Author: CheckW

The Metaverse and NFTs are concepts that I was originally very sceptical about. Just like ICOs and SPACs, I think that they are a bunch of scams pretending to fleece the man in the street. My views have changed a bit this week though.

I attended a SmartNation event on the Metaverse and NFTs which our FinTech Prof had introduced to us. The 1.5 hours of presentations were chock full of information that opened my eyes to future possibilities. It also helped me to conceptualize my smart contract project which was incidentally due this week. I will elaborate on what I came up with later.

Actually, the concept of the Metaverse has been around us for a long time already. The many video games we play over our lifetimes will, like reading a fiction novel, transport us to strange new worlds where we are immortal beings conquering monsters to achieve a goal. Countless hours were wasted as we pretend to be something we will never be in real life to get that adrenaline high.

The Japanese developed Cosplay to further extend gaming into the real world where we will dress up and hide under the disguise. This cloak of invincibility can let us act out our deepest fantasies. I remember a number of fancy dress events I attended over the years. A few were memorable ones where my colleagues didn’t even know that I attended and asked why I missed such a great party the following week. No one knew that I was at the D&D undercover and it felt liberating to totally immerse into my character.

Many other examples abound. The 2018 movie “Ready Player One” was based on a book written in 2011 about the idea of full immersion into an alternate reality as the real world was in a depressive state. The game Second Life started in 2003 with the same idea and there were many others like SimCity.

With tech advances, the Metaverse is now ready to be taken to a whole new level and its possibilities are limitless. There is scalability and the sky is the limit as multiple worlds like Loki’s Marvel Multiverse alternatives. Having split personalities in the virtual world will be the norm. I can be a Wizard avatar in one and a raving psychopath character killing kittens in another. Living in the real world will be so boring in the near future if you can do everything in the virtual dimension.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are another recent new asset craze that has griped the world by storm. We see looney prices being traded for non-existent objects that uses Blockchain to track ownership. As I read more, I begin to understand that they can evolve into many other uses we are only just beginning to discover.

The event I attended had a speaker who was young and very in tuned to the NFT world. He is helping others to find value in this space and imagining new and creative ways to leverage on this new phenomenon.

Anyone can create a unique NFT himself while the ownership is trackable on the Blockchain. Artists can create one of a kind work of art aka Beeple style and continue to receive commission/royalties everytime the ownership changes hand.

NFTs can become status symbols because of the uniqueness of ownership. You can be in an exclusive members only club where entry is only possible when you present your NFT membership card. It becomes a utility token with exclusivity rights, like early bird entry into NFT purchases before the public can get access.

Though we can be flooded with limitless NFTs, some may become much more valuable than the rest. Therein lies the magic. That this can happen makes the acquisition of rare ones even more exciting. Just rich nerds with their crypto riches can spurge on these one in a million NFTs that one one can have.

This leads me to my FinTech group project. How can I utilize Blockchain, Metaverse, Smart Contracts and NFTs to resolve a current process that is creating unneccessary bipartisan tension that has trust, transparency and fraud allegations? Can we have a solution that uses Tech to solve an age old problem?

I will try with my voting concept paper – how can we make it better with technology? Can there be a better way to do this? Can we maintain voter identity secrecy while making the process more transparent with almost zero risk of fraud? Is a fully trusted solution possible with Blockchain?

My proposal at the moment is basically a macro big picture concept and there may be finer details that needs to be iron out. We have available IT with Cloud Computing to address various parts of the process, to strengthen security and improve trunaround times. This will in turn make it extremely difficult for scammers to penetrate as the window of opportunity is tiny and results are in real time. We can have an election done within 24 hours using mobiles and virtual reality (VR) tools.

On the day of election, all elligible voters will be notified to immidiately log into a secured app that uses 3rd party verification to determine if they are who they are. This can be in the form of Google Authenticator, AI/Facial recognition or a SingPass equivalent.

Once that step is done, a unique individual NFT is auto generated for the individual. This NFT linking to the person is recorded in a private blockchain ledger run by a trusted 3rd party eg. the voting commission. This step is 2 fold: (1) to mask the identity of the voter as voting is secret, (2) to ensure that only authorized individuals can past this first test.

But we go one step further using NFTs. The unique NFT is now uses as a utility token for the voter to enter into a Metaverse environment of virtual polling stations. Only a verified NFT can trigger an avatar that will allow the individual to vote.

Once the vote is cast, the info will be recorded into another blockchain which has a public ledger of smart contracts linking the NFT to the vote. A real person has therefore voted. This blockchain will be subdivided by location/township and the results (votes for candidate A or B) will be tabulated in real time.

