Author: CheckW

Perhaps my timing was good or maybe it was the divine powers above that had led me to this data analytics to AI (Artificial Intelligence) journey. I have learnt a lot in this short 2 years ride but there is still so much more to absorb. The more I plug in the missing information gaps in my understanding of this subject, the more I become fascinated with what had been achieved so far and what can be accomplished in the near future.

After my last working day in my old banking job in Jun 2017, I decided to continue my learning journey in earnest. This initiative started in bits and pieces from 2012 with the discovery of Udemy and Coursera web portals which allowed me to study whatever interests me at that time. Social media topics were big at that time and being an active user, I went into topics like hashtag and affiliate marketing and even started my own blog. When I put my mind into something, I will usually stick to it stubbornly for quite a while (case in point: playing Pokemon Go).

By 2017, the stars had lined up for me to embark on the next phase of my learning journey. The government initiated Skillsfuture push was fully underway. It aimed to help older PMETs like myself, to learn new skills that were relevant to the current world, to reinvent ourselves in order to adapt to the realities of our disappearing jobs.

After completing a few fun courses like Wine and Starting a Business, I had to ask myself: “What’s next?”. How can I utilize my past work experience to pivot into another industry where I could possibly have an edge over younger and more tech-savvy competitors? How can I monetize my 25+ years of banking experience?

In my previous sales role in the American bank, we were developing CRM (Client Relationship Management) systems that were getting bigger and better by the year. We were constantly discovering new powerful tools to help increase revenue via the data mining of client information we had. As the system software is enhanced and improved, we could add in yesterday’s end of day information to the database and move towards real-time updates.

This planted the seed of data analytics in me as a next step. By using my past work experience, perhaps I can pivot into the world of data analytics to provide a business edge, by driving the optimal review process of a company’s database.

I searched around for appropriate Skillsfuture courses which suited my objectives. I also wanted to challenge myself, to see if I could perform outside my comfort zone. Finally, I found a course that checks all my boxes and as a bonus, it will lead to a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics.  https://www.tp.edu.sg/courses/part-time-courses/industry/ict-and-media/specialist-diploma-in-business-analytics

It was a 12 months long program that conducted evening classes 5 times a month. Because of my age, I also had a huge 90% subsidy for the course fees. I decided to jump head first into this without fear. It started in Sep 2017. As expected, I was one of the oldest students in a class of 26 that consist of younger and more tech inclined people.

The first 6 months were a struggle for me as I tried to grapple with alien IT concepts and new data mining software. Going back to school again was challenging, yet exciting. I felt young again and even looked forward to the assessments and project work, I kid you not!

Very soon the course ended in Sep 2018. By then, I had a taste of what systems are out there to data mine effectively. It also got my feet wet via projects that required presentation skills to bring across the findings in a persuasive way. This course brought me up to date on the huge possibilities of Big Data and the tools that are easily available to create models and spot trends. The human now has all these tools to play around with, to gather insights which the naked eye would not be able to detect.

Around this time, the Alpha Go phenomenon happened. https://www.alphagomovie.com/ Within months, the developers used newer machine learning techniques to develop a better version called Alpha Go Zero which basically utilized reinforced learning to learn and challenge itself. It eventually managed to completely defeat its predecessor (by 100 to 0 games). https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/ Within a year, it set off the new global nuclear race by China, which set a national directive and road map on how to become the world supremo in AI. With lots of data available and little privacy issues, China believes that Big Data is the new OPEC oil product to AI.

By this time, my interest in AI and machine learning had deepened a lot. I hunger to know more and also to plug the gaps in my knowledge of this subject. I took an introduction to Fintech MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) to familiarize myself with the foundations of this industry, before signing up for another one on AI in Finance. They led me to various articles which opened my eyes to what I had been doing during my projects in the night classes which helped to make sense of what I had done, to see how they relate to machine learning and AI.

