massive layouts have just confirmed my sentiments.

Being from the manufacturing industry, I am of course somewhat biased. But people still needs goods and products, albeit necessities and not luxuries, unless your product is something that is addictive. Highly debatable, in my case. Anyway, it is lamentable and a pity that some of the best people (yep, those in manufacturing) are the next in line to get the axe, if they haven't already gotten it. A key culprit is of course the lessening demand for luxury goods and products, given the harsh economic clime, but a strong and undeniable factor is definitely the rise of developing countries with an educated and cheap workforce (both skilled and mass unskilled) that can offer a cheaper cost base from where to operate, hence providing a competitive advantage that would be hard pressed to overcome in a developed country with much higher costs of living and where the rights/laws add additional costs of operating. It is sad that those in manufacturing, who really produce with their hands and whose work efforts can be tangibly seen, have to be laid off.

A side effect of the current economic crisis, and mind you, from all the figures I've seen and definitely from the very real impact that it has on my company, we are in a crisis, is the affirmation that the end is nigh for the out of control and insufficiently regulated finance and banking sector, putting a much overdue end to a period first started 20 years ago and defined by the jet settling and lavish lifestyle of the privileged top few which hardly translated into real earnings for the average mum and dad. Those who have put their money, hard earned savings, retirement funds, because they trusted the slick talking and smooth talking financial product salesmen, many of who have little understanding of their product except the commissions they stand to gain, and have their hopes so cruelly dashed, will have little to show after decades of slogging, and most likely will have to go through their retirement years much les gloriously than imagined. Of course, many of these people were betting, were ignorant, ill informed, or were greedy, and for these, there is not much to say. But to those who were ignorant, but who trusted the banking and financial institutions, because they had government backing or were too big to fail, this must have been a bitter lesson. Not to mention a blatant breach of trust.

To the many thousands around the world, the financial workers, the bankers, professional services people, who were riding the wave for the last 2o years, the bubble has come to an end. To everyone who dreamt of getting rich quick, of doing work that cannot be seen or touched, who thought that they could take a shortcut and bypass the factory workers, who could get by by manipulating numbers, taking advantage of people's desires/greed/ignorance/insecurities to fund their own lavish lifestyles, who thought they were cleverer than the rest, who stifled their own conscience to push financial products they barely understood, who flaunted their wealthy and lavish lifestyle, this is a time for reckoning. There really is no short cut to getting rich. Analyzing stuff, preventing risks, all that fancy shmancy stuff, has proven to be truly ineffective. What is the point of having analysts, ratings, risk managers, product managers, investment bankers, blah blah blah, when almost every such instrument has failed to prevent the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression? You'd expect, with the technologies at our disposal, we would have been able to spot/prevent/rectify this a mile off, instead of waiting til we are drowning in it. Had someone had more brains, more foresight, more balls, perhaps the damage would have been less. I do not have much sympathy for those who have greedily fed the vicious machine, encouraging and feeding it, thinking they'd be happy doing a 9 to 5, saying they work in a 'firm', wearing their sharp snazzy suits, marching around with their heels and briefcases, talking about clinching multimillion dollar deals, arrogantly describing themselves as traders/bankers/whatevers, who are addicted to the glamour of the corporate world, and who reject the honest work-with-their-hands types as lowr class denizens. Looking at the gazillions of commerce graduates, and especially with an eye towards the cocky and arrogant classmates I had back in uni, I can't help not feeling sorry for them. It'd be more correct of course to point out that not everyone working in those industries is like this, and that I'd be guilty of gross generalization by tarnishing everyone with the same brush, and risk my entire tirade being dismissed, hence I shall include that disclaimer.

If I sound bitter, yes I am. Perhaps it is the residual effect of feeling first hand the arrogance of such people, the constant overlooking of people who do not work in glamorous jobs, the second class treatment, the fact that people close to me have suffered from the activities of such people, and the feeling of injustice I feel for my co workers who put in a good hard day's work and yet are regarded as lower than and earn less than the cockroaches who have contributed to this crash. Life is not fair, and people say 'accept it and don't fight the system'.

