Author: CheckW

It has been 2 weeks since we returned from our amazing south Italy adventure. Prior to the trip, I wrote in my blog about taking stock of what I had done so far and then deciding on what I want to do next. I believe that things are starting to gel together as I aim to move towards a path that veers towards seeking significance at halftime.

A friend had shared with me his idea of a portfolio career for senior PMETs which he believes in, which is to do a number of things not for the $$ alone, but which interest the heart and gives personal satisfaction beyond money. Helping others with no hidden agenda is a refreshing change and it nourishes the soul. It is a recipe for staying happy while counting your blessings. I believe that my journey of discovery is continuing and a number of events this week is starting to shape the path I will take.

Earlier in the week, I was connected to an executive development career coach introduced by a mutual friend. We hit it off right away as we have many similarities in life – same schools, 2 sons, halftime mid-career direction change etc. We shared experiences with each other and it is a privilege to see the roadmap of someone who is a few years ahead of you, to learn from it.

Like puberty in our teens, we do experience a similar mid-life crisis of sorts during our halftime period. How we react to it is very important. We need to have a game plan in order to map out the next course of actions required. Getting clarity of your innermost goals by verbalizing it will be the first step towards a to-do list action plan.

Two months back, my wife and I attended the founder’s day of our alma mater as our older son was to be presented an academic prize from his junior college. It sets us on a discussion on how we can give back to the school as it was so instrumental in setting us up on the right framework to approach life so many years ago in our secondary and JC days. It need not be financial but it could include intangibles like providing our time to projects relating to the Alumni office.

After a series of email exchanges with the Alumni office, I finally had a face to face meeting with 3 of them on Thursday. It was a fruitful brainstorming session on how we can better connect with the alumni population. I shared with them some of the stuff we had done previously. I had previously worked with my brother in law to fund the 6 years school fees of a boy in this school through the youth wing of a clan association. We had also set up a small annual university bursary named after our boys via the NUS Campus Couples initiative.

I think the approach is 2 prong: Firstly, the Alumni office has to actively reach out to as many old boys and girls as possible to raise its profile. This can be done via social media. We should not be surprised that there are many pockets and groups of people keeping in touch via this medium. Our generation probably is more nostalgic to want to meet up now. Once this connection is established, we can then gather like-minded people to organize reunions. Eventually, I hope we can get more financial support for the school or for some of them to give back their time to the school (eg. as mentors or sharing of life/work experiences for career guidance etc).

The other thing that happened was the progress I made on getting 2 parties together for a discussion on a possible deal to trade raw materials in bulk, for me to act as a middleman. I came across someone from another investment discussion who has traded raw materials for years, primary for the China market. He is constantly looking out for import and export of new materials opportunities. I spoke to another good friend based in Indochina and he came up with some suppliers for the production of certain materials that may be of interest to the buyer. I finally connected them together this week. It is still early days but at least it is a start. There may be other opportunities in Myanmar as I go there every month for my microfinance consultancy role. Let’s see how this develops.

Lastly, I have finally kick start my first little hydroponics vegetable experiment. After my Aquaponics course in May, I have been studying this field and buying/gathering materials like seeds/systems to test my green fingers. If this is successful, I will then embark on a bigger hydroponics setup before eventually graduating to an aquaponics structure.

It has been a meaningful week for me as the building blocks of my halftime journey is starting to form. Where it takes me, I have no idea. But it is better to have gone somewhere and done that, rather than just sit on my butt and do nothing and slowly becoming a whinny, complaining/bitching old uncle.

 

 

 

We just returned from a lovely 2 weeks vacation in south Italy. It was part of the celebration of my wife’s birthday and also to attend a fantasy wedding of a friend. The journey brought us slowly down south as we move towards the island of Pantelleria – the southwestern tip of Italy.

We landed in Rome on 21 Aug and took a train to Naples, then to the Amalfi coast before heading to Sicily and finally towards the 3 days wedding event in Pantelleria.

Naples was a rich empire that started its decline in 1870 when Italy was unified and the northern cities of Rome, Milan and Venice took over. Before that, it was a prosperous empire with a rich history that spans into Sicily.