I feel that AI is now not as complicated as it sounds. They are generally extremely narrowly focused but they can do that specific task exceptionally well. The building tools are easily available. The difficult part is to clean the big data and provide the human touch to direct the analysis in order to produce quality models to help predict the future.

My Alibaba study trip to Hangzhou late last year also helped cemented my views that China was way ahead of the AI game. The AI Superpower book by Lee Kai-Fu also emphasized this point. The general consensus is that 30% of current jobs may be taken over by AI in the next 10 to 15 years. This is not something to be taken lightly. Looking around us, the signs are already here. What if driverless cars become the norm? A whole industry of human drivers will be displaced…  My old job as a salesperson can be easily replaced by a robot-advisor that can provide a summary of the best expertise of the top 1,000 professionals through reinforced learning.

My group of friends are also now looking at a chatbot investment opportunity that utilizes AI to refine and improve itself. The opportunities to apply itself into all aspects of the company is mind-blowing. Become an HR (Human Resource) domain expert for all employees? sure. Be an automated online response resource for all external client enquiries? Easy.

It is so fascinating to see how AI can be applied to almost anything. We take certain things like Uber, Airbnb and social media for granted nowadays. But there are multiple AI tools in the background that are customizing solutions on the fly in real time for the clients. Can you imagine that we did not have them only a few years ago? Neither do we want to go back to the days before we had these tools at our fingertips now.

The choice is clear. We will accelerate our AI developments from here. More amazing discoveries will be made and what we think is not possible now will become the norm in the near future. The future is so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pokemon Go mobile phone game started almost 3 years ago in July 2016. In the beginning, whole families like mine got into it big time. We had numerous family outings specifically to “catch them all”… The servers crashed as Nianti (the game developer) couldn’t have anticipated how successful it would be globally.

If you look at how the game was created, Nianti was indeed very ingenious. It leveraged on a well-known franchise that had started in Japan and which remains very popular even after more than 20+ years. There was a naturally large niche group of game card players that would initially hop on the new game quite easily.

In order to create and map all the Pokemon stops and gyms, it had also developed another game prior to launching Pokemon Go to collect this data. This new game rewarded players for geotagging and naming interesting locations as the main game objective. Using this crowd gaming effort worldwide, it was able to utilize the mapping data as the building blocks of Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Go had all the elements of being a first in the world of mobile gaming which on hindsight, was totally revolutionary and took gaming to the next level. It also had mass appeal to many different age groups. Young and old took it by storm as it becomes a family bonding exercise for parents and grandparents to connect with their kids and grandchildren. It has also become an obsession for some hardcore players who spend a lot of funds to buy the virtual stuff to enhance your game. As you can guess it, Asian countries were the top revenue contributors in the world.

The unintended consequence was that a whole generation of older players from the age of 40 to 80 would be hooked to the game. Because you need to walk in the game, it was also a form of exercise for couch potatoes. Older folks started to treat this as an opportunity to stay healthy, walking many kilometres every day. New friends were made and groups of strangers interacted frequently, to share the passion of completing the tasks.

New online stars like TrainerTips were born overnight on Youtube. He was a fanatical player of Pokemon game cards as a young boy and hence developed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the game characters. Coupled with his efforts to being a budding influencer on his Youtube channels to create video content, it was a natural jump for him to eventually become the go-to online Pokemon guru. He created daily videos and sold merchandise on his Pokemon channel, travelling the world to events and becoming an ambassador of Nianti. Not bad for a twenty-something who was developing a career out of a passion and making good money too…  https://www.tiredofmydayjob.com/trainer-tips/

As for me, I am the only Pokemon Go player left in my family. I have been faithfully playing this over the past 3 years to develop my player levels (38 now). It was also a form of distraction to make my half marathon training runs and overseas trips more interesting. I don’t think I have spent more than $50 on this game so far though. There are news reports of an elderly man in Taiwan that holds 21 accounts and spend almost $500 every month! He reasoned that he has lots of time to kill and this game has given him a purpose in life, to set objectives and make friends. Well, good for him! As long as he can afford it and this makes him happy and healthy, why not?

