Author: CheckW

The video went viral this week of a performance in the American’s Got Talent show. A friend shared it in our WhatsApp group chats and all of us were humbled by the brave lady and what she has gone through in the last year.

The COVID year had made everyone a mental wreck and even with the rollout of the vaccination, many have wallowed in self-pity from one lockdown after another. Along comes a brave soul who had suffered through 3 rounds of cancer and still is able to put up a strong and happy smile to face the world.

It makes the rest of our sufferings minuscule compared to what she has been through. She held her head high throughout her AGT performance and gave a surreal rendition of her original composition “It’s OK” which gave a heartfelt explanation of what she went through over the last year. It touched the raw nerves of all the judges and Simon Cowell decided to reward her with the golden buzzer.

Cowell teared up when she said: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” That about sums up the new mantra we should all embrace now, to live for the moment and count our blessings, to be happy and banish the negatives.

She went through a divorce where her ex-husband walked out on her at her lowest point which discovering she had cancer with a 2% chance of survival and then went on to have cancer thrice over the last few years even up to today. But she chose to look on the bright side and said that 2% is better than zero. It still means that she has a chance to fight back. She is indeed a role model for those feeling depressed and thinking that there is nothing left in life for them anymore. Her personal blog shared her innermost feelings of what she went through and is highly recommended reading for everyone. https://www.nightbirde.co/

Meanwhile, the dams have burst overnight for the orange one and the floodgates of new abuses were revealed. They are chilling and read like a mafia boss novel where absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The overnight DOJ article bombshell points to DOJ’s (Department Of Justice) systematic subpoenas on multiple individuals including at least 2 house Democrats in an unprecedented effort to track leaks tied to contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions are now in deep shit for having OK’ed DOJ to conduct witch hunts using data from Apple to seek evidence of the wild allegations the orange one was spewing.

The blatant abuse of power and the crossing of lines over a few years is sure to anger many. Even reporters were targeted and most only got to know recently once Apple’s gag order was not renewed by the DOJ. This is going to be an evolving shitstorm that gets bigger into the next week.

It could be the real reason why the GOP is so afraid of him. He would have amassed the full power of the DOJ to collect dirt on everyone he hates or might block his path of madness to blackmail them into submission. I would not be surprised if he has many FBI/CIA files of everyone’s dirty little secrets to threatening them into obedience. We should see more shocking details as this fiasco unfolds in real-time.

S’pore finally opened up the vaccination program to the last age group yesterday. Those citizens between 12 to 39 years old numbered 1.5 million. They will be given a 2 weeks head start to book appointments now. My older son finally became eligible and he is the last one in the family to get his vaccine. He will get his first one at the end of Jun and the 2nd one in early Aug.

This is a sigh of relief for us as he will be going back to the UK at the end of Sep to begin his 2nd year at Oxford. This added layer of protection against the virus will make us sleep easier when he is overseas. Hopefully, the whole world will be in a better place by the end of this year.

A relatively quiet week for the markets as the US had a long Memorial day weekend. The only excitement was the release of Fauci’s emails from last year and accusations of more conspiracies from the usual GOP suspects.

With mounting legal battles ahead, the orange one once again made a desperate attempt to rally his troops with a promise that he will be back in the White House in Aug. This was after being kicked out in Nov and also for inciting the 06 Jan riots to stop a “stolen” election result. Incredible and defying logic, yet many still love a new conspiracy theory and want to live in an alternate lah-lah land reality.

The continued discovery of new unlinked Covid cases around the island is still a worrying sign as we entered into the 3rd week of the new lockdown restrictions. With higher testing capabilities (from 4k/day last year to about 73k now), it is inevitable that we will discover more positive cases with a greater amount of testing. Coupled with the use of real-time contact tracing tokens via Bluetooth by all citizens, the automation of manual tracing would tempt the authorities to quarantine as many people as possible to be on the safe side of caution. More housing blocks have been targeted for testing to isolate and arrest unlinked clusters. This had been a very successful method used in HK for residential areas as tightly packed as S’pore.