If we really wanted to prevent ourselves from getting into another crisis in the future, really, we just need a few simple rules. (i) focus on manufacturing (ii) focus on delivering higher value added products/goods/services/propositions (iii) have stringent regulations (iv) reduce the insane executive payments to weed out the incompetent (everyone's greedy, let's just weed out the incompetent and greedy).

Back...! With[out] a vengeance.

Ah! After many months, I am back, to stake and reclaim my place as one of the world's foremost irregular bloggers. Having said that, I think I am edging away from blogging so rapidly that soon I may be able to shut this down for good. On the still-numerous occasions when I have something to say (noteworthiness of the said stuff is another matter entirely) I find it quite easy to brush it aside and continue living, whereas back a couple years ago I would have tried to post it asap.

Life is still on the regular, coz it's just been a few months, and nothing is gonna change THAT much. But there HAVE been changes, too much to describe in a post.

I probably wouldn't be posting for the next few days, there you go, on again, off again, because I am off to Singapore with some friends to do the OCBC Cycling Challenge. Finally, the race is here! We did not do much preparation, definitely not what is required for a competent participation in the event, but whatever light training we did should suffice in terms of getting us to the finish line.

Having wasted (omg, the final ominous signs are here, I am describing time spent blogging as wasted) 5 mins on the last few paras, I think it's time to check back out of this temporary online reprieve/pit stop of life and rejoin the main race, as I do still have a few errands to run before embarking on the trip down south.

Adios amigos.

Oh wait, just before I go, I would like to say, please take care and enjoy ur life and appreciate all those around you who love you and treat you good. Life is short, unfair and unpredictable, no matter how you try to control the controllables, sometimes it is the more powerful uncontrollables that really get you. Appreciate everyone and everything. Don't let the small stuff get in the way of the things that really matter.

An unexpected joy...

...came in the form of an unexpected pay increment today.

I was summoned to the Director's office, and handed a letter, and when I examined it, it was a 6% increment.

Quite unexpected, but quite pleasing.

I guess thats more money in the bank every month!

Definitely not complaining in this day and time.

GAMES!

Recently, I've been hearing shitloads from Prim about how his Nintendo WII, his XBOX and his PS3, and how much fun he has doing what he does. Its gotten me really amped up about buying a gaming console for myself too...but they cost RM1k! So I guess I should be sensible and wait..for...my...bonus.

Anyway all of which got me thinking about my gaming lineage. I got my first console, an Atari, when I was a kid, and quickly moved onto a...cannot remember what. Both were quite shortlived, and although offered lots of fun, they were nothing addictive. It was just revolutionary because it was a novelty. The most outstanding games I remember on these machines are the old Mario Brothers, where the stuff you could jump and hit with your head were "bricks", and the easy bad guys were flat mushroom like creatures who moved sideways and had squinty eyes, Bomberman, and, Contra, which was my fav game because I was really good at it. It was basically you commanding a Rambo like guy who collected weapons, health, and shot up all sorts of bad guys. Cool stuff. Played with my sister, who sucked at it, and I had to revenge and rescue her all the time.

And then my mum bought me the Super Nintendo. And a whole new world of gaming emerged, where I became a fanatic, and the first signs of my hyper competitiveness started to make itself known to the world. I quickly conquered and mastered Super Mario Brothers, to this day the BEST Mario game in the series, where I happily killed all of Bowser's' musically named offspring. Ludwig's Castle, Wendy's castle, the Star dimension, Yoshi, all these are happy memories indeed, and I happily spent hours and hours immersed in this universe. I became very attached to Yoshi and hated to 'abandon' him, which was occasionally necessary. Then I had NBA Jam, which got me started on the road to real life basketball fanatic. You know it's an insane arcade game when you have Ewing nailing threes as long as you time his release just right. Then there was StreetFighterTurbo, with the 12 'original' characters. I was the indisputable champ at this, and used every character to finish the game just to watch the ending. It was this game that first brought out my competitive streak, where I would stay up til dawn honing my skills just to beat the computer. Eventually, none of my real life friends could beat me in this game, and my cousin even almost got to trading blows with me. I didn't care how I won - as long as I won. Then there was Super Mario go Kart, where I obsessively, pursued the unrelenting singleminded focussed mission of setting and rewriting all the circuit records, and whenever someone else broke my record, I had to reclaim it. It was a mission to ensure that all the record lists were populated only by my name. Yeah, what a freak right? Then it was Mortal Kombat, where I relished doing the Fatality finishing move. And not to forget, the fantastic Double Dragon, which, occupied me and my cousin for hours and hours. Even my aunt got involved in it, to the point where she was begging us to accompany her to play.