The reason I wrote this blog was that for the first time in S’pore history, the company decided to have a Safari Zone event in our waters. Sentosa was the designated location and it was over a 5 days period. I decided to apply for a gaming pass and got one for the last day, which was on Monday. Apparently, they issued a total of 125,000 passes for this event and they were all eagerly snapped up by the trainers. 90% of them were allocated to local players. Imagine! I was not that lonely player after all!!

I had a nice breakfast at Vivo City on Monday before the event started at 10 am. I then took a nice walk over the bridge to the entrance of Universal Studios to “check in” using my account and the QR passcode. Once in, a lot of features were unlocked and special monsters were visible for capture. I had a short walk towards the beach where the main event was held along the beach shoreline.

I saw so many people there and wondered if most of the adults and students took leave from their jobs/schools on a Monday or were actually playing truant instead? There was a sense of community as they had set up big tents for the 3 different clans of the game (Red, Blue, Yellow). Instinctively, I went to rest in my clan colour only. Laughable? It sure was to a non-gamer.

There were so many Pokemon Stops to spin and new shiny monsters to catch. People were walking up and down the beach and taking cover during the occasional rain showers. Everyone seemed to have a determined purpose to catch as many as they can. The tourists there must be wondering who all these crazy people were from, all concentrating on their handphones and blindly walking in a zig-zag matter, up and down the beach. Before I know it, I had spent 4 hours there and caught quite a few specially featured monsters there. Time to have a late lunch.

For the rest of the week, I was down with a flu bug I had caught from my recent China vacation. Then it was to Yangon for my monthly financial consultant job. Friday was to attend an event linked to skills upgrading for mid-career PMETs. It was a bit disappointing as it was different from what I have imagined it would be, based on their website information. It was actually targeting the younger age group and not us 50+ uncles.

Anyway, my family rounded off the start of the weekend with the much anticipated Ed Sheeran concert. It was better than I expected with the talented young singer who gave a brilliant 2 hours performance. Time to get back to my online classes and exercises next week.

 

 

Wife and I were so amazed by China after our Alibaba study trip to Hangzhou last Oct that we decided to explore China further this year with another trip to a scenic part of the country. The original venue to Jiuzhaigou and panda-watching in Chengdu was scrapped as an earthquake 1.5 years ago destroyed much of the scenic views.

We decided on the next best thing and signed up for a guided tour into central China. This was in Zhangjiajie and includes a Yangtze river cruise. Yuanjiajie was the place that James Cameron used as a scenic backdrop to create the mystic floating fantasy island world of Pandora in his 2009 Avatar hit movie. Then we will be hopping onto a cruise ship for a few days to have an idyllic cruise upstream, starting from the 3 Gorges dam, the biggest man-made dam in the world, to the city of Chongqing.

The 9 days vacation started on 11 Apr. We gathered at the airport in the early morning after a trip briefing session a week earlier. In total, there were 36 of us and a quick observation made us realized that most participants were around our age group or older. The youngest was a newly married couple in their 30s and another lady in her 20s travelling in a group of 10 with her relatives.

The first 5 days were mainly walking tours are the many scenic sights there. The intensity increases day by day until the last day before the boat cruise, where we had to climb 1,300+ steps to see the underground caves of Shuirao Simen. By then, doing nothing and lazing in the cruise ship for 4 nights was a welcomed idea.

The weather at the beginning was cloudy with occasional rain, ranging between 12 to 18 degrees Celsius. We layered ourselves with at least 3 levels of clothing to keep warm and also have the ease of removing one layer when the physical exertion causes us to sweat.

Landed at Changsha on day 1, visited the Phoenix Ancient town on Day 2. It was a quaint little town that looks like a journey back a hundred years ago to a small village where life was simple amongst the indigenous tribe there.