This creates another layer of identity masking to protect the voter. It also provide the greatest level of public transparency as anyone can see the results in real time. The risk of fraud is zero as every individual voter is using his own mobile to complete the initial step and a VR tool to vote.

Millions of voters will have only have a 24 hours window to vote as the process has been greatly simplified and user friendly. The results will be instantaneous and real time. The Public Blockchain ledger is accessible for all to see. No one can have the ability to alter or influence the votes as it is encoded and forward building.

Workable? Some fine tuning needed – how to provide enough VR sets for voting? Maybe dumb it down to a gaming screen on a PC or mobile? It is now harder to hack as there are at least 3 independent Factor Authentication (3FA) that combined NFTs with the Metaverse. My presentation will be on Wed. Let’s see how it goes 🙂

It has been exactly 2 years ago in Mar 2020 that we started to shut down because of Covid.

It will be no April fool’s joke on 01 Apr that our country is finally telling the world that we are reopening for business and pleasure/vacation now! With a pre-flight negative test result, a totally vaccinated visitor can come to S’pore without quarantine requirements anymore.

Last week, further restrictions on easing were announced. 10 people will be allowed to gather for meals outside instead of 5. Mass gatherings for events will start to happen and masks need not be worn outdoors anymore. Some sense of normalcy is finally coming back after more than 24 months of lockdown limbo.

It seems just like yesterday in Mar 2020 when we were wondering what the Covid situation will develop into. I had started to wear a mask outside at the wet markets and some friends thought that I was being overly cautious. Mask prices shot up and I had to scramble to buy a box at $25. It is now back to less than $3 and even given out free if you buy a certain amount at the supermarket.

We know much more about the virus now. Vaccines came almost a year in Jan 2021 later. Most of us are well into our booster/3rd shot by now. Test kits are also easier to buy and use nowadays. Compulsory quarantines for all initially when you return to S’pore. You are even allowed to isolate at home now if you tested positive and it’s just for a few days.

We went through the alphabet for the virus variants, each became scarier than the previous one. Just when it seems that we have overcome Alpha, Beta came along. Gamma was thought to be less severe, then Delta came for the encore which really smacked the world upside down with its deadliness. We could literally see the Delta waves sweeping across the world as deaths piled up everywhere.

Everyone was scrambling to roll out the vaccinations even as the anti-vax voice came out in strong resistance. There were heated debates of both sides trying to call out the other. Are you for science or against it? Is there a long term effect? Too many opinions and not enough data history to show the effectiveness of the vaccines. Do you want to roll the dice and take a chance, or do you just want to improve your odds to survive the next mutation with the shot?

Omicron was the last to arrive late in 2021. All of us were surprised at how mild it was, given that it was 7 times more contagious than Delta. With version 2 BA2, it was spreading even faster. By now, we now have seen some relatives or immediate family members getting Omicron. There isn’t a stigma anymore and one just needs to isolate at home for a couple of days until the contagious period is over.

Getting used to ever-changing situations kept us on our toes and isolated at home most of the time. Over time, we adapted and trained to stay and work from home while trying to keep fit. Nightlife means watching Netflix and sleeping by 11 pm. Hopefully, Mother Gaia had a chance to repair herself during this time as travel was minimized. But evidence on Climate Change says otherwise.

Just as we thought we would get out of this mess, mankind has a way to maintain the tension. Putin decided to start a war. Tightening supply chains via sanctions will cause stagflation worries in the coming months. It is like getting out of the kettle into the fire… 1 month into the invasion and the fighting continues.

I like to remain optimistic that we are at the tail end of Covid, that the virus has mutated into a milder form like the flu in order to survive. Hence we should not be afraid that a newer and deadlier variant might emerge anytime soon.

The western world is trying to drag things out for Putin. The longer he remains in this no-win invasion of Ukraine, his resources will be depleted. Even as he might have miscalculated, this does not mean that he may not do something crazy as he gets more desperate. Hopefully, sane minds will prevail and he might find a graceful exit out of the mess he created.

I am into the final leg of my 3 month NUS FinTechSG course by the School of Computing. The first module was relatively easy with Design Thinking. I struggled badly with module 2 as a non-IT person trying to learn 3 programming languages within weeks – HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Then I jumped off a cliff trying to learn DevOps front, middle to back end integration. There were projects that I struggled with and had to seek help. But at the same time, it was refreshing to deep dive into new knowledge and concepts which I might not have been able to do on my own without the push from a structured course program.

The final module is the one that attracted me to this course originally. We will get to know how Algo-Trading works and learn how Smart Contracts are created. They will introduce me to practical tools I can hopefully use to enhance my investment strategies and better understand blockchain technology.