Not to mention the computer games. Besides being a loyal NBA Live fan through the last 10 years, I also played Day Of The Tentacle, loved it, Indiana Jones, Worms, the 11th Hour, Time Crusader, and all sorts of other RPG games. There was Wrestlemania, X-treme Sports, etc. And the unforgettable, Fifa, World Cup, Actua Soccer...

Funnily enough I never liked all the shoot em up RPG games like Doom Wolfenstein Quake Duke Nukem etc... got a headache from watching it.

Today I stumbled upon an article in the age, on the 10 most influential games. Take a look, see if you can talk a walk down memory lane like me, and see where your favourites rank.

You know it's going to ...

...be a long day when you start off feeling slightly upset.

Ah well. That's life, some days the cookie just doesn't crumble your way and we have to be mature about things and move on. We can't all always expect everything to go our way, and really the secret to happiness is knowing when/what to give and take.

I never wished to break my hiatus from blogging with such a mundane post, but hey we've all gotta start somewhere. OK, I'll continue this later, in a little bit.

Fat Cats

The Australian Government is mulling over a plan to increase the tax rates for high net worth indivs to 50% of every dollar that make once their income passes the 1 mil threshold.

Now, waddaya think of that? Fancy, the Aussies coming up with a workable tax system! What a load of crap.

The reason for that is because they reckon that being the creme de la creme, we can rake a litle bit more off of them. Yup, agreed. But the 50% rate is going to deliver v marginal returns to society. Why? Because if a guy earning 2m can be paying the same tax rate as the guy earning 40k, then something is obviously not right. Obviously, someone is taking advantage of tax loopholes. So unless you scrutinize their returns and close those holes, they can still get away with it, even if you increase the tax rate to 80%. And if you issued a blanket tax that way, no one would have the incentive to try to get very rich, or to be as successful an entrepreneur as they might be inclined to be. If I am already pulling 900k, why should I strive to expand my business and increase my income to 1.2m, when the result of all that labour is that the Govt will take 50% of my marginal increase anyway?

In that case, the economy loses out on its potential, along with all the potential consumers and employees who might otherwise benefit.

- - -

If you look at the way Westerners, and Australians, manage their finances, you start to feel really good about yourself, and pat yourself on the back for the genetic advantage that you have; after all, it is a known fact that Asians are more prudent with their cash. Luckily for us, the Asian financial crisis and its subsequent reforms have buffetted us from the fallout this round. I reckon the West is in for a really hard landing, inc. in Australia. Their constant self delusions that they are insulated by being so far away is an illusion, a very dangerous fallacy. The only silver lining in this cloud is that it's a good time to invest in the Aus dollar.

- - -

I've always maintained that the best jobs are jobs where you actually perform a real exchange or either a product or a service. In the financial sector however, its an exchange and trading of a lot of hot air and virtual money. Thats not for me. It never could be. Really, when they run through their investment software and models, what are the assumptions, the business information, the data, they feed into such systems? There is an interesting article on precisely this. I reckon its a good wake up call. Its not just over optimistic; it is feeding a system an entirely wrong set of data and assumptions. My friend Rand has been hyping up his own simulation model that has supposedly been outperforming the market consistently for the last one year. Well, lets see how he fares these last and next few months. If it really works, I reckon he is a genius.
- - -

Wanna buy a home?

I don’t suppose anyone is really looking into the phenomenon of “30 being the new 20”. This basically means that people live with their parents well into their 20s and 30s in today’s era, compared to our parents’, where children move out in their 20s. A big part of the reason is the affordability of a new home now compared to our parents’ generation.