We visited the Tianmen mountain on day 3, taking the longest cable car ride in the world (7km) up to the mountains. There was a huge hole craved out on the mountain cliff by nature and it was indeed awesome to be standing below it after taking a while to reach the top. The engineering prowess of China was admirable. They build a world’s longest 7 stage escalator ride down the mountain by craving into the mountain walls and completed this in 1 year 10 months!!

Day 4 was the highlight of the Zhangjiajie trip as we visited the Tianzi mountain where Avatar was filmed. The scenic Yuanjiajie area was wonderful but it was a bit cloudy and wet that day. Unfortunately, I had a misstep and fell down the slippery steps. Only my pride was hurt though. Then we took the Bailong lift, the highest one in the world, to the base of the mountain. It was a vertical drop of 1.5 minutes. It was cultural night today where we ended the night with a 10 pm local musical production.

Day 5 was the longest day so far as we were out the whole day till 10 pm before we could board the ship. The coach travel time was almost 5 hours just to get to the harbour in Yichang. We had a 1.5 hours visit in the late morning to the Shuirao Simen caves. Some of the older folks in the group opted for a shorter route as the usual one had 1,3000+ steps to conquer.

After the first night onboard the cruise ship, which had a capacity of about 300 guests, we decided to chill in the morning on Day 6 before going to the 3 Gorges dam excursion in the afternoon. It was indeed a modern wonder of the world that spanning 2.3 km long and took more than 10 years to complete.

Finally, it managed to tame the annual flood waters of the Yangtze while providing clean hydroelectricity as a by-product. The main concern is the 500 million tonnes of the slit that accumulates each year which could add pressure to the dam. Also, it is located in an earthquake zone which could spell disaster if a big one hits. Night activities were filled with song and dance. Our 78 years old aunty in the group sportingly grooved along into the night with everyone.

The ship set sail at 930 pm and moved along the river before anchoring at the next spot on Day 7. We decided to join the morning Taichi class on the open area of the upper deck at 0645. The fresh morning air was refreshing and the simple stretching exercises were relaxing. After breakfast, we had a boat excursion to the Goddess Stream, cruising in a smaller boat to the narrower parts of the river that was surrounded by mountains. We alighted at a floating platform to watch a tribal show before heading back. The wife did her second medical treatment for her shoulder and I joined in for an acupuncture session on my weak lower back. A talent show at night by the staff members followed by more drinks with a smaller group of people from our tour whom we were getting to know better every day.

Day 8 was a casual shore excursion at another stopping point to visit the Shibaozhai Pagoda. In the afternoon, it was a tea ceremony lesson followed by a documentary on the 3 Gorges dam. The final night was a guest talent show and more drinks and dancing till 11+.

We reach Chongqing on the morning of Day 9 to disembark the ship for a short visit to the Bashu Art and Cultural Exhibition before we headed to the airport for our flight home.

Overall a pleasant and surprisingly compact trip. We did so much walking at the beginning. I would not have believed it if we were told at the start that we had to travel so much on foot. The cruise at the later part helped us to chill and get to know the other likeminded members of the group via drinks and dance. No regrets for signing up for this tour as we managed to see quite a number of natural and manmade wonders of the world in one compact 9 days package.

Guess what happened this week? I just completed my online submission of my 2018 tax assessment and realised that I have reached a critical milestone in my tax paying career…

I discovered that my tax deductions were more than my income for the first time in my work career!!! Does that mean I can get a tax refund from the government now? Fat hope. Well, at least it could mean that I may not need to pay any taxes this year 🙂 I guess that this is fair, given that I have paid a lot of personal income tax over my 28 years of work. It is time that I try to enjoy a bit of the tax dollars I had invested in the country, no?