Finally, the course will also help us network into the FinTech space via e-speed dating interview sessions. Some of the fintech companies looking for people will present job opportunities to us. We will then connect if both sides are interested to explore further.

My goal over the last few years was to pivot my banking experience into a consultancy career. I now hope to do another pivot into the FinTech space based on the knowledge I have picked up in recent years via the courses I had completed. This will make me stay relevant in the fast-changing world as I embark on my next halftime journey. Where this will lead me, I do not know. I just am certain that I need to proactively plan ahead because if I do not plan, I will plan to fail.

It has been more than 3 weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine. Where are we now and what is the long end game objectives of all parties? Multiple discussions had been waged on how it is developing and where is this going from here as we try to filter out the noise.

Russia is finding that it is getting harder to conquer a country as large as Ukraine. The citizens’ resistance is much stronger than previously thought. Putin had fired the intelligence officials who told him that this invasion was a walk in the park and its people will welcome the victorious forces. Having EU and US supplying an almost unlimited weapons supply line, especially the anti-aircraft Stinger missiles and anti-tank Javelins, has made a conventional war extremely difficult for Putin.

It only takes a small band of resistance fighters armed with these weapons to stop a 42 kilometres convoy of tanks in its tracks. Fighter jets get shot down from the sky even as they try to aim for aerial superiority. The only way is to apply brute force via shoot and forget missiles. This was what the US did for Iraq to try to flatten a city and reduce the morale of its inhabitants.

The latest price estimates are that the invasion is costing Russia $15 billion per day. With half of its $600+ billion reserves being locked and sanctioned at the moment, it means that money could run out within 20 days (300/15). And we are already into the 3rd week now.

The economic sanctions on Russia will be starting to hurt now. Biden is increasing his rhetoric to poke the Russian bear by calling him names, a skill of his predecessor. The longer the war goes without a decisive victory, the higher the probability that Putin will have to stop the invasion engagement, so the thinking goes. An early May date is perhaps the longest that Putin can last, according to the military experts.

So it is in the interest of the Western world to prolong this situation until the invader runs out of ammunition to fight on. But this could make Putin even more desperate for a win and cyberwarfare, chemical and nuclear weapons may be considered fair game by then.

Everyone seems to be supplying their expiring weapons to Ukraine. The biggest winners are going to be the American military manufacturers because there will be new record orders for 2022 to replenish their stock inventory. Every European country is finally going to increase their defense budget now, something that the orange one was complaining about EU not putting in its fair share a few years back.

Interesting fact: The Russian are now accusing America of having Bio-Labs in Ukraine that may be producing bio-hazard weapons like anthrax. The US is denying it although someone testified in congress that they indeed do have labs to collect virus samples there. Strange that this is the same charge the US placed on China for Covid the last time. A ironic pot calling the kettle black situation?

While the US is rallying the world against the invader, one should not forget that America had also done similar “invasions” previously – Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Libya etc. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is fundamentally wrong but the accusers cannot claim that their hands are clean too.

We are starting to see double standards being applied everywhere and this war has stirred up the distrust we have on news media which usually tell only one side of the story most of the time. There are multiple layers to every situation and like an onion, we need to peel off the layers to try to dive deeper to discover the truth for ourselves and make up our own minds based on further research.

I wrote about the end game a few weeks ago and what is the objective of invading Ukriance. Could Putin and Xi be trying to get out of the US controlled SWIFT payment systems as a longer term goal? SWIFT was always America’s financial “gun pointed at the head” threat everytime a country is “disobedient” to the wishes of the US.

Russia might accept RMB/CNY as payment for their sale of oil to China from now on. Commodities will stop being priced only in USD going forward, breaking the SWIFT grip on the balls of every country. Even the oil rich Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia is thinking of accepting RMB soon.

It is starting to happen for India too, based on a Financial Times article today. Russia is one of their top trading partners and they cannot just stop trading suddenly with them without having an adversed economic impact on their economy. They are exploring having a payment system using INR for their deals with Russia now.

The world now can have their reserves in RMB or INR in the future and this will diminish our reliance on the almighty USD. The Pandora box had been opened by the Ukrainian war.

Covid has been sidelined by Ukraine news recently even as countries relaxed restrictions while Omicron surges are still happening. South Korea just hit a new high of 600+k daily cases 2 days in a row. Hong Kong is into fire fighting mode now. Even China is not spared.

If we look at the positive cases now, the new Omicron variant BA2 is taking over as the main culprit. It is 50 to 75% of the new cases now. Are we seeing a worrying trend ahead? Will we see new mutations in the horizon or is the virus evolving into a non-lethal strain eventually and becoming endemic like the annual flu strains?