This is a continuous learning curve as we learn to adapt to the new normal. Each day does feel the same as we get into a standard routine to pass the day without getting mad. Weekends and weekdays look the same now too. To keep sane, I go for a run every morning and spend the rest of the day in front of the computer either to attend my online classes or to do my homework/read about investments. More useless hours also spend watching youtube videos. Many evenings are usually accompanied by a welcoming happy hour drink before dinner and finally some readings/TikTok before bedtime.

An event like going out of the house to the wet market on Sat morning becomes something to look forward to. It helps to break the monotony. I travelled all the way to Sentosa midweek to have lunch at a friend’s place to comply with the 2 visitors per household per day restrictions. Given that there is no dine-in at all food outlets, I bought lunch at the food court to bring it to his apartment. We had a good 4 hours of food and discussion about life and discussed his future plans (his last day of work was on Mon).

Little things we take for granted in a normal world seems like treasured moments now. We may get so used to this lifestyle after more than a year that we might not know how to get back to the old normal again if we ever get back there.

The virus mutates as the world plays catch up every now and then. The promise of vaccines as a cure also creates new headaches for each country to try to reach herd immunity. We stumble along and try to react in the best possible way, but mistakes are bound to occur with insufficient past data to learn from. And it only takes one mistake in one part of the world to affect everyone across the world. Never have I experienced an event like this that affects every living human being on planet earth before. The 2008 GFC probably affected only less than 10% of the world population then. Stars of last month can suddenly become failures over a matter of weeks – S’pore, Vietnam, Taiwan as examples.

On the personal front, my Data Science class moved towards the project stage and our team finally decided on the dataset to use. Next week will be mostly group discussions via Zoom to use IBM cloud tools to build upon our project presentation.

I had also finalized my new Myanmar Treasury consultancy contract. I shorten it to 6 months as I am still very bearish about the country after the Feb military coup. My course ends in Aug and maybe that is the right time to seriously consider pivoting into the AI industry to get some real hands-on experience. The Banking /Treasury sector seems to have become sunset industries with the aggressive push of Fintech and AI into this space very soon.

This was the week that cryptocurrencies continue to be volatile while trending lower. Too many Elon tweets have burst the bubble as BTC (Bitcoin) dropped from its 65k high to as low as 30K in a matter of days.

It was like Jan 2018 for me again when my crypto portfolio suddenly went up 6x after having just entered this market 4 months earlier. I just bought into the top 10 cryptos by market cap and XRP was the preferred choice for a heavier weightage. XRP went from $0.21 to more than $4. BTC briefly touched 20K before collapsing back to 4K again. I was too greedy and did not want to take some money off the table and hence went back to square one subsequently.

Since then, I have been trying to selectively buy just the major ones and sell a portion of them when I think the prices are high enough. High volatility provides attractive trading ranges for one to profit from it. With the assumption that they will trend up against fiat currencies in the long run because of continued central banks money printing, I continue to have a mainly long crypto position for BTC, ETH (Etherum) and XRP. I have also recently dabbled in Dogecoin as a punt and for fun, having been influenced by the Elon hype.

The growth of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) was a direct result of recent crypto price appreciation. The newly minted rich nerds do not trust physical asset classes anymore and hence this new virtual asset class was created for them to “spend” their newfound wealth. The logic of NFT investments are still not clear to me and it still looks like a fad for now. Just like the ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) investment thought process, I think it is an ideal objective but it absolutely misses the point of investment for profit. If your goal is to profit from the rise in share price, then it should be the profitability of the company using whatever means to achieve it. ESG concerns should NOT be your focus.

As of now, I have just been concentrating on the accumulation of BTC as it slides lower. I have been putting bids from 50K all the way to 37K and all are now filled. My exposure is not very big and I am kind of like the HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) crowd and not use any leverage for my positions to ensure that I have better holding power. It is sort of like a wait-and-see situation. I also have sufficient unrealised profits to fall back on.