Ironically, the highest amount of tax I had ever paid in my life occurred in 2012, the year after I was retrenched from the American bank I had worked in for the past 19 years. I was “lucky” that it occurred at the peak of my career where I had the highest monthly pay as my knees were being cut off, the rug being pulled from under my legs. There was additionally a bank pension plan that I was entitled to and they allowed me to cash that out too. Also, it was kind of them to immediately vest all my outstanding uninvested shares and stock options. All in all, the pension and retrenchment benefits accrued equated to an upfront payment of about 3 years of my basic salary at that time. As a result, the subsequent tax owed to Uncle Sam exploded big time.

It did not help that I could not find a new job for almost 10 months after that. For the next job I finally managed to get, thanks to an old boss, I had to also eat a massive 40% cut in pay. So it was a double whammy for me that year, where my monthly tax bill consumed more than 70% of my new monthly salary. This was indeed a painful 12 months. I had to dip into the retrenchment funds to bridge over this gap.

My last working day in my last job was Jun 2017, another painful episode after working for only 8 months in a European bank. The guy that hired me lost his job 3 months into my start date. They were nice enough to give me 3 months of gardening leave though. So in 2018, I had to continue to pay taxes because technically, I worked from Jan to Sep 2017.

As luck has it, an opportunity came along in Jan 2018. It was a monthly financial advisory role in Myanmar which I talked about in my previous blogs. They covered my flight and accommodations there and only gave me a token sum for every trip.

So back to the topic this week. I finally submitted my tax returns online this week and was pleasantly surprised to see that I had a net negative income number after taking in all deductions! I had some rental income and was still expecting to pay a small amount of tax per month, maybe a 90% drop from last year. But it seems very likely that the number will be closer to zero 😉

Over the last few years, the government has also been encouraging the concept of life long learning for older workers as a means to learn new skills to keep up with the latest work opportunities available. This was the SkillsFuture initiative which I had wholeheartedly embraced.

It has re-invigorated me to want to learn and absorb new knowledge. Besides a starting amount of $500 to help kick start the learning process of each individual, they also have a 90% subsidy for citizens above 40 years old for most of the 25,000+ available courses available.

I have already done quite a number of them and with a quick back of the envelope calculation, I believe that I have enjoyed more than $10k of subsidies to date. This is another way for me to take back my tax dollars 🙂

There is certainly life after 50. It is about how you want to frame your journey ahead. I just want to stay happy and healthy. This baseline helps me build multiple branches to achieve these twin goals and keeps me actively occupied. Halftime is about significance, what you want to give back and be remembered for. There are a lot of opportunities nowadays if one digs deeper. A positive attitude is a must. When one door closes, another one will open. It makes life so much more exciting.

 

 

 

 

Moving into the end of Mar already and a quarter of the year is over soon. Sometimes it is good to just reflect on the last 7 days about what I have been doing and see if I could make it better, more productive from a personal growth angle. By recording it down in my blog, it also serves as a periodic diary reminder to me about my thoughts at that time and if I have done them.

I started the week with my monthly trip to Yangon as a financial consultant on the ALCO committee. The end of this week will be the company’s fiscal year-end. I am happy to see that much has happened for them over the last 15 months since I started in Jan 2018. Their loan portfolio has more than tripled in size. Their infrastructure is now more robust and in place to help them grow further. It is a constant work in progress where processes and policies have to be continuously refined as we encounter new milestones.

I was there with my fellow consultant and we had a number of dinners and meaningful discussions on what we want to do next with our lives. Both of us agree that we should aim to do something impactful, like starting a new business. He provided a structured approach to our brainstorming session and suggesting a 4 prong road map.

One, to continue to look for potential investments as passive investors. Two, to look for retail opportunities like F&B ideas to launch and to get our hands wet. Three, to continue to look for new one off deals which may take months to incubate till completion – eg. financing deals between financial institutional lenders and end users like microfinance or SMEs. Lastly, to play a more active role in seeking out more consultancy roles and projects. Given that we travel to Myanmar every month, there should be opportunities for both of us to explore and channel our past experience, to use our expertise as consultants.

