Author: CheckW

As part of the reinvention of myself, I had made a conscious effort to acquire new knowledge. It started with online eLearning last year via Udemy and Coursera after I left my job in Apr. It was an eye-opener for me as I learned about Hashtags, FB and Google Affiliate marketing and new programming languages like Python. I also started my own blog to help me improve my written skills and hopefully, to share my diary with my sons whenever they want to know more about their old man. I discovered new occupations like travel blogging and influencers, realized that we continue to create jobs that did not exist a few years ago while old ones die at a rapid rate. With unlimited imagination and new technology constantly evolving, the whole is your oyster indeed.

My resolution for this year was to go a step further and attend physical classes. The timing was good too, as the government was also actively trying to push the Skillsfuture initiative, especially to 3rd Ager PMETs like myself. We cannot afford to keep still when the world is moving ahead at lightning speed.

I just completed my 2nd Skillsfuture course this week, after 8 evening classes over 4 weeks. The course was “Starting a small business” and the trainer had his own F&B experience to share. It was a pleasant surprise for me to have interacted with 15 other like-minded coursemates who are all into our halftimes and wanting to explore Plan B. One, in particular, stood out. She wanted to start her own cake shop as she was in her sixties and kids are all grown up and they are supportive of her initiative.

I was always interested in the retirement village concept and during this course, it pivoted into a service business discussion group I was in. Over the weeks, more details were fleshed out as we go through the process of the 8 steps that the trainer had taught us, to methodically prepare for a small business setup.

What if we set up a membership service to link 3rd Agers who want to lead an active lifestyle and expand their social circle to meet up with like-minded individuals over diverse topics like health/wellness, sports, new learning interests (eg. food, skills/hobbies) and travel? Currently, we can see pockets of such activities all around us. With WhatsApp alone, one already has multiple chat groups with different groups of friends/family members on a wide area of discussions.

What if there are more people like me out there, who want new learning experiences and like to expand our social circle? My wife knows I like to organize things, having planned more than 8 class reunions over the last 7 years (more than 100+ pax per gathering). I was always the one planning the family holiday vacation in detail. Talk about merging your interest with your job! I could literally set up this business at home and do this online. My creative juices continue to swirl in my mind as I try to visualize the overall game plan. This course has allowed me to do this in a structured way, to take into consideration all areas to avoid common pitfalls and help shorten my learning curve.

On the last day of the course, we did a small potluck to build up the camaraderie within the team. The trainer rightfully emphasized that as the training ends, we should continue to support each other as we all embark on a new journey, to try to that the next very difficult step to cross the invisible line to start a business. A new WhatsApp group was also set up so that we can continue to stay in contact, to encourage each other and also provide support if appropriate.

We stop growing if we stop learning. Risk aversion comes with age but that should not prevent us from wanting to continue to gain knowledge. This will build up excitement to face new challenges and adds more meaning to our lives as we face our second half. Learning is a lifelong journey.

https://www.spring.gov.sg/Developing-Industries/FBS/Pages/Campaign-Start-Right-for-FB-Enterprises.aspx

Being called uncle nowadays reminds me that I am older than most of the general population. Getting used to it is another thing. While one may feel young at heart, the physical body tends to have a habit of reminding you that it has been around for quite some time. The body aches and pains seem to take much longer or forever to go away, the excess body fat seems to be increasing even though you try to eat less and exercise more.

One is constantly reminded of one’s mortality when someone you know has passed on. And this happens more regularly as you grow older. Last week, I was informed that a classmate from secondary school days had a fatal heart attack. It was tragic that he was living alone when it happened and colleagues found out about it a day later when they noticed that he was MIA. I was told that he had medical problems and a heart condition. I remember him as a very sporty and friendly person in school. RIP.

What is human mortality? Once we passed on, loved ones only have memories of the person which fades away over time. Thanks to social media, we may be able to call up photos and videos of the person anytime we feel a tinge of nostalgia.

Would you rather know when you will kick the bucket or do you prefer not to know? We had a friend that passed on at 37, 7 months after he found out that he had pancreatic cancer. He made full use of his limited time on earth, making peace with the world and spending quality time with close friends. He even composed his own obituary epitaph where he invited everyone to his wake, to have a celebration of his life with nice food and wines. He told his best friend : “No cheap mineral water please!”

Going out with a bang is something I would like to do. Morbid as it sounds, I have already told my sons and best friends my chosen funeral wake song (Silent Lucidity by Queensryche). I would also like them to play a list of songs (with MTV video and lyrics) that had impacted my life during the wake. Haven’t got to the part to choose the playlist yet though.

LKY, a possible atheist, once said that when you are gone, you are gone. Accept that. For those that have religious faiths, it means going to a better place or being reborn again. Whatever your inclinations, the fact remains that we are living on borrowed time on planet earth. You are what you want out of this. Either you make the best out of this life and maximize it by living each day as if it is the last day of your life, or you waste away every single day. It is your choice.

I choose to face life positively, to look at the bright side of every situation and make the best of it. While I may still encounter people I dislike once in a while, it should not stop me from sharing and trying to give back to society. Staying healthy and happy is still my motto.