We are now into the second week of stricter Covid restrictions/lockdown and getting used to it. While tension remains high due to the discovery of new unlinked cases, there seems to be a better handle of things now than a few weeks ago. Seeing other Asian countries battling the same situation might have helped convince citizens that S’pore is not an isolated incident. Malaysia seems to be spiking higher and will have a new full lockdown soon.

There is an ongoing debate now about whether if countries closing their borders completely (eg. Australia and NZ) to aim for zero cases is a sustainable long term strategy. A country is interconnected globally and cannot be forever shut off from the outside indefinitely, else the economy will perish. Then what is a sweet spot if the fear of just one new variant entering the country will screw up all the best-planned efforts of protecting the population? I really don’t have an answer at the moment. So many tough choices to consider and decisions to be made by each and every government where a wrong call can have severe consequences.

The only hope now seems to be to achieve herd immunity via vaccinations. The downside of this hit home on a personal front for me this week. I had received a call on Thurs morning that my niece had suddenly passed away the day before. She’s 52 years old and we were undergraduates in the same faculty in university many years ago. We had not really kept up for many years but this was still a shock for me.

I attended the wake that evening and spoke to her dad to try to understand what happened. She had her second vaccine shot on Tues and felt unwell after that. At 4 pm on Wed, she was still ok and went to rest in her room. When she did not take her dinner by 8 pm, her family discovered that she was unconscious in her bed. The ambulance came for her and she passed away upon reaching the hospital.

An autopsy was done and the results indicated a heart blockage. Her distraught family are not convinced and wants a second opinion. They were not aware that she had any heart problems as she had been doing regular checkups. Her dad expressed some regret to wonder if they had discovered her earlier, would the outcome be different? She was a bit overweight since young though and did exercise regularly according to her dad. My condolences to her family and may she rest in peace now.

This reminded me of another close friend who recently had a stroke in the middle of the night. He apparently had his first vaccine shot just before that fateful night and woke up at 3 am feeling that things were not right. Thankfully, his quick-acting family brought him to the hospital A&E in time for a full recovery. My friend has had heart issues and has been taking a lot of medication on a daily basis. Did the vaccine trigger an adverse reaction because of the meds?

I make it a point now to share the above info selectively with friends whom I know may have been on a lot of medication due to various reasons. I want them to be aware of possible vaccine side effects. I suggest that some family members should be around them for at least the next few days after they had their shots, to be on the safe side.

While I think that everyone should eventually be vaccinated, there is still not enough data to understand the risks of the vaccines and its possible effects when combined with other medications. It has been a strange and unsettling week for me.

The week started with a call from an Indian minister to ask the people to be aware of the new S’pore virus variant mutation that affects children and to ban flights from that country.

Funnily, the S’pore strain does not exist as it is had been already scientifically tagged and identified as originating from Indian (B.1.167). S’poreans naturally went up in arms to condemn the misinformation and memes were furiously produced. The country that gave it to us and now resulted in us having a mini-lockdown now wants to ban our flights. The irony was so rich and tragic, considering that India is now fighting the worst pandemic of modern times.

It was probably a political move to distract citizens from the shitstorm that is happening onshore where everyone is rushing for oxygen tanks. The Indian mutant virus has swallowed up the whole country and causing panic. Whole families have died and all medicine was in short supply. The daily tragic human toll and news update were getting worse. Modi seems to have given up.

Meanwhile, more unlinked and community cases were recorded in S’pore. New emergency measures had to be announced and effected on Sunday. It seems to be very contagious and spreading to the younger population via tuition centres and schools. Because of the TraceTogether app, tracking of positive cases were highly automated via the Bluetooth function of the tracker.

There was a mad scrambling of issuing quarantine orders to multiple suspect cases but the hotels could not keep up with the sudden surge in demand. Two of our close friends had received call notifications or SMS to inform them that they were affected and to be on standby for further instructions. Schools were told to test all students. Even a public housing block was identified and all residents there were told to get tested after 3 positive cases were found there.