An interesting thing happened to me last week. I was betting that China stocks may have bottomed out after the horrified slow death caused by the authorities breaking up the company with fines and sanctions. I decided to invest my remaining SRS funds into a number of China focused mutual funds but had to suffer more melt down into early this week. Until a sudden announcement from the Chinese agency that they are done with the penalties caused a big China market rally into Friday. What a ride in these crazy times…

Nickel prices shot up like crazy in a matter of days in the global markets. It created a firestorm of panic and margin calls which we have not seen before. This is an interesting and developing story that has many different levels and implications.

Some background first. Nickel prices had been climbing up to all-time highs of $25k recently. The global supply chain had been slowly trying to unblock itself after 2 years of Covid lockdowns and disruptions. Raw material prices have been rising.

Nickel is mainly used as an ingredient for producing stainless steel. But the upcoming importance of EV cars means that the demand for their lithium-ion batteries will also require more of it as a component.

The Ukraine situation with the invading Russian forces pretty much created a super short squeeze in the futures markets. Nickel surged to 100k, a 4x increase within a day of trading. This had created a huge overnight margin call situation as positions are MTM (Marked to Market) on a daily basis.

Russia is one of the top countries that supply Nickel. As the world implements sanctions on the country for the invasion of Ukraine, almost 20% of the global supply vanished overnight. Nothing can move in or out of Russia as long as the restrictions are in place.

The LME had to suspend trading on Tues and even started to cancel some trades in order to try to stabilize the situation. This was an unprecedented move that could have long term repercussions on how commodity futures will be traded in the long run. The futures exchange remains closed for the rest of the week as financial institutions try to sort out the mess and address the overdue margin calls that can go into the hundreds of millions.

Who are the players that are caught on the wrong side of the trade and why do they have large short futures positions? Surprisingly, they are the major Nickel producers of the world. The futures market acts as an efficient hedging tool for miners as it helps them to navigate volatile price swings. It provides an ability to better forecast and financially plan production schedules.

By selling the contracts regularly, they offset against the nickel that they will mine from the earth. This helps them to calculate a good estimate of production cost. For example, they may sell a June futures contract for delivery for that month and eventually sell the physical mineral in June to a buyer. This forward selling effectively helps them to hedge their risk exposure from now to that month.

While this sounds all good and logical on paper, there is a basic timing risk that the producers have to bear. In the futures exchange, one has to place funds upfront as collateral before one can take a position. The required margins are different for various types of contracts and there is a maintenance margin process that has to be followed strictly.

Future exchanges follow a MTM (Mark to Market) procedure where the daily closing price of the instrument is used to calculate against all outstanding positions of its members. If the difference is a loss, they will have to provide additional funds to cover the margin shortfall. If it is a profit, they can withdraw the excess funds accordingly. This usually has to be done by the next day in order for its members to maintain the integrity of the exchange and protect it from unnecessary risk. All members effectively guarantee that the exchange will not fail.

In the Nickel situation this week, the margin calls posted were too large that financial institutions had to scramble for funds. Their end clients may also not be able to have that much liquid funds to post in time. Some had asked LME for more time given the extraordinary intraday price action.

If the exchange declares a default, this may trigger a chain reaction where the banks can foreclose the client’s positions. In normal times, this may be an acceptable action plan. But in this case, there was a large China mining company plus many others having these short futures positions.

This could trigger off a domino effect that can immediately bankrupt many healthy mining companies. This in turn will also cause future physical deliveries to fail. Prices will then likely shoot higher and it will snowball into a total shitshow. Hence LME had to take the unprecedented step to give the banks more time to top up margins and even allow the unwinding of some of the positions.

This episode also reminded me of the oil hedging strategy of Singapore Airlines that resulted in more than a billion-dollar of losses during Covid. As a prudent strategy, they had a plan to buy oil futures to hedge against their jet fuel requirements. Using financial forecasting, they will project outwards to 12, 18 or even 24 months to map out their likely jet fuel requirements. They would then use futures to buy a strip of contracts for around 25 to 50% of their forecasted needs on a periodic basis.

Because of Covid, their financial forecast planning went terribly wrong. Demand for flights went to almost zero as countries lockdown to stop the virus. All of SQ’s partial hedges became meaningless as there is no need for them anymore. The futures contracts became outright speculative bets on rising oil prices.

But demand for oil during Covid had also dropped like a brick too. It even dropped to negative at one time! This double whammy of being caught with their pants down and having lower oil prices resulted in big MTM losses for their long positions.

It was also compounded by the fact that the exposures were hedged out to many months into the future which became large periodic negative outflows that suck out precious liquidity/capital. They had to raise billions of bonds just to stay afloat. Besides revenue falling off a cliff, this hedging strategy also ate a large chunk of it too.