After 2 days in Naples, we headed to the Amalfi coast and visited Pompeii on the way down. It was amazing to see a town frozen in time more than 2,000 years ago when Mount Vesuvius suddenly erupted in 79 AD. At that time, the citizens were not even aware that it was a volcano as it was dormant for more than 800 years!

Next stop was Sorrento. I was pleasantly surprised with this festive place as I was expecting an old town with a slow pace. It had a holiday vacation feel to the place which made it very enjoyable. The guided tours gave us a well-covered understanding of the place within our 2 days there Sorrento Small-Group Food Walking Tour.

Next off was a day trip to Ravello and Amalfi towns. Ravello was where Wonder Woman was filmed and we could see the majestic mountain views that inspired the director to choose this location. Amalfi was a small vacation town next to the beach where we stopped for lunch before heading to Positano for our next 2 nights stopover. Remind me to never drive again in Amalfi coast – it was a hair-raising experience with the narrow roads. The first warning omen was when I picked my rental car at Hertz – the guy at the counter commented that my car was a bit too big for the Amalfi coast…

Positano was a picturesque town that was exactly like all the photos were saw. Buildings were built into the steep hills over the centuries and the colourful paints made them even more outstanding. The room we were in had a balcony with a lovely view – the bedroom even had a chandelier hanging from the ceiling! We had a lovely meal at a very homely family managed Italian restaurant (Da Vincenzo) and the Al Dente pasta was simply awesome… Thanks to my wine course last year, I learned that Italian wines consist of multiple grape varieties and each region has their own specialities that go well with their local food. Campania wines were therefore on our hit list.

The next destination was to the island of Sicily. We flew from Naples to Catania and rented a car to drive into the city of Noto which my Italian friend had recommended that we visit. The lovely city was welcoming to visitors and its food was superb. Never knew a grilled eggplant could taste this good. The tour guide recommended us to a small family restaurant Trattoria Fontana d’Ercole and I tried another most amazing pasta. Apparently, the owner was a former barber that decided to open a restaurant since his wife cooked so well!!! The stories we hear about the birthplace of the mafia via movies now looks so tame by comparison.

After 2 nights at Noto, we drove westward to Palermo with a stopover at Syracuse to visit the Roman ruins and huge ancient amphitheatre. Again, the town of Palermo surprised us with its rustic charms. It was a throwback to what Italy was in the 1960s. Which we could have stayed another night to explore the city further.

Finally, it was off to our final destination to attend my friend’s wedding in Pantelleria. The resort Resort Acropoli we stayed in was an old palace built on top of Roman ruins 300 years ago and now has a modern swimming pool with a lot of olive trees and rosemary bushes surrounding it. Our villa was called Dammuso Zafiro and it was more than 200 years old. During our 4 nights stay, we managed to visit the volcano created lake (Lo specchio di venere) to do a mud bath and did a private boat cruise around the island.

Thanks to the wedding, we had 3 days of celebrations in some of the best locations on the island. The first evening was an informal wedding reception to welcome the 100 guests, as we were all meeting for the first time. It was in a nice luxury hotel Sikelia Luxury Retreat that overlooked a great sunset.

The second evening started earlier at 5 pm with a church wedding in a small church that was built in 1725. The event was made even more unique as the groom had also invited a Myanmar Catholic priest to the ceremony and colourful flags from the Myanmar church were also hung outside the building.

The subsequent dinner was held in a stunning location that took my breath away. It was a restaurant located between a valley that was surrounded by vineyards l’Officina – Tenuta Coste Ghirlanda . We literally could pick raspberries off the roadside and grapes from the vines to eat them directly. How cool was that!?! We had a long table prepared for all the guest and they had a pretty flower arrangement set up which was made of all edible fruits and herbs. A roving live band played Italian classics throughout the night. It was magical. We stayed till 1 am and skipped the handmade desert as we were so tired by then. Most of the guest stayed till 3…

The final day was a recovery late brunch at 2 pm in another scenic venue (Altamarea) for more seafood and drinks. As most of us knew each other by now, it was an informal let-your-hair-down session to chillax and groove to the music.