We are told to stay home as much as possible to try to break the virus cycle. While the restrictions were not as severe as the Circuit Breaker a year ago, there was a sense of unease for everyone towards this new danger. Though the vaccination rollout had already started in Jan and more than 30% of the population had been vaccinated, much is still unknown so far.

Reports said that the fully vaccinated positive cases seem to not require hospitalization. The vaccination program still has not been rolled out for those 45 years and younger. That may account for why the younger population are getting the new strain now. The worry is that we are suddenly seeing it in a lot of kids below 10 years old. Things are starting to unfold and the next few days will be critical to understanding if the restrictions could arrest the spread or if we need to go into more serious lockdowns.

Surprisingly, the Western world is going in the opposite direction. The UK and US are starting to open up their businesses to try to return back to normal. America’s CDC announced that masks are no longer needed for the fully vaccinated.

It is disturbing to note that Asian countries like S’pore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and India are now battling new Covid waves while the West is blissfully unaware that the strain could travel to their shores soon. This is like a horror movie where you know how the story will play out next. The UK and South Africa strains had created new waves previously. What makes us so sure that the Indian one will not do the same around the world soon? It is like a slow-moving train wreck that is unravelling in front of our eyes. I hope I am wrong about this.

Given that we are unable to eat out and told to stay home as much as possible, this week has been a quick reversal to old lockdown schedules of getting used to staying in our rooms the whole day and eating in. I try my best to go for a run every morning to stay sane. My online classes and e-Learning program on Data Science keeps me occupied. 3 more weeks to go till this mini-lockdown is done.

In the Clubhouse app, chat room moderators have been using the term “room reset” periodically.

What does it mean? When the discussion veers off the main topic or whenever there is some unwelcomed distraction, the moderator will call time out and ask for a room reset, to bring everyone back to the same page again, to re-emphasize proper chat etiquette.

And just like that, S’pore and US had done a room reset this week. But both were on opposite sides and spectrum of Covid expectations. The rest of the world had also gone through a certain form of room reset in the last few weeks too and we move to the next phase of this virus journey.

Biden just announced that CDC had issued new guidelines that there is no need to wear masks outside anymore for those that are fully vaccinated. This is perhaps a smart strategy to push the remaining population to get the shots to achieve herd immunity before the July Independence day deadline. The anti-mask 1st amendment rights Covidiots now technically have a way out. Get the vaccine, stupid! For the Anti-Vaxers, well you can continue to wear your masks and be ostracized by the rest of society, Dumbo! If facts cannot convince you, then social moral suasion and making you a pariah might do the trick.

Kids from 12 years old upwards can now also take the vaccine and capacity has been ramped up to accommodate more people in the coming months as demand had been steadily dropping. The US and the UK have been at the forefront of the vaccination strategy to get its citizen out of the Covid cycle, even as newer variants (6k and counting) have been popping up all over the world.

The situation in India is still not looking good and the case count remains dangerously high. 44 other countries including S’pore have begun to record this strain in their countries. The Modi government has retreated into its own shell of denial with no plans of trying to get out of this quagmire.

S’pore had seen a relentless surge in cases over the last 2 weeks with many new clusters and unlinked cases popping up everywhere, especially on the east side (now henceforth named the new East Coast Plan…). After many days of investigation, it has decided to do a room reset and start a mini lockdown of sorts for the next month.

From tomorrow, group gatherings will be restricted to 2 persons from 5 and all dine-in activities will stop. Unlike the stricter Circuit Breaker (CB) last year, this will be more of fine-tuning of activities to try to break the virus cycle and arrest the spread. All gyms will be closed and group activities minimized and households can only have 2 unique visitors per day.

There were some panic supermarket groceries buying as usual last night after the announcements were made. Guess most have not tried out online shopping of groceries yet. Live will still go on as we have mostly conditioned ourselves over the last year to survive in the new normal.

The rest of the world is now moving at different speeds and strategies against the virus and the disparities are getting wider. While all of us are in a better place now than a year ago with more knowledge of the virus and a vaccine solution, new problems seem to creep up as we move to the next phase of trying to achieve normalization.