The Ukraine situation is almost 3 weeks now and everyone seems to expect it to get worse. Putin doesn’t seem to want to stop until the country surrenders. The Ukrainian people vowed to have a bitter fight till the end to defend their country. Do we see a stalemate with more bloodshed coming?

Talks are getting nowhere and the longer this drags out, the more fatalities and destruction will happen. Let’s hope that sensibility will eventually prevail and that everyone can de-escalate the violence in this no-win war.

It has been a tense week as the world watched in horror at the invasion as it advanced in real-time. It is like a sickening movie that is unravelling where no one knows what the ending will be like.

The online media has been bombarded with images and stories about how the Ukraine war waged by Russia is evolving. Sites like LinkedIn have heartwarming writeups of ordinary people facing their bleak situations of being personally caught up in this one-sided war between a bully and a smaller country fighting for its survival.

The world watched and debated on how it can help to stop this senseless war. No country wants to send in troops as it could trigger an escalation of the war. Even as stronger sanctions have been implemented, it will take time for them to filter down for their effects to be felt by the aggressor.

Real-time updates provided us with a glimpse of the bravery of the Ukrainian people as we witness the helplessness of the vulnerable children and women who are exposed to a situation beyond their control. Families are torn apart as the men are to remain to defend the cities while the rest of the family heads for safety in a neighbouring country as war refugees.

It is frightening for people who have never held a gun before in their lives to now volunteer to jump into a battle operation to defend the cities. Potentially, they have to kill an enemy or be killed. The call for overseas Ukrainians to return home to defend the motherland has also resulted in at least 500,000 going back to the country.

Even as Russia threatens a heightened nuclear alert, many still believe that this option will not and cannot happen as it will be truly MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). What can unfold next even as Russian troops are now encircling each Ukraine city? They are slowly tightening their grip after days of bombardment.

A new war dimension is starting to rear its ugly head… The new pillar of Cyber Warfare will likely be escalating in the coming days and weeks. It is a relatively effective recent way of inflicting maximum pain via a small and superior number of individuals. Russia, China and North Korea have been at the forefront of this recent threat to steal data, create chaos and even ransomware for years.

Apparently, Ukraine is one of the top places where there is a lot of cyber talent in Europe for tech companies (eg. Grammarly HQ is there). Now there is a global call to arms to use Cyber Warfare to fight against Russia. Ukraine is uniquely positioned to execute this defence strategy against the enemy. Even the famous hacking group Anonymous had recently declared war on the invader.

Instead of heading towards nuclear warheads, this may be a new stepping stone to higher escalation before we go thermonuclear. Russia has been training for this for years. Examples include elections meddling in Brexit and Trump’s 2016 elections. Shutting down legacy computer systems to cripple national infrastructure and stealing from crypto wallets are other possible vectors of attack.

We have already seen Russian bots do DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks on Ukrainian systems to jam up the information highway. Elon Musk and StarLink to the rescue and internet access is maintained! It will be insightful to see how the invaded country will fight back via Cyber Warfare tactics.

What is Putin’s end game? Everyone thought that it was going to be the Crimea annexation all over again for the 2 new regions. But he now seemed determined to capture the whole country, city by city. Is that the main end game? Another theory had surfaced in the past few days which is worthy of consideration.

It concerns the SWIFT system that banks have used for many years to allow the transaction of funds across the world. It is mainly for the movement of USD and major currencies. America had been using this as a threat to cut a country off from international finance to choke its economy. This option has now been activated against Russia this week.

China and Russia have been planning for years on a strategy to neutralize this threat which can severely impact their economies. What if Russia intentionally wants to be kicked out of this system so that it can implement an alternative to SWIFT? It now has a strong ally in China (the parties have recently established Renminbi (RMB) swaps lines against the Russian Rouble (RUB)).

As a top oil producer, Russia can now force all the buyers of its oil to pay in RMB instead. This will decouple oil from only being priced in USD internationally and break away from the SWIFT financial handcuff. China also wants its currency to become more acceptable globally. They have enough of buying US Treasuries to support America’s deficit. It may seem to be a bit farfetched but anything is possible in these times.

Once the SWIFT sanctions were announced this week, the immediate beneficiary was cryptos. In order to move funds out quickly before all the financial pipelines were shut, cryptos were a quick alternative. Prices surged in the next 48 hours as a mad scramble to head for the exits followed.

Suddenly, Covid news has been sidelined for the last 2 weeks. We hardly hear much of this topic now, even as Asian countries are still waiting for peak Omicron to happen. HK and South Korea are currently suffering from record high positive cases as the contagious variant overwhelms their medical facilities.