We left Pantelleria with lots of good memories and had to stay in FCO Rome airport for a night to await our connecting flight home. This coastal town area was also quite quaint and we could experience how a day at the beach was like for a local family.

This 2 weeks vacation adventure was good for the soul. It was like when we were young where my wife and I travel to new places to discover new experiences before the kids came. It helps to put me in the right frame of mind to plan my next halftime career moves.

 

I am now at another reflection point in my halftime journey. I want to take stock of what I have done and decide on what is next on my plate. It is also timely because I will be heading for a lovely trip to South Italy with my better half to attend a fantasy wedding celebration on the lovely island of Pantelleria next week. It will be a time for self review to better understand what I want to do next.

For this weekend, I will be submitting my final project for the evening class I have been attending for the last 12 months. This evening course’s aim was to graduate with a Specialist Diploma for Business Analytics. I have learned so much new data mining technology to upgrade myself and done lots of assignments, projects and tests. My hope is that I can leverage on my past banking experience with this new big data analytics skills to pivot into a niche sector that will provide me with an edge.

On the intention to give back to society, there is the Myanmar micro finance firm that I have been providing financial consultancy advice for the last 8 months. I am energized to see that the senior management team have done tremendous work over the last 7 months, strengthening their core  infrastructure and achieving new business records. The end clients are the farmers and small business entrepreneurs (vendors like push cart food/vegetable sellers in wet markets and micro SME loans). These people have no access to banking and lending facilities and hence a small loan can help them to climb out of the poverty cycle, to provide funds and cash flow to stabilize and grow their business while weathering emergencies beyond their control like natural disasters.

It has been rewarding to see them grow and I hope that my guidance was helpful to the firm. The next few months will be interesting as we embark on bringing in an international name as an equity partner and doubling our loan portfolio by adding new lenders.

I have also been on the look out for investment opportunities while seeking to learn about new things that interest me. The signing up of a course on Aquaponics had led me to one such investment proposal which I managed to bring in a few friends to look at. Hopefully, we can some tangible results early next year.

With my monthly trips to Myanmar, I am also evaluating if we can bring a S’pore spa concept into the country. There are also a number of import/export possibilities between Indochina and China that I can explore and they pertain to raw materials.

There was a consultancy firm I was also talking to, to see if there are project based opportunities that can tap into a ready pool of PMETs like myself in order to leverage on our experiences in various fields, to provide a comprehensive report at a fraction of what the global professional multinational corporations charge.

For my personal stock portfolio, I have also been adding more US REITs that are linked to the retirement and medical concepts for dividend plays. I have also opened another OTC cryptocurrency account and added more positions, though prices remain soft. Blockchain is the way to go and cryptos are a by product that may benefit. Pretty much loaded on most of the FAANG tech stocks too.

What’s next? My Italy trip will be a good time to reflect on what I want to do next. We also have an Alibaba related business trip to Hangzhou booked for end Oct to understand how their online retail platform works. That should be very interesting to see where the China market is heading. Amazon is also trying very hard to muscle into Asia now. The next stage of growth for the Myanmar firm will be very exciting and challenging too.

Should I continue to seek investment opportunities as a full time career or should I start to look for a full time job in 2019? I want to continue to learn and acquire new skills. I am lucky to be financially alright with the kids education taken care of. I am too young to retire but what should I do for the next 10-20 years?  I aim to seek answers soon to gain further clarity into my halftime journey.

 

 

It must be age, but I think I get pissed off more easily nowadays. I see that in friends around my age group too. Sometimes I bite my tongue, a few times I do snap back at them. I try to count my blessings and let things pass, but some days it stays with me for a while. I am using this week’s blog to vet it out and hopefully, it will purge the negativity out of my system.

I really cannot stand people who complain all the time, thinking that the world owes them a living. I try to avoid such people as much as I can because I think negativity is contagious while one has to constantly work harder to seek happiness.