If one looks at the cost of a home now, a reasonable dream house is really priced out of the average consumer and the average Joe plumber wage earner’s means. When one pulls a couple k a month, and the cost of an entry level property is a couple hundred grand, ranging from 350 to 500k, the prospect of owning that home is so unreal that there is little real incentive for our yuppies to seriously cobble together a financial plan to try to reach for that home. Hence they choose to indulge in lavish short term lifestyles, figuring that a few hundred dollars splashed on a Kontiki trip or a luxurious spa treatment does not really dent their chances of owning that dream home down by the beach.

This post will not be debating on the virtues and the general spending habits of the 20 something age group, and definitely will not criticize the debt laden culture that so commonly inflicts those of this generation. As an aside, did you know that the average American carries 13 credit cards? What is the implication of that?

At any rate, I’ve been looking at homes here in KL, and it is still affordable to a certain extent, but definitely not for those who are earning an average salary. Over in Australia, where house prices have been fluctuating wildly, it seems that for an average couple starting out, trying to find a reasonable property in Melbourne and Sydney is quite an impossible task, unless one is prepared to stay at Werribee. Werribee! That’s a couple hours train ride from the CBD! What next? Will we be taking planes to work next on a daily basis, sometime in 50 years? Seems like there are no more affordable and reasonable housing left on the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney – and KL.

Imagine the social costs of housing affordability. We are seeing it already – fathers renting rooms closer to their workplaces to save the hour long drive to work and the hour long drive back home, in their bid to provide a bigger home for their children to play in. Heavy traffic jams, productivity being affected, time spent on the road instead of enhancing family welfare or contributing to the economy via their work, and people being more stressed out, having to sleep earlier and wake later…etc.

We really should address this issue. If I was in Government…

Perverts are everywhere

When one walks down the street here in KL, or in many other Asian or Middle Eastern countries, for that matter, he or she will be acutely and hyper aware of the many lustful, sinful and other less than pure glances and outright ogles from the men in such places at females who wear clothes that show a bit of skin.

Such females usually can be divided into 2 camps. Those who are ignorant and unaware of themselves being disrespectfully looked at, mentally undressed and whatnot and those who are aware/have been told etc but who insist upon it as it is their right and hence they should not curb their own wants since they do not suffer real harm or indignity. Aside from this fact, which I shall not debate, there is also a subtopic of whether or not the cultural, religious and societal norm of a place breeds the sexual health and nature of its men.

One would be tempted to think that in such places, where women are usually required to cover up, a bit of skin could well create some excitement due to the fact that these men are a bit backwards and the sight of something which they rarely get to see gets them to lose all sense of being civilized. However, this argument is sorely tested when one comes into contact with news reports and incidences of peeping toms and other perverts in Western countries, where it is the norm for the females to prance around in very revealing clothes, partly because of the safety and security they feel in wearing such things there, as the men are a bit more refined and refrain from outright ogling at bits of exposed female flesh.

Cutting costs with human lives

I was watching the movie The Towering Inferno the other day. It exposed me a side of construction and architecture that I was never really aware of up until then – how cost cutting, shoddy workmanship and ‘creative get-around’ methods are employed by builders when building properties, which are in essence, death traps.

Then I read about the fire at Bourke St. (Myers), which is the 2nd time in 2 months. It just makes me think that in their greed and quest for profits, all these developers putting people’s lives at risk just makes me sick. I feel almost sure that they employ vastly different standards of qualifying in building their own homes. My family being in the construction business as well, I am privy to some info on the safety of some of our homes today as well.

It is a common occurrence to replace high grade materials with lousier materials, or even different specs that were originally drawn up by architects. Architects also are under pressure to reduce costs while maintaining certain expensive features, such as attractive looks, hence safer but more expensive materials will surely be sacrificed. An example is our tarmac: although we are supposed to use high grade, high concentration tar with a certain pebble density, we are using something much cheaper. That’s why a section of road on our North South highway en route back from Penang to KL is especially slippery during heavy rains. It just makes you wonder 100 years from now, what will be the condition of some of our landmark properties.