S’pore is also in the same boat but a higher vaccination rate has limited the fatality count. Most do have mild symptoms and recover well. We have already seen at least 10 cases within our immediate family and none needed serious hospitalization treatment. It is highly likely that all of us will get it eventually. A recent report suggests that as many as 43% of Americans may already have been infected by Omicron.

The continued meltdown of asset classes, except for oil and gold, continues as uncertainties push many to position for a risk-off strategy. This is going to be a very long March month where every day is full of exciting turns and twists of events. Many are already invested in the markets. The question is do you average down, cut losses or do nothing? It is a very tough call now.

And the orange one called Putin a genius this week. It made me want to understand more and dig deeper into the background as I listen to numerous Clubhouse chats and read about the arguments from all sides.

There are really 2 sides to every story and depending on how it is framed, the good and bad guys’ roles can be interchanged quite easily. For example, if a country is trying to overtake another, it is called an invasion. If the US does the same, it is called a liberation exercise. Same action, different meanings.

Let’s look at the Western countries’ points of view first. Ukraine has just been attacked by a hostile opponent whom Biden had been warning for days that the invasion was imminent. Russian troops have been surrounding the country and building up to more than 150k troops while denying that they were planning to attack.

Putin cleared all doubts by declaring on Thursday that he will defend the 2 breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukraine’s suppression of the separatist states as they were seeking Russia’s help. Its soldiers were then mobilized to cross the shared borders and move into the country from all sides.

This seems to be the biggest invasion since WWII which many see as being unprovoked and the arguments of freeing the states from a Nazified regime sounded hollow as the Ukraine president is Jewish!

Putin is basically opportunistic and had been patiently bidding his time and getting ready for this week’s invasion of Ukraine. His argument for the attack is relatively consistent over the last few weeks.

When the Russian federation collapsed in the early 1990s, many new countries next to the EU were granted independence. According to Putin, there was an agreement to ensure that these countries stay neutral and act as a buffer between NATO and Russia. This seemed to have been broken as a number had successfully applied and joined NATO.

With its joined defence pact, NATO countries are now bordering Russia and threatening them right in front of their doorsteps. Putin liken it to the Cuba missile crisis where the threat was just in front of the US. Russia did also tried to join NATO in the 1990s but was refused as a legacy of the cold war then. Now it is faced with an encroaching and expanding NATO bloc next to it.

Its basic demand was that Ukraine stays neutral and stop its application to join NATO. Biden had flatly said that this cannot be done as it is up to each country to decide. That was perhaps the last straw for Putin and made him even more determined to right this wrong to the motherland.

Russia has been slowly biding its time since the 2014 Crimea annexation where they believed that the democratically elected pro-Russian president was wrongly ousted by the demonstrations that the Western world had supported in 2013.

Since then the Russian central bank has slowly built up its reserves to at least $600+ billion and made the world more dependent on Russian oil exports. Oil has now reached highs of $100 even as Russia becomes the 3rd biggest exporter of oil in the world. Europe is ever more dependent on these imports into winter and a number of gas pipelines from Russia to Europe are also located in Ukraine.

Putin has been boldened with past victories in Georgia and Crimea with hardly any serious repercussions. There may have been sanctions before but Russia had survived them all. He had probably calculated his risk/reward ratio and decided that this is as good a window as any for action to reclaim the motherland. He has figured out that NATO and the US are likely not to have the nerve to want to send troops over to escalate the situation and bring on WWIII.

It’s a game of chicken and he thinks that NATO has blinked already, even as Putin warned of retaliation and hints about going nuclear if any country tries to come into Ukraine. They have already waged a Cyber Warfare attack on the country to try to cripple its infrastructure.

The Western world seems to be adopting a wait and see attitude to determine if the first round of sanctions are working in the next 30 days! Oil-related sanctions have also been dropped as that might cause prices to go even higher. With the recent rise of cryptocurrencies, the threat of restricting the US SWIFT system for payments for Russia is no more as big an impact as before.

As of now, we are not sure of Putin’s ultimate end game yet. Is it to topple the existing Ukrainian government and take over the whole country? Or just to do a quick and sharp attack to capture and secure the 2 breakaway regions like what they did in Crimea?

The financial markets had fluctuated wildly over the last few days, dropping like a brick initially and then staging a big rally last night. It seems to think that this may be a short invasion exercise for Russia to aggressively stamp its disapproval of the situation to let the world know its side of the story.

America has no appetite for another new war after the recent Afghanistan withdrawal. It can only supply more weapons and aid to Ukraine. NATO is powerless to intervene as it is not part of the pact yet.