I had 2 calls with our Myanmar overseas lenders this week. Things do not look good there. With Covid and now the coup, it is death by a thousand cuts. The military is not moving an inch towards negotiation after the failed ASEAN attempt, encouraged by the 7 years old Thailand military coup which happened in 2014 and still showing no signs of free elections. As long as China supports Myanmar, they really do not need the blessings of outsiders.

The protesting young population looks to the 2019 Hong Kong riots as a template to escalate the confrontations. They have started to join the rebels up north to take up arms and training to fight back. Killings continue and the outlook looks bleak for an outsider like me looking in. I am resigned to the fact that my engagement with the country might come to a halt soon as things go beyond anyone’s control and that I cannot provide any value add to the company anymore.

One of my 2021 resolutions is to read 15 books this year. I have been into books about the chef and food porn show star Anthony Bourdain recently. We will be reaching the 3rd anniversary of his suicide soon and there is a new book out on his travel shows (World Travel – An Irrelevant Guide) that summarize his visits to interesting places around the world. I am also reading this book about his various interviews (The Last Interview and Other Conversations) at the same time. A documentary (Roadrunner) about his life will also be coming out soon, I heard.

On a more positive note, I started the new Data Science module of my IBM AI course this week. We were blessed with a highly talented young man as our trainer and were taught so much just in our one and only day of Zoom online class on Tues. I am excitedly looking forward to this module as it reminds me of a similar course I took in 2018 for my specialist diploma in Business Analytics. This is more in-depth now and much has changed in the last few years with technological advancements. The trainer also strongly encourages us to learn about Python programming to better appreciate data analysis concepts.

Even the recently completed Cloud Computing module had gotten me very excited about the huge possibilities of Cloud as I got to know more about it. It is much more secure than I had imagined and with the start of 5G services, this will be a paradigm shift to greater things. Amazon’s AWS is the leader in this field and I will revisit this again as a 2021 goal when my course finishes in Aug.

There are still so many uncertainties brought about by the Covid situation as we adapt to it month by month. Human adaptability is a strength that all of us have. We continue to count our blessings in this brave new world.

The Clubhouse app has been around for more than a year and a kind friend gave me an invite a few months back. I just wanted to share my experience of the app in this blog.

Imagine if you can invite yourself into a unique room full of strangers from anywhere in the world anytime you want to listen and discuss a specific topic. You choose only the chat rooms which are live at that moment which interest you, listen for a while and then can leave quietly anytime you want.

At your first app sign in stage, it will ask you to list your interests in order to show you ongoing chats that you might like. But as you start to use the app more often, you can begin to follow people or groups that appeal to you. When they host new chats, you will be informed or they will show up in your feeds.

At the start, it was to tune into my friend’s chat as he was trying to pivot from his many passive LinkedIn followers into this newer and more interactive medium. Then I saw pop-ups of famous people participating in live chats and immediately jumped into those rooms to have a look-see.

I went into one where Marc Andreessen was talking. He is one of the original investors in Clubhouse and a famed technopreneur whom most would want to listen to his experiences and views. The other one I happened to chance upon was the actor Jared Leto. It was amazing that I could listen to live discussions by well-known people and surrounded by like-minded audience from every corner of the world. The limit for participants in each room is 5k and you can jump in when you see it filling up fast.

As I was interested in technology and AI in particular, I started to follow certain groups and joined the chats. There were fantastic and knowledgeable people with PhDs or professors who speak from a level of authority on the topics which were so enlightening for me. Anyone can put up their hand to ask a question and the moderator can “upgrade/invite” you to the panel where you can ask your question. The panellist of experts will try to attempt to answer your query.

There were so many groups of special interest to join and learn from. It was especially useful for me to tune into one during my long morning jogging sessions as they were intellectually stimulating. One can chance upon a chat that will blow your mind once in a while. The fact that you have participants from all over the world even though it is now only an iPhone only app gives one a wider appreciation of cultural differences and thinking.