Bike rage - the new rage

Cycling is one of the best and most enjoyable sports around. I love it. It’s fun, it is healthy exercise, it is environment friendly, it is not noisy, it is much cheaper than driving, and there are lots of instances of bonding with fellow riders, and you can talk to each other as you cycle. In short, it is really one of the best activities that we can engage in. Back when I was in Melbourne, I used to take the bike everywhere, if it was within a 20-30 min ride. Since returning to KL, I’ve been mostly transporting myself via my car. However, now that I have bought my bike, I do intend to make more use of it, and cycle to places within a 20 min bike ride radius, such as supper, breakfasts on weekends, The Curve, etc. It is very heartening and encouraging that The Curve has bike racks for people to lock their bikes to. Hence I can cycle 20-25 min there, have a workout, and cycle back again, which would give me both cardio and resistance. What a great idea!

However, we have to co-exist with other road users, namely cars and motorcyclists. In my opinion, the more dangerous ones are the motorcyclists. Long being the ones intimidated/bullied/picked on by cars, they are now no longer the last item on the road food chain, and hence have decided to take their frustration and newfound sense of superiority over the latest additions to the road chain – cyclists.

Other road users have to realize and understand and accept that cyclists are here to stay – and we are only growing to increase in numbers. The Malaysian government has to make our roads more bike-friendly, have more cycling lanes to accommodate cyclists, in our bid to be a world class city. Being world class does not merely mean having high concrete towers.

There is a new term coined for road rage against cyclists: bike-ism. And as this article shows, it can have dire and possibly fatal consequences too. There is a new an alarming trend of backlash against cyclists. Knowing how our drivers are here, the Government needs to do something to educate and ensure our drivers do not behave in dangerous ways towards cyclists. This is an opportunity to Malaysia to really take a lead in Asia and make a name for ourselves as being a pioneer here in being cyclist- friendly, and showing the path to an environmentally conscious nation.

Estrangement

It is my conjecture that kids don't leave parents. It is, on the contrary, parents who drive away kids.

Which kid emerges into the world doggedly determined to get the hell as far away from the parent as possible?

The thing is this. Kids actually want to be good kids. We want to be good sons and daughters. And we DO understand that when they restrict what we do, it is out of what they perceive as 'for our own good' and towards our betterment, and that it is out of love. That is why, when we want to do something they oppose, we are open to the idea of neogtiation and discussions. We don't mind sitting down and hearing their side of the story, and then trying to compromise or find a middle ground. But we must talk logically and calmly, we must be rational and make a case for what we are trying to do and why.

Likewise, they have to do the same. They don't want us running ahead yelling and hollering that we are going to do it we are going to go ahead with it so fuck you. They likewise must not do that. All I am asking for is that you rein in and control your emotions. Let us sit down and talk properly, like 2 mature adults. You state your case, I state my case, lets understand each other, compromise and find a middle ground. You don't want me emotionally yelling and bulldozing my way through, so why do you then go and do that? So if you want to do that, does that mean I can do likewise? All I am asking for is that you rein in your emotions, control your goddamn outrageous emotional outbursts, and talk rationally, calmly, composedly. I really hate it when women react emotionally and just lose it, and start blabbering. Some colleagues are like that as well, and it makes me want to slap them to shut them up and bring them back to their senses. There is absolutely zero point in getting carried away, crying and wailing and all that. I mean, can't you build your case? Must you resort to just issueing blanket emotional demands?

We mean well and want to be well. What you need to do is to sit down calmly and we can talk about this rationally. If you insist on approaching conflicts in that manner, then you will definitely have to deal with the consequences and ineffectiveness of such a solution. It is as if making a rational case is beyond them, and they just have to resort to some sort of emotional hysteria and psychosis to threaten the other person into submission.

And I just won't have it. I am not curbing my life and its freedoms for some silly unfounded emotional hysteria. Just because an accident on the road on a motorbike happened to someone close to you 30 years ago, does that mean that forever I am banned from being on the road on anything 2 wheeled? Do I really have to curb my life to that extent? Well, people die from all sorts of things everyday; should I then also refrain from exposing myself to all that? Get a grip, get a life, get some perspective, before you chase everyone else away.