We also shared about our past experiences working in Citi and had a good laugh over the crazy stuff we did then over our long careers there, while enjoying our Korean BBQ and alcohol. Those times are never ever coming back again in our current PC compliant world…

Had a nice morning flight back on Wed as it was a Myanmar holiday. Met an old ex-colleague in the plane on the way back. I originally wanted to take public transport back since I had the time and wanted to save some money. But I became lazy and took a cab back instead, as I bought a few bottles of duty-free wines which were heavy to carry around.

The AI in Finance MOCC online course I signed up last month has started this week. Looks promising and I aim to complete it within 3 months. It could be faster if I can, but the wife and I are having a vacation to China in mid-Apr. The more I read about AI, the more I am convinced we are approaching an Ah-Ha moment where the paradigm and seismic shift is going to happen. Those that are caught unprepared will feel lost. I wrote about this in my blog last week.

Thursday was spent on another 5 hours lunch catch up again with 3 other great friends. This was over lotsa good food and booze where a variety of topics were discussed. Politics, social, the meaning of life and thrash talking included.

Met up with another 2 other old friends on Friday. One was an entrepreneur whom I can learn from as he updated us on his China F&B business. He had done many things, like setting up an investment fund, bought Japan property, sold shampoo online and marketed yield enhancement structures that participated in German real estate.

For the next 2 weeks before my China vacation, I need to prepare for my quarterly half marathon run and catch up on my AI studies. There is also a potential business opportunity exploratory meeting set up. This was an intro from my wife. Just also received a letter notifying me of my graduation event for the 12 months Specialist Diploma of Business Analytics I completed last year. This will be held in early May.

 

 

 

I completed my diploma in Business Analytics in Aug last year and will have my graduation event in May. This had started me since late 2017 on a learning journey of understanding what is out there in the world which I am not aware of. https://www.tp.edu.sg/courses/part-time-courses/industry/ict-and-media/specialist-diploma-in-business-analytics

The initial 6 months was tough for me, being one of the oldest students in class and not quite tech-savvy, to grapple with new data mining software and trying to digest technology concepts after being a marketing guy for so long. But it started to open my eyes to how much I did not know – it was a frog-in-the-well-looking-up situation for me. I was amazed at how much interactive analytics we can do now, versus my manual Excel spreadsheet kiddy stuff.

Then my wife and I did an Alibaba business study trip to Hangzhou and it blew my mind away as I realized how technologically backwards we were, compared to the motherland. https://www.sirsdigitalcommerce.com/alibaba-ceo-programme.html

That yearning to seek more information made me do an Introduction to FinTech MOOC course by HKU. I figured out that I needed to fill in the gaps I had on this topic as everything I know about FinTech was a mishmash of titbits of information gathered online. https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-fintech

I now know that FinTech consist of the 4 pillars namely ABCD: AI, Blockchain, Cloud and Data. FinTech is the digitalization of Money while TechFin is the monetization of Data. What stood out for me was AI (Artifical Intelligence) and how little we know about it. We watch Marvel superheroes and Westworld to imagine what AI is like – it is just fantasy and we are still so far from that being a reality. It started my new life long learning quest to know more about this subject.

The HKU course led me to a series of free Microsoft (MS) online courses on Teva. I then subscribed to a number of them which I thought would benefit me. Intro to AI, Deep Learning Explained, Intro to Big Data, Intro to Data Science, Data Science Essentials and Analyzing & Visualizing Data with Excel. https://www.fevaworks.com/maicp/

These courses made me realize that what I was doing for my diploma was actually related to AI! Sorting out massive amounts of data and then using modelling technics to create predictive/cluster/neural models with software like SAS Enterprise Miner. This is the genesis of AI, the building blocks. Having a module on Social Media analytics also helped me appreciate how computers read and recognise/understand human languages.

These MS courses are now preparing me for the online course that I will start next week: AI in Finance.  https://www.cfte.education/aifinance/ This is my continuous AI learning journey and it fascinates me immensely the more I delve into the subject.