Just like the recent National day celebrations we had, I attended the preview parade last week. The live performance was amazing and it made me feel really proud of my country. Some scenes of everyday people struggling through life brought tears to my eyes.

I am thankful for the personal material gains I have had over the last 53 years of independence as our little red dot of a country managed to transformed itself onto the world stage. But yet, there are citizens who constantly complain about everything the government does. Talk is cheap on social media but you never see action from these people.

Some of my good friends do so sometimes, but when challenged by a call to action instead of being a couch potato, the silence is deafening. Shouldn’t we be thankful for what we have been given, instead of bitching about everything? Being NATO (No Action, Talk Only) is really just pathetic.

While you can voice your opinion sometimes, you have to be objective and not become too personal in your attacks. Everyone makes mistakes once in a while, so do be nice and not scream mother and father when things go wrong. Its easier to poke holes at anything, rather than lift a finger to help and co-operate.

In this internet age, we have an avalanche of news pushed into our faces and one has to exercise a bit of personal discretion to determine truth from fact, thrash-talk from conspiracy theories. The bombardment is overwhelming and the deeper you go into one end, it just sucks you up further into its food chain of hate and ridiculousness.

I have a friend that just love conspiracy theories but yet believes that he is impartial, claiming that he watches all news from the alt-right/left, centralists and even Russian news. He is a smart and logical guy, but yet I have a nagging feeling that he just loves a good conspiracy story over facts sometimes. I don’t claim to be right all the time but I try to study things a bit more before taking a view. I am human after all too.

I believe that many small happiness experiences are better than a few big happy ones, that they will last longer. Looking forward to a walk in the park can be my highlight of the day and it perks me up for hours after that. Or a long run in the morning before my brunch and papers.

On the investment front, I managed to gather a group of friends on Monday to attend an investment proposal I had been looking at for the last few months. It was an ambitious plan to commercially jump-start an aquaponics venture. While the terms can only be finalized early next year, it was great to meet up with old ex-colleagues again.

Who knows, this may be the start of many reviews of new investment proposals as I seek a new career path. I had a lunch catch up with the business people yesterday to provide some feedback. We talked about many other topics and then new business opportunities emerged. It was exciting for me as I could leverage on my Myanmar network to work on possible future China tie-ups.

The future is exciting and it is up to oneself to make the best of it. The glass can be half empty or half full. You can look at the bright side of things or the negative part only. I choose to smell the roses and live life to its fullest by staying positive, happy and healthy all the time. I wish you all the same too.

 

 

 

 

Social Media Analytics (SOMA) is the science of analyzing the sentiment of social media, to measure the current pulse of a particular topic in reference to what the online world is talking about. In order to do that, the computer requires Natural Language Processing (NLP) skills in order to make sense of the numerous messages being exchanged and shared.

My 12 months Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics is coming to an end soon and the last semester topic was SOMA, which was the subject that interests me the most. Over the past few weeks, I was introduced to this field of study. This was a build-up to the finale, the finishing line of my 1-year of evening classes and homework for projects/assignments/tests. Over the last 11 months in Temasek Poly, we have completed modules in business intelligence fundamentals (Qilkview dashboards), quantitative statistics and data mining (SAS Enterprise Miner, predictive models).

This course has opened my eyes to a new world where technology has empowered us to do big data analysis on a level never before thought possible. The quantity of data is now not an issue. We are able to crunch data using software that can review hundreds of thousands of data points in seconds and models that can look for trends to make sense of past or current data.

The art here: to use these tools to come up with conclusions and recommendations with a high level of confidence backed by data analysis. Each and every person will have a different way of analyzing from various angles. I am trying to leverage on my past bank marketing experience to pivot into the business analytics sector with a value-added edge.

In the past 3 weeks, we have learned that social media apps like Facebook and Twitter allow users to extract data easily from their database. Our assignment was to crawl 500 tweets of 2 companies from Twitter using RStudio software and then conduct a sentiment score comparison on the results.