Russia meanwhile had already sought support from China a few weeks ago and China is watching carefully as this may be a template for its Taiwan problem too. Common enemies of the free world have ganged up. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

A new world order is developing and the old norm of policy strategizing may not be applicable anymore.

Just when the Western world is showing a drop in cases and more relaxation of restrictions, Omicron hit Asia like a ton of bricks. The delayed wave swept over most Asian countries in a matter of days as new records were made every day.

Authorities have been warning about this for weeks and we had seen it hammering Europe and America since late Dec as new positive cases surged to new highs never seen before over the last 2 years of the Covid nightmare. Thankfully, we had the vaccine rollout for more than a year now and death rates are much lower than in 2020.

The last 24 months of paranoia that had seized everyone have conditioned us to panic if we see rising trends. Media news on hospitalizations and filled to capacity ICU wards have kept many of us locked in our rooms for days on end trying to weather the next variant.

It still came as a surprise and we were shocked at how fast the cases were doubling within days this week. Omicron is 7 times more contagious than Delta but thankfully it exhibits mild symptoms and does not attack the lungs that much. Vaccination protection had resulted in fewer hospitalizations for those fully vaccinated together with a booster. Sadly, a majority of hospitalizations and deaths are still concentrated on the unvaccinated.

The anti-vaxxers rally cry has now changed to become a fight against compulsory vaccine mandates and the right to choose. That contracting the virus will provide antibodies the natural way and give future immunity to new strains. My body, my choice. Well, I guess their wish will now be fulfilled. Governments are starting to relax the restrictions and the vaccine mandates have been stopped in court. They now have a right to choose possible death over science/facts. The authorities are probably tired of trying to convince the remaining hardcore minority to get the vaccine and decided that it’s best to leave them alone.

The worrying thing is that history had shown that this may not be a wise move. The 1918 pandemic showed that after 2 years, they had let their guard down and relaxed restrictions. That subsequently resulted in a new surge into the 3rd year. Omicron variant 2 (Ba2) is also starting to show itself in countries like Denmark and rising fast to overtake the original Omicron mutation.

Many in the world also do not have access to the vaccines yet, so there is a high probability that further mutations can still occur to produce a new variant. The hope is that Covid is evolving to a milder strain like Omicron over time as the virus strive to survive and perpetuate itself like the common flu. Hence we will all be expected to get it eventually as natural herd immunity kicks in. Meanwhile, with modern science and vaccines, we can lessen the evolutionary impact of the virus and transit from pandemic to endemic status.

The signs of the new Omicron wave came fast to us on a personal level. It started in late Dec with our experience of an overseas infection from my son as he headed back to S’pore. Then we had the Chinese New Year holidays and within 2 weeks, the virus came fast and furious to our communities.

My wife’s relative caught it and then it was passed within the household to an elderly person who had to be sent to the designated facility as she is above 80 years old as per required Covid protocols. Within a week, another member of the household had it.

Over the last weekend, my brother-in-law tested positive and isolated himself at home as his symptoms were mild. Then on Wed, my sis called me with the news that my mum has it. She is 88 this year and we panicked initially as we were at a loss on what we had to do.

By now, the hospitals are overwhelmed with cases and new directives had to be implemented to lessen the flood of patients utilizing the medical resources. We scrambled to get the latest updates online on what to do next. It directed her age group to see a doctor asap, do a PCR test and then obtain further instructions after that. Meanwhile, she was allowed to quarantine at home.

The PCR SMS results came back positive the next morning and her details plus those in the same household had to be shared with the central authorities tracking Covid. A Health Risk Notice was subsequently issued to my dad who was living in the same household.

Due to the surge in cases (from 1k to 19k), my mum was eventually allowed to continue her quarantine at home. Just a few days before, my wife’s elderly aunt was sent to the hospital for observation for a few days before being moved to the S’pore Expo to sit out her extended isolation requirement. The regulations are becoming dynamic as it changes every day. It is tough on the authorities as they have to think and react on their toes.

Just look at HK now. Omicron is really testing their zero Covid plan now. As they had to align themselves to the same strategy as the motherland, the rapid spread of the virus is stressing the medical resources to the max. They never had a full lockdown before and it seems that they may now have to do so. Xi had also ordered Carrie Lam to stop it at all cost. Since China had locked down and tested cities with millions of residents, HK will do the same soon to test the whole 7.5 million population.

Meanwhile, my student days continue. My Fintech course is pushing me deeper into more technical stuff this week. I need to do a crash course on the JavaScript programming language, figure out how to do a project on displaying cards using Bootstrap, understand how to use Git, Github and React.