 

 

In a bid to reinvent myself, I had decided a few months ago that I needed to learn new skills. An old dog needs to learn new tricks to survive in this ever-changing world, else I will be left behind. In a happy coincidence, the government has also finally realized that there are a lot of older displaced PMETs like myself that has a lot of work experience but encountering an ever increasingly challenging work environment as we age. Companies prefer youth over experience, costs before long-term profits and greater perceived hunger of the millennials versus Gen X. Hence there has been a big push in the skillsfuture initiative, where PMETs like me are encouraged to sign up for courses at a heavily subsidized rate to learn new skills.

The first one I signed up with 3 good buddies was more of a fun one which we discovered online (The science and business of wine – free, after all the subsidies :-). The 2 months of Monday night classes were really memorable which we will probably talk about in many years to come.

The second one was on a more serious note – Starting a small business ($81 after subsidies). I am halfway through this now. It is a good crash course to help a newbie like me avoid common mistakes when starting a business. But it was more about F&B as the trainer has the relevant background experience. It was interesting to see that my coursemates were around the same age group as myself, all thinking about plan B. One interesting observation – there were about 7 (out of 17) who were from the education sector.

The third one that I had just started this week was the one that impressed me the most. It made me feel like a student again. This was a 6 months Part 1 course that will eventually earn me a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics. The Polytechnic even had a briefing session 2 weeks before the start for all students taking the Specialist Diploma courses. There were probably a few hundred attendees. I found out that the one I was taking had overwhelming demand (300 applied for 120 places) and that they had decided to open up another new batch in Nov. It was very professionally conducted and each of us even had a student matriculation card for the school library and tech support to help us configure our laptops for classes and e-learning lessons. The school is really progressive and will even kick-start a Fintech course early next year. Another one that I can apply…

The first class started this Monday and I met my other 29 colleagues for the first time. The group was pretty diverse, from sectors like programming/technology, operations, financial (front/middle/back offices) and there was a wide age range. I think I was one of the oldest there… It seemed quite daunting to me at first, given my lack of technical skills compared to the millennials who are more tech savvy. Though there are no exams, this course will have a lot of project and assessment work.

In the second class on Thursday, we were briefed on the project work required for the next 2 terms. We had to form a team of 4 and my team has quite a good mix – programmer, operations, consultancy and marketing experiences.

The evening classes have broadened my mind to endless possibilities as I cross my half-time period. The fear of embarking on new things and taking risks which comes with age has subsided. The brave new world is not as scary as it looks. Happy Halloween!!

 

 

 

What is Food Porn? It is the love of food and watching videos of food presented in such a way that one will spend countless hours watching. It is a pun on pornography as it has similar characteristics.

Over the years, we have had book authors that concentrate only on food. Then the authors and celebrity chefs did the next big leap to TV. Anthony Bourdain was one such person and he still remains as one of my favourites. He constantly shoots his mouth off but he provides new and fresh perspectives of different destinations that introduce viewers to brand new experiences. His latest episode (S10E01) even featured my home country. It was refreshing to see an outsider’s thoughts of who we are.

As part of my usual diet of YouTube videos, I am never short of new food porn stuff to watch. The evolution of social media means that anyone can publish their own content to show to the world. Viewers are appreciative that they can have an armchair approach to being transported to different parts of the world to see new foods and cultural experiences on a first-hand basis. It’s like having a personal tour guide to share the food with you, except that you cannot taste the food and it always makes you hungry…

There are a number of rising stars that have achieved more than 1 million subscribers over the last few years. They have effectively made this their full-time profession, traveling all over to record their food eating experience to share with their fans while creating a sustainable revenue stream (via merchandise, patronage or advertisement revenue).

As I am based in Asia, I naturally prefer the ones that are closer to home. 2 of my favourites are based in Chengdu (China) and Bangkok (Thailand).

Because of my previous job, I had gotten to know Chengdu and acquired a taste for mala cuisine. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a Canadian based there with a love of Chinese culture and posting food videos. The story of Trevor James, the Food Ranger is pretty amazing. How he arrived in China because he had to take an elective in uni and chose Chinese language, then fell in love with it and took a one-way ticket to experience it first hand. He is probably more Chinese than me now, showing fans the many varieties of food in Asia and China in particular. http://www.thefoodranger.com/about-me/

The other guy that I follow is Mark Wiens of Migrationology ( http://markwiens.me/about/  ). He fell in love with Asia, got married in Bangkok and decided not to teach English anymore, but be a full-time food blogger, traveling the world in search of new food experiences.

I believe that less than 1% of all of us really love our jobs, but these 2 have really transformed themselves to dive deep into their passion for food as a career. My admiration goes to them for their courage to venture into the new unknown and wherever the journey takes them.

They have also linked up with fellow food bloggers from all over the world. This is an interesting strategy to broaden their fan base and introducing themselves to each other’s fans. In the meantime, we fans continue to feast on our daily armchair adventures in food gastronomy, courtesy of YouTube.

 

 

 

The highlight of the week was last Sunday. One of my ex-colleagues was very involved in a charity organization. They were celebrating their anniversary by organizing a big vegetarian lunch and selling tickets for $120/pax. Another friend decided to take up 10+ tables and started contacting everyone via WhatsApp to garner support a few months ago.