Why are some kids so hell bent on migration or getting away from their country? It's to get away from their parent/s. Oftentimes, a parent is so tunnel visioned in using whatever means to manipulate their children into behaving in accordance to their wishes, that they totally lose sight of the fact that their children are indivs with their own opinions too, and by doing this, they are flatly forcing the child into a situation where they have to lie, or they just have to get away from the overbearing, dominant, controlling parent, who insists on having almost blanket access into every part of the child's life.

Sometimes, parents just have to learn to let go. By doing so, they are in effect, pulling their kids closer.

An exciting weekend

This last weekend was very exciting. I always crave to be out, in the outdoors, as much as possible. I really hate being cooped up in my office, stuck at my office job, chained to my desk, everyday playing with SAP. Everytime I'm at my desk, I look out the only window there is in the office, a small square slab of glass 10 feet high, where I can only see blue sky and bright sunshine. And everytime I see that, I gaze out wistfully, longing to be out there, amidst the woods, forests, rivers, streams. Well, last weekend, I got a major dose of that!

First of all, we went white water rafting, then we went climbing through some caves which opened out into the highway, then we showered at a natural mountain side spring, then we did a flying fox from 100 feet up out of the cave, and finished off with ghost stories around a campfire. The next day, I did several ropes based obstacle courses, which was carried out 20 metres up in the air, and involved a real leap of faith in the middle of the air. Then on the very next day, the 3 of us went offroads and again did a 6 hour cycling trek through the forests of Kiara, ending up at the BK Equestrian Club.

Thats how life should be lived!

Cycling again!

Ever since my very first BMX as a tiny tot of a boy, I have been an avid cyclist. After about 2 hours of cycling with the stabilizing wheels, I dismantled them, hopped on the bike, fell off maybe once or twice, dusted myself off, and resumed cycling, and have never looked back since. That led to a second and a third BMX bike, and then one day, I was gloriously presented with my very first MTB, a green 24” Montana with real Shimano shifters (18x) and V brakes. It came with real road-ready tyres, with threads that extended all the way to the sides of the tyres, making it possible to do daredevil turns at high speeds.

Well, with the BMX bikes, my repertoire was limited mainly to tricks and ‘joy’ cycling. Once I had the road-ready MTB though, I took to the roads. That led to my second bike, a 26” Blue MTB, with alloy wheels, and a slanted frame that allowed me to do climbs and attempt crazy slopes and hills, no longer afraid of bumping my nuts on the horizontal bar of my previous MTB. The alloy wheels proved lighter, did not rust, and the bike overall was lighter. Armed with such a machine, I began to (hey, why not make use of it right?) mix with the neighbourhood boys and we cycled in light forests, over gentle streams, carried our bikes over logs and pipes, and went on neighbourhood terror rides, and formed our own bicycle gang. I won’t elaborate on what we did as that outfit, coz some of it isn’t legal!

After a multi-year cycling hiatus, due to distractions, I popped over to Australia to further my studies. In first year, I bought myself a blue 26” MTB, a solid bike that was sturdy, strong but heavy, meant for light road cycling. Hence on, I engaged in only a very few cycling expeditions, some uni-organized, some with friends.

Since returning back here, it’s been one dreary working day after another. I look longingly out the window at work all the time, wanting to be out in the outdoors. So, instead of merely wishful longing, I actually bought myself another MTB, this time, a BH Diamond frame, with Shimano Deore 27 speed shifters, V brakes (disc ones are slightly unnecessary and costly at this point). He is called Bumblebee, because of his colours, after the Transformers character. I’ve been hitting the trails recently with my buddies, at Kiara Hills, and it has been really fun, addictive and wonderful. First of all, the experience is wonderful, there is thrill, spill, adrenaline, adventure, physical challenges and toughness galore, equal parts grit, mud, endurance, strength mental strength, sweat and blood. Second of all, it is good exercise, a healthy getaway from urban life, just me, my friends, my bike. And every inch you go, you have to earn it. There definitely ain’t no free ride. And the thing is, even if the first hour is very hard, we just have to be mentally strong, and fight on, and eventually, we’ll overcome it, and be glad we didn’t succumb. You’ll prolly encounter more cycling posts later.