The hype has since died down and usual chat group sizes are now smaller, anywhere from 100 to 1k in size. Many other firms like Twitter have also jumped onto the bandwagon with similar functions. Discord had also been doing the same for a while now via a gaming angle. Given the year of Covid, the need for human interaction had certainly played a part in encouraging these apps to blossom. It feels so nice and personal to listen to a private conversation of like-minded people discussing a favourite subject in a warm fireside chat setting.

The latest one I enjoyed was a few days back in a comedy chat group. Jeff Foxworthy was the special guest featured. I didn’t even know who he was before the call. He is a 30-years stand up comedy veteran whose speciality was clean redneck jokes. I couldn’t stop laughing for more than an hour. So many joined in, some comparing the similarities of redneck and black jokes, all agreeing that comedy is a great unifier of different people across all cultures. Something new I learnt that day.

We had a family gathering last Sat to celebrate my dad’s 92nd birthday. Thankfully, it was a week before the lockdown that will start today because of the new clusters that were discovered recently. While we still had to limit household visitors to a maximum of 8, we organized it in 2 separate locations to accommodate everyone. The older adults went to my dad’s place while the younger generation came to my place and we did FaceTime to connect both sides via live streaming. We ordered some food delivery and did some potluck plus birthday cakes to celebrate.

Dad is not a very chatty person and usually looks stern and quiet. But he did something different that night which surprised all of us. After the cake cutting, he told all of us that he wanted to speak and address all of us as a group. It seems that he wanted to get something off his chest.

He started to tell us the reason why he has always had an altar in the house for my grandfather. I never got to see my grandfather before and always assumed that he had left my grandmother for another wife a long time ago while dad was still very young.

My dad related that when he was a 14-year-old boy something happened. As he was born in 1929, that would be 1943 then. During that time during WWII, my grandfather apparently had been preparing for a journey to Indonesia via ship to do some trading and exchanging money for goods to sell back in S’pore. He never returned and dad heard absolutely no news from him thereafter. He consulted a temple for help and they advised him to place an altar at home to pray for his safe return. That was how it all started.

Forward to 78 years later, dad was still doing this. He still periodically burn joss sticks offerings to the altar in the hope that his father will return home safely. That was the legacy of his practice all these years and he wanted all of us to know. I am touched by the story that he was sharing this with us now, given that he has always been a very private person. He told us that this would continue with him while he is still around and that we need not continue this practice after he passes along if we do not want to.

I guess that at a certain age, he has the right to want to share certain things with his children rather than to keep them bottled inside. My full respect for him. As we age, we will look back to our life and legacy to decide what we want to be remembered for, rather than depend on using material stuff to serve as a rememberance.

We finally had a family holiday this week in these new normal Covid times. Beggars can’t be choosers and the choices were a cruise or more staycations. We chose a 3 nights cruise to nowhere on the World Dream ship by Genting. There were a 2 hours check-in process that included a Covid test, multiple briefings and tokens issued for tracking purposes of your whereabouts on the boat at all times. Due to social distancing rules, the ship can only be 50% full. They had a capacity for 3,400 passengers and hence there were only 1,700 of us in this 19 stories high ship structure.

It was an eat, drink, sleep and repeat leisurely vacation. There were sufficient activities to keep us occupied, gym and pool sessions included. All activities and speciality meals had to be pre-booked in advance. Alcoholic drinks buffet packages were tempting and we managed to consume 4 bottles of wine and cocktails during the stay. Food was alright and was part of the cruise package except if you want to dine at the speciality restaurants where you had to pay extra. The casino was one of the highlights but it did not interest us.

For 2021, S’pore had become one of the top countries with the most cruise passengers in the world. The government had started a trial cruise experiment with 2 cruise liners a few months ago and it seemed to have gone on well with so much penned up demand to travel boiling over.

These are interesting times as the new normal continues to evolve. The virus has taught us to not take things for granted and that we should count our blessings all the time.

Quite an eventful week for me after a long period of non-event days on a personal front while covid again reared its ugly head.