On NLP, I have learned how computers look at documents and phrases to data mine information. Of the 100% of words used in documents, it has been shown that statistically, 80% is noise while 18% of the words are where the important information is stored. The remaining 2% are “stop-list” words that hold no meaning and should be discarded (eg. prepositions, a/the/at/on etc). By slowly refining the words list and “training” the software, we will then be able to obtain the main messages within the document.

Our final project will be to use SAS Enterprise Miner to analyze 290 recipes for Thai, Indian and Italian dishes and train a model (decision tree or regression) to accurately identify the ethnicity of any dish by looking at the methods of preparation.

So much to learn, so little time left to digest them and then produce the work with a video presentation within the next 2 weeks. Oh, did I also mention that we will have a test next week too?

 

 

This week has been a memorable one for 2 back to back reunions with friends I have made over my 28 years of working life, of which I spent the bulk of it with one company alone.

During those 19 years in the American bank, I worked in 3 different roles and headed the teams for 2 of them. The people I have had the pleasure of working with had become good lifelong friends whom I cherish and look forward to meeting up, to laugh over the good old times and the crazy things we used to do then when life was simpler and less complicated.

One of the senior Treasury guys had been organizing a get-together since 2012 and this Wednesday was the 3rd one. Thanks to the power of Whatsapp, a few of us were able to spread the message relatively widely by adding in more interested parties over the weeks. You can now create groups of up to 299 people!!

In the end, about 50+ people turned up that evening and what a blast it was. With the free flow of drinks, we all became old buddies again pretty soon. It was nice to relive the times where we went through so much together in the financial crisis of Asia (1997/98) and the GFC (2008) periods. We estimated that the combined Treasury work experience we had in Citi that evening easily exceeded 500 years!

Amazing how we managed to pull through all those years, none the wiser but supremely stressed out and thinking (a few times) that the world might end then. Somehow, these experiences made us stronger, to become who we are. And experiencing them with these people made the memories even more intense. We laughed hard at the silly things we did, the ridiculous antics we saw which are now mostly defined as career ending events in this compliance and whiter than white environment we worked in now.

The 3 hours passed by very quickly. I decided to skip my evening classes tonight because this is a once in 3 years event which I really looked forward to. I connected with people I have not seen for more than 15 years. One regular theme was that though we are all much older now, most of us looked better now (tanned and fitter) except for a few that mother time was not too kind to.

All of us figured that we need to stay happy and that a job is just a job. Most of us have since left Citibank, except for 4 remaining souls. Though we have moved on, the common thread of shared work experience in this wonderful bank continues to pull us together.

The following evening, another good long time Citi friend invited me to join his table at the ACI FX Gala dinner event. Once again, it was like a mini-Citi reunion as we met old colleagues over a nice dinner and copious amount of drinks again. We belong mainly to the Treasury marketing unit and have the battle scars to show for it.

Most of us do admit that the finance industry was good to us, having participated in Singapore’s growth over the last 50 years as kids and then as adults in our careers. Our parents’ generation started from a low base, so any incremental was a big jump. My generation benefited the most, just as the country was ready to take off from the efforts of our founding fathers.

I will aim to stay happy and healthy all the time while I remind myself to count and cherish all my blessings.

 

 

 

 

That is the mantra of Trumpism, built from many years of survival instinct in the business world, where you are only as good as your last success. You have your 15 minutes of fame and you make the best use of it. Nobody remembers a loser, so aim to go for a win (me) -lose (them) situation. Chaos is good, keep everyone on their toes with your unpredictability. The end game is of utmost importance and how you get to the finishing line is irrelevant.

This was played out for the world to see over the last 7 days during his scorch earth journey to EU, UK, Helsinki and then back home for damage control, more flip-flops and finally dropping another bomb again (inviting BFF to America) before you have the time to recover. Brilliant! Started as a deranged lion and ended as a purring pussy before reverting back to his combative obnoxious self.

If I were an American now, I would either be (1) totally embarrassed to be identified as a citizen or (2) so proud that we are giving the finger to all enemies and foes (except one country) and MAGA forever! It is difficult for me to judge the polarization of the US population from overseas though. GOP ratings for him are supposed to be an all-time high – is it because they are shrinking in size as only the hardcore fans are left? All US media (except one, Fox) and comedy shows are fighting back.