This is a bit steep for a non-IT marketing person like me and I am starting to get regular nightmares trying to figure out how to cramp all this new knowledge into my uncle brain in such a short time. The trainer even cautioned that it takes lots of practice and time to learn to program. And we have only weeks to learn how to link the front, middle and back end together using so many tools. Positive stress is good as I keep telling myself…

So much talk of Russia invading Ukraine for the whole week has been keeping markets on their toes. Even the speech of the Fed’s more aggressive tightening had been sidelined. The slow recovery of the US equities on the back of stronger financial results had just been eroded last night when the call was made to warn Americans to leave Ukraine asap.

While the US is regularly implying that Russia may invade Ukraine at any time, Russia had accused them of fear-mongering. It does not help that Russia has already amassed more than 100k troops on their borders next to Ukraine and doing military exercises. The US has also been sending troops and threatening more sanctions over the last several days.

So what gives? Ukraine has been on the news radar for many years, especially since 2014 when Russia took over and annexed Crimea. Then there was also the famous Trump call to the Ukraine president in 2019 to investigate his rival’s son Hunter Biden. It was also the place where the horrible Chornobyl nuclear accident happened in the 1980s. We should also never forget the accidental shooting down of the MH17 passenger aircraft in 2014 at the height of the last conflict.

For a country that is economically weak and suffering from mass corruption, it had only started to achieve its short independence in 1991 after being part of Russia for hundreds of years. It is now caught between the US/NATO and Russian superpowers trying to gain an advantage because of its strategic location. Not a very envious situation the country finds itself to be in.

There is always 2 sides to the story on how the current escalation evolved. From the Western media, it is about Putin’s nationalistic aggression and wanting to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Democracy is at stake and the world should confront the bully, even though he had already taken over and swallowed up Crimea 8 years ago.

From the Russian side, it is about protecting its borders and exercising its sovereign rights. The Ukraine people’s revolt to kick out a democratically elected president who wanted to shut down the NATO application and pivot to Russia was seen as a slap in the face to the motherland. It was suspected that the US was supporting the protestors to topple the government covertly — sounds like HK 2019 riots…

Ukraine traditionally had a split identity. Half its people (mainly the western side geographically) supported a move towards establishing stronger ties with Europe. The Eastern side is more pro-Russia, having traditionally aligned themselves economically and culturally with them.

It is really hard to say which side has a stronger case but it has now become a “who will blink first” situation. Oil prices are approaching $100 soon and financial markets are jittery into the weekend as any false move could trigger big unintended consequences.

Coincidentally, I am also now reading a book on Hong Kong’s history called The Gate to China by Michael Sheridan. It chronicles the period of time from the 1960s to the 1997 British handover to the 2019 riots till now. It has provided me with a greater understanding of the mindset of China. How it was taking back the country after more than 154 years of British rule when the Opium war shamed China into giving up HK.

Universal suffrage is a concept that the people of HK were trying to achieve, to have individual voting rights. The question to be asked should be – can you ask for something you never had? The British never gave it to HK and Patten planted the idea to the people just before the 1997 handover. A socialist country like China (“Socialism with Chinese characteristics”) can never ever open the pandora box to Western democratic norms to HK.

So it was a failed exercise before it began for the protestors. The 2019 riots were the last straw for the motherland. HK had bitten the hand that fed it and made it successful for the last 40 years as a gateway to China. There were rumours that external Western forces may also have a hand in helping to whip up the rage and violence.

Halfway through the promised 50 years of “one country, two systems” from 1997 to 2020, China has now decided to take back control. Under the guise of Covid, they have harshly clamped down on all the dissidents, jailing all the perceived guilty parties who started the 2019 protests. HK will never be the same again. With its zero Covid strategy and the rise of Shanghai as a financial centre, its decline as a city looks inevitable now.

There are some parallels of this book to the current Ukraine situation. Its people seek to assert themselves but yet are superseded by 2 external opposing powers that take the citizens’ decision to choose their destiny out of their hands.

I had a crash course this week on HTML and CSS programming languages as part of my FinTech project I had to hand up by today. I was blown away by the first full day online class on Mon when we started module 2 – “Developers Toolkit (Part 1): Connecting the Frontend”.

I couldn’t grasp most of the concepts as I did not even have a basic foundation in these programming languages beforehand. The trainer gave some notes to study late last Fri and I could not complete most of it in time. The rest of the week was spent in a panic to run through all the notes and “how-to” links, and ask friends for help in order to be able to complete my project.

I have a better understanding of how websites are created and the detailed steps to develop a better user’s experience. I have at least learnt the basics for now and can deep dive into them at a later date if I want to. What we want to create is only limited by our imagination. It is a real eye-opener for me as I discover only one aspect of the amazing world of Cloud Computing. Next week is another deep dive into Jave Script… 😮