Just when we thought that Covid recovery is rounding the corner for everyone, the sudden and vicious flare-ups around developing countries like India and Brazil took the world by surprise. Multiple videos of people scrambling to get their loved ones into hospitals and depleting oxygen supplies was a wake-up call that all is not over. In fact, all is not well at all when we see pictures of numerous impromptu funeral pyres being set up as crematoriums were overwhelmed. It really looked like a scene from a Hollywood apocalypse movie.

The fact that a simple commodity like oxygen was lacking should scare anyone. It is not even a medicine but a basic necessity to survive. India is one of the biggest manufacturers of the Covid vaccines but yet this had happened. What went terribly wrong? Wrong moves by Modi and commercial greed? The Bloomberg article below tries to figure this out:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-29/how-india-s-vaccine-drive-crumbled-and-left-a-country-in-chaos?sref=TCJIUe33

The other acute fault line that the virus had exposed: countries scrambling to protect their citizens rather than assisting others. That became apparent with the orange one’s America First strategy over the last 4 years. Unfortunately, Biden had to continue it as a virus strategy to keep the raw materials for the vaccine production for itself until all its citizens have access to the vaccines first.

India’s vaccine production capabilities were severely crippled once it could not obtain the supplies needed to continue producing the billions of doses required. Biden has now decided to release 60 million of the Astra Zeneca vaccine to India. The irony of it was that it had not been approved for use in the US yet, as America started stockpiling and hoarding all the vaccines for its citizens. Hence the stockpile had been languishing in warehouses at the moment. Biden has also now agreed to allow vaccine raw materials to be exported to the manufacturers in India. But the damage has been done as the ramp-up in production now means that new vaccines can only be ready for use in July.

It was mentioned earlier in the year that India intends to keep 50% of the vaccine production for its citizens. By the political will seemed to have been lost very quickly. The overconfidence of being able to battle the first wave had caused them to let down their guards with disastrous effect now. It had hit new world records of more than 300k cases daily for many days now.

The widening divide between the have and have-not countries, the developed and developing ones, are getting bigger by the day. Countries that planned in advance to stock up for the vaccines like S’pore and stronger ones like the US that can exercise their might to channel resources seems to be winning at the moment.

But yet for S’pore, a recent flare-up of cases has been a worrying concern in the last 48 hours. We are discovering a few new clusters in a hospital and other locations. In the last 2 weeks, there were about 45 new confirmed positives. Some can be attributed to people with old infections who are still shedding the virus. Others who were already vaccinated with the 2 shots of Pfizer or Moderna were also in this group.

While we were told that those who had the vaccine were less likely to have life-threatening issues if they contracted Covid, we are not sure if they do have the ability to pass it on to others and become contagious. The authorities are frantically widening the net to quarantine as many of the people who have come in contact with the positives cases. More countries are being put into the banned from travelling or having a stopover in S’pore.

This is a dynamic evolving situation and authorities will need to nail down the spread and identify who is patient number one. I worry that if it is someone who has had the vaccine and yet can spread the virus, then it will be a game-changer, back to square one again. New mutant variants are also a big worry. Let’s hope that it will not result in a lockdown again.

On the personal front this week, the positives first. I finally had my second Pfizer vaccine shot on Thurs. It went better than the first one with some soreness and tiredness that lasted for a shorter period of time.

I finally met my IBM AI classmates after 2 months of virtual online Zoom classes at our first in-person exam. I went for lunch with a number of them after that. Meeting people face to face is so different from looking at the screen. Our perceptions and assumptions can be so wrong when we meet the actual person in real life.

From tomorrow, my family will be going on a 3 nights cruise to nowhere. It will be a vacation of sorts in these Covid times. It has become so popular here that S’pore now accounts for almost one-third of all cruise travellers in the world! A friend liked it so much that he has already done 3 such trips. Prices are low and reasonable with social distancing protocols being strictly observed – only 50% of capacity allowed. It will be an interesting family bonding session for us in a controlled environment.