Just when you thought that things cannot get more ridiculous, he surprised you with more. I am at times totally flabbergasted at how low things can become and the positions the politicals can twist themselves into for self-interest and the upcoming elections. US news media from both sides only aim for high viewership as an end game. Impartial reporting is hard to get for the US citizen unless he gets access to BBC, who at times can also be biased.

Information overload is very real in our times. Social media enforces that by playing up to your interests. The Cambridge Analytica saga has shown us what the evil empire is capable of. Youtube/Facebook videos are channelled to you based on your clicks and likes. Yet you cannot completely shut yourself out from this world as we want to stay plugged into this world to stay relevant.

So is chaos good? Humans tend to prefer stability and hate unpredictability. So when a hurricane sweeps across us and the paradigm shifts, we feel uncomfortable and it takes time to adjust to the new norm. Cycles are getting shorter and shorter, thanks to technology and connectivity. Our attention spans are also getting narrower. What interest you yesterday has already been forgotten today as we move on to the next big thing.

Is this spinning wheel going to stop eventually or continue to move faster? Will social media evolve into a different animal in the future? Will AI take over us? Is Pokemon Go going to launch Gen 4? Such vexing questions to ponder over…..    #FacePalm

 

Other than the brain, I believe that the asshole is the most important organ in the body. This organ is not the most well known in the medical world and methods to treat it are still the same for many years. Did you hear of this joke yet? http://www.channels.nl/knowledge/33188.html

There is a good reason why I bring this topic this up today. About a month ago, my wife went for a colonoscopy and piles procedure and we were unprepared for the resultant complications. In total over the last few weeks, we had a total of 11 visits to the doctors (3 specialists and 2 GPs), 3 A&E admissions and 1 hospitalization (2 nights stay). It was a lot of agony for her as a supposedly “simple” operation created a whole series of unfortunate side effects. She was having severe nausea from the new medications and extreme pain from the swelling/inflation of the piles and to top it all, a reoccurring UTI (Urinary Tract) infection.

The 3 specialists we saw also seemed to have different opinions and suggestions. The more we read on the web, the more we realized that complication was more common than we originally thought. The surgery methods have not really evolved over the last 10+ years and the doctors really do not explain the complications well. All of them state that the procedures were simple and recovery should be fast, until shit hits the fan (literally).

In the end, I concluded from the doctors that piles are actually quite common in all of us and age/gravity is the main factor as we get older. The message that seems to come out of this nightmarish experience is that if it doesn’t bother you badly, don’t go for the ops. Just use baby wipes to clean up, apply cream to the anus area and take Dalfon meds orally to reduce the swelling. Maybe its best that I wait a few more years till a revolutionary foolproof procedure comes along before I do it.

Meanwhile, it has been suggested that we do a colonoscopy examination once every 5 years if we are above 40 years old. A close friend discovered he had stage 3 colon cancer last year. Thankfully, the chemotherapy treatment worked and he is back at work.

The other uplifting event this week in the midst of bad news this week (mostly Trump induced) was the successful rescue of the 12 boys and their coach in Thailand. The whole world pitched in (even Elon Musk) and the rest of us watched in suspense as we got periodic updates of the rescue efforts. The 1,000+ people from Thailand and specialists from around the world works tirelessly and raced against time to plan for the extraction exercise.

It was also heartening to read about the communities in Chiang Rai sacrificing what little they have to help. Farmers agreeing to have their lands flooded with the waters being pumped out of the caves that destroyed their crops and giving food/massages to the rescuers etc.

Not only had this unfortunate incident brought the world together in a common mission, it also brought a divisive Thailand together as a nation. It made us all believe again that there is hope for humanity. It has been a long while since such an event galvanized everyone to chip in selflessly. We were all rooting for the boys but fearful that something might go wrong. The fatality of the brave Navy Seal diver should not be forgotten. He paid the ultimate personal sacrifice and should be recognised as a hero. RIP.