Meanwhile, thanks to an old friend, I chanced upon a well known AI expert who had just released a book on AI: Kai-Fu Lee. The author believes that China could overtake America in AI soon. https://aisuperpowers.com/

He had a very interesting life journey that took him to Apple as the top AI language recognition expert in the early 1990s with John Sculley, ending with being the head of Google China.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee     He heads a Venture Capital fund since 2009 and had a recent medical scare that changed his views on work-life balance completely. There are a lot of youtube videos which one can watch about his thoughts on AI and philosophy on life. He is a very popular authority in China and speaks from experience and authority.

I am almost done with his latest book and the general themes are: (1) China will overtake America in AI soon, (2) 40% of current jobs will disappear in 10 to 15 years time, thanks to AI.

The Chinese government realized that Data is now the new oil and China can become the new OPEC. Given that privacy was never a big concern for them and that their citizens value convenience more, they set about to announce policies to advance AI as a top priority national project a few years ago.

The new wake-up call to China was ironically AlphaGo, the movie which I had spoken about in my early blog. https://www.alphagomovie.com/  He took some time to explain how AlphaGo came into being with the tech breakthrough of Deep Learning in 2006 by researchers into neural networks. This process mimics the human brain and allows machine learning to reach a new level of expertise not seen before.

AlphaGo’s DeepMind creators, after beating the best human player on the planet in 2017,  went on to develop AlphaGo Zero, which learned to teach itself how to play Go from scratch. https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/

This reinforced learning eventually resulted in it beating its predecessor 100 to zero games, an unbelievable thrashing of the machine that just conquered the best human mind. As recent as early this year, they have moved on to beat humans in strategy games like Starcraft II. https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612832/deepminds-new-ai-just-beat-top-human-pro-gamers-at-starcraft-ii-for-the-first/

He goes on to describe the stages of AI as Internet AI, Business AI, Perception AI and Autonomous AI and the emergence of O2O (Online to Offline) that changed China within a few years to a totally cashless society with little or no friction for financial transactions.

He cites examples like Uber/Didi that disrupts the industry from the ground up. China the nation that copies from the world previously has turned the notion 180 degrees around – the world now watches in awe as it is able to transform its economy via quantum technologically leaps, skipping many traditional evolutionary steps. Its ecosystems are pulsating and throbbing intensely as China shows to the world how every ounce of efficiency can be squeezed and optimized. Same day delivery? How about 30 minutes now? Honesty and integrity in the eWallet systems? Done. There is no stopping this tech tsunami. While the rest of the world moves on another slower track, China will be powering ahead within its own orbit.

AI systems can now only be a single focused algorithm with a single objective as the end game. They are not smart or creative enough to encompass multiple spectrums/arenas yet. But with this limited ability, they are already able to make minced meat of the narrow objective then they work in. Take driverless cars for example. When it arrives in a few years time, look at the number of humans that will be displaced. Whole industries (truckers, cab/bus/Uber drivers etc) will be made redundant. By then, we may not have the ability nor luxury of time to jump to another higher level skill not threatened by AI. 40% of the job force eliminated is not a fantasy…

 

 

Human mortality is a touchy subject especially when you hit the half-century mark. Thanks to a friend, I developed a morbid fascination of reading the daily newspapers backwards from the sports page and stopping at the obituary columns to scan through all the persons listed there. When a see a familiar face, I will feel sad and share with friends. But I am mainly looking at the average age of death and wondering how many more years I have on planet earth.

A few weeks back, we started to talk about this topic in a business lunch discussion. One of the guys just became a new father at the ripe age of 52. When his daughter graduates, he would have been in his mid-seventies. While we worry about how much time we have left, he went the opposite way and asked the question: “What if we live to 100 instead?”.

If we still have so much time left, what are we going to do from now till then? With medical advances nowadays, issues like dementia are expected to be solved in the next 10 years. We might even find a cure for cancer soon.