I finally completed my excruciating traffic accident court case. It has been dragging on since Jul and I can finally settle it and stop driving for a while. While I still feel that the penalty is a bit too severe, I will just take it and move on.

My biggest negative news of the week was on Myanmar. The CEO of the microfinance firm I was providing consultancy to for the last 3 years had suddenly decided to quit. I guess the pressure of Covid and then the coup 3 months ago, plus working overseas from Yangon and being a new father had overwhelmed him.

To see a country going down the tubes so fast is really a heartbreaking emotional rollercoaster for me. There seems to be no end in sight even after the recent Asean overture to try to bring all parties to the negotiating table. It is sad that after 11 years of opening up and slowly lifting the poverty line for many to get a better life could be reversed so abruptly.

I feel so helpless as an outsider looking in. I cannot imagine how it would feel like for my fellow local colleagues there. So many things have become beyond their control. The banking system has shut down, day to day activities and supply chains have collapsed. Even the simple act of trying to draw money from an ATM machine is limited now. Internet services and broadband are also restricted every night.

Things seem to be going back to Myanmar’s previous 50 years of isolationistic darkness again. I fear for the country and what it will become. My heart bleeds for the citizens whose destiny is being controlled by the few in power who are crushing the will of the citizens.

This week was one of those times where we experience once in a while. It was hard to figure out where the various asset classes were heading as prices were all over the place.

It seems like there were multiple diverging views as investors try to grapple with the “what’s next?” million-dollar question. The stock markets were jumping up and down the whole week trying to figure out if the pandemic was over yet. Vaccinations in the developed countries are going well in the US and UK while Europe fumbles. China and Japan are also not really near their herd immunity targets at all. Developing countries are seeing vicious 2nd waves hitting them. India just hit a new world daily cases record and news coming out there about hospitals running out of oxygen while body bags are piling up.

Coinbase started trading the week before with a bang which led cryptocurrencies to a rally. Bitcoin hit a new high of just under 65k before correcting a spectacular 25% to 48.5k by the end of the week. ETH also hit new highs and seems to be maintaining its levels. XRP prices exploded briefly before dropping like a brick again. I sold the rest of my XRP too soon before it broke above $1 though. Have started to slowly accumulate BTC again at current levels. Just trying to trade the range in these volatile swings.

Gold was a missed opportunity as it suddenly gained in these chaotic times while all asset classes whipped sawed the whole week. It seems that the whole market was trying to come to an agreement on what will be happening going forward and has not reached an equilibrium yet. Very confusing now to figure out the macro theme being played out as various news seems to contradict each other too.

A third of 2021 has already passed us by. Biden’s first 100 days is approaching and he has provided a lot of strong leadership to correct the 4 years of mistakes created by the orange one. More has to be done on the pandemic front as the issue continues to play out. Normal overseas travel seems to be a thing of the past which we cannot foresee to return any time soon with many countries still experiencing the worst of subsequent waves.

A quiet week for me as I prepare for my Cloud Computing exam next week, having completed a third of my 6 months full-time IBM AI course to date. While I learnt a lot of new things about this topic, there is so much more to absorb if one wants to dive deeper into this evolving technology. It would be a good new to-do item for me after my course ends in Aug. Amazon AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure are the ones I should learn more about, besides picking up Python.

The Myanmar situation doesn’t look to improve soon and the economy is going through death by a thousand cuts after the military coup on 01 Feb. Without a functioning banking system for almost 3 months, financial institutions are going into survival mode now. Lenders’ covenant breaches are happening everywhere and tough calls have to be made to stop or defer loan repayments now as cashflows are severely impacted. I worry for the company that I had been providing Treasury consultancy for the last 3+ years and now seeing the whole country crumbling before my eyes every day.

An interesting week ahead for me after 2 subdued weeks of not much happening and staying at home studying. We are all becoming domesticated homebodies thanks to the pandemic. Perfectly happy to just be in our little comfort zones and forgetting what the old norm is like where we used to have vacations that had overseas travel plus flights. Sad or the new norm?