If one looks around, we can see many more very active +80 year old senior citizens still having a hunger for life and having more energy than most +50 “youngsters”… In the US House and Senate, you see career politicians going right into their 90s. Most 70-year-olds now seems to be able to lead active lifestyles. My parents are 90 and 85 this year and they are still relatively mobile and continue to take overseas vacations periodically. The latest census for Singapore shows that the average life expectancy is around 83/84. We are already number 3 in the world. In 2000, it was 78. So we have steadily increased over the last 20 years by another 5 years.

While we live life to its fullest, what if we survived to 100? Do we have the funds to outlast our mortality? Hopefully, the kids will be able to support the parents, but that is not a given. The government is trying to implement pension plans called CPF life. But would the monthly amounts receive in 10 years time be sufficient then as inflation kicks in?

One has to actively plan for one’s retirement years as soon as possible. Put assets into 10-year buckets to utilize in different future periods – 55 to 65, 65 to 75, 75 to 85 etc. Some say that you should utilize 4% of your retirement funds per year and with some compounding, it can last for +20 years. If you set aside to use $8k per mth, then you will need just under $100k per year. So $1 million will last you 10 years. Cashing in of some insurance policies in the future will also net you some cash flow and having some passive income from rental income and REIT dividends will provide more cushion.

Money aside, one will also need to keep the mind active and sharp. Constant exercise is good and having a life long learning attitude is healthy. We need to constantly seek new “adventures” and have goals to strive for, in order to make this life interesting and bearable.

 

 

 

I have to say that I did quite a lot of things this week. Getting sick at the later part of the week was a bummer though.

Went to Yangon on Sunday afternoon, ahead of my regular monthly ALCO meetings on Monday morning. Had a great Korean BBQ dinner with a nice bottle of Italian red that evening with my colleague at the mall near our hotel. Monday morning was an intensive 2.5 hours meeting followed by a quick lunch before I had to catch my flight back home.

The following day on Tuesday, a group of us finally made it for our much-discussed day trip to Batam. We had been talking about how cheap it is to visit the place for food and massages. The last time I had been there was almost 10 years ago. One of the guys was a regular there for golf and he was our tour guide for the 4 of us.

We started our marathon massage session in the late morning with a facial and a pedicure. This was followed up with a lunch of roast duck and many dishes before we moved on to a massage establishment for 3 hours of intense relaxation. One hour of foot reflexology was followed by another 2 hours of full body massage. Then we had a bit of mall shopping to buy some food stuff to bring home.

Finally, we sat in a large open food court to enjoy the late afternoon breeze, watching the sun setting and ordering so much seafood dishes that I lost count after a while. The beer, wines and whisky certainly helped to digest the food. We headed for the jetty before 8 pm and managed to make this day trip an eventful 14 hours excursion. The all in cost for everything was less than SGD 150 per person, so it was really value for money.

Maybe it was the travelling, maybe it could be the food. But I started to feel lousy by Wed. Son was also sick and I might have caught some virus too. Had coughing fits, diarrhoea and a sore throat. It was worst at night and the sleep over the next few days was terrible.

Went for a follow-up investment discussion on Thurs afternoon. This was the Aquaponics investment we attended in Aug/Jul 2018. The founders tried to bid for a land earlier this year but were unsuccessful, hence they decided to refocus on acquiring land from a new shareholder instead.

Their presentation this time seems more complete and sharper after we provided our feedback to them in the last 2 meetings. They were seeking more secondary series B funding and wanted to gather our thoughts on the materials and also to see if we are interested to invest. We gave them some pointers from an investor’s perspective and they agree to look into it to further fine-tune their sales pitch.

Overall, a very busy week for me. The body may have been trying to tell me to slow down but I was having so much fun. Have not been sick for a while, due to my regular exercises. So this was a bit of a surprise for me as I feel more lethargic than normal. Could be the medicines that I was taking and that the viral cycle took a while to reach its peak.