I was pleasantly surprised when the day came as I had the chance to meet up with many old faces I had not seen for a long time. Most were people who used to work in Citibank where I had the opportunity to interact with during my 19 years there. Susan had retired in the late 1990s to take care of her mum and this was the first time I saw her after so many years. She looked a bit feeble and I was not too sure if she did recognize me. We even had a visitor (Wandee) from Thailand who came here especially for the charity lunch. The group photo we took had easily a few hundred years of Citibank work experience amongst us. So nostalgic to have caught up with everyone again. How time flies…

On the cryptocurrency front, my little portfolio seems to be doing well. It has appreciated by more than 10% in less than a month. My purpose was to expose myself to this new asset class by actually buying small amounts of the top 5 currencies. A positive experiment so far and I have TT’ed more funds into my Kraken account this week. The more I read and learn, the more I am intrigued by the possibilities of blockchain and how it could be the next new big thing.

The 2 other skillsfuture courses I had signed up will begin soon. Starting next week (2 sessions/week eover a month), I will be learning about how I can start a small business ( http://www.nuss.org.sg/about-nsa/fully-booked-starting-a-small-business ).

Yesterday, I attended a briefing session for Temasek Polytechnic’s Specialist Diploma on Business Analytics. Pretty impressed with the school structure and 0rganization of the course. It will be 5 times a month for 6 months (Part 1). There is no exams but only regular assignments and e-learning. http://www.tp.edu.sg/courses/part-time-courses/diploma-by-schools/school-of-informatics-and-it/specialist-diploma-in-business-analytics

Thanks to being over 50 years old now, the courses are heavily subsidized. For once, age works in my favour…

 

It has been an aimless week for me. Just felt that I had not done much to further my development of my next steps for the last 7 days. Though there were 2 evenings of excellent get-togethers with old and new friends, I think I spent most of my time unproductively.

Had a great dinner catch up with some good friends on Tues and also to celebrate a birthday. It’s been a while since the 6 of us last caught up together.

Then on Thurs, we had our Skillsfuture graduation dinner (The Science and Business of Wine). This was the first one that I had completed with another 3 good friends and the experience was memorable. We will probably be talking about this for many years to come.

The trainer suggested that each of us bring a bottle of our favourite vino to share with the group. The 18 of us had wines from all over the world, from USA to French, Italian and Australian ones. I brought along a Stag’s Leap Cab Sauv 2012 which I found in Cold Storage supermarket. Because of the 1976 Judgement of Paris event that was introduced to us during the course, I was very intrigued and did more research into this, including watching the enactment in a movie (Bottle Shock : 2008). The French wines had suffered a humiliating defeat against Californian upstarts. We decided to do the competition amongst us and my Californian red won again!

On the cryptocurrency front, I decided to use the balance of my USD funds  (to date : just only 1.5k), to purchase the rest of the top 5 which I do not already have. More research needs to be done as I explore this new phenomenon and gauge its potential in the new world. The more I read, the more questions I have. Not sure what the end game will be, but I certainly want to join in for the crazy ride, having missed the recent surge in price by a few months.

Rediscovered another website I came across a few years ago. Social trading and eToro in particular. The market is always right, I am told. So why don’t I follow the market then? eToro allows an individual to participate with the best traders and join the herd. I am chewing over this and will likely fund my account next week to give this a try.

Having finished my first skillsfuture course, I will begin another 2 in a few weeks time. Starting a small business (1 month, 8 lessons) and a 6 months Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics (5 lessons / month). Very soon, 3 of my evenings per week will be occupied with night lessons.

As I have discussed with some friends, the new generation now treats failure as a learning experience and welcome it. The emergence of disruptive technology and startup culture re-enforces that mentality as a way of survival.

My generation was taught that failure is never an option and hence we are reluctant to take on risk and try. Age also works against us and brings us into a prolonged phase of inaction.

I have to break out of this mindset and learn to embrace failure, to remove my fear of trying new experiences. I need to constantly create my own learning opportunities, explore new horizons that will hopefully bring me to a new personal renaissance of self-discovery and growth.

Off to my next quarterly half marathon run this evening now…

 

The rise and rise of cryptocurrencies was an investment opportunity lost for me. I had been observing Bitcoin (BTC) for a few years, seeing it moved above $1K for the first time in 2013 and its big price drop subsequently. I was thinking that I may try to get it if it goes below $200 but I never got around to doing it. A few months back, I did open an account with Coinbase but I was put off with the complicated way of trying to fund the account and lost interest in it. That was in June and it was a big opportunity cost for me as it was just before the meteoric price rise.

A few months back, I did open an account with Coinbase but I was put off with the complicated way of trying to fund the account and lost interest in it. That was in June and it was a big opportunity cost for me as it was just before the meteoric price rise.

Why are cryptocurrencies so in focus now and what does the future hold?

As long as there is a demand for it, money in various forms has been created and used in human history for a long time as a means of exchange for goods. Long ago, we used precious metals as coins for trade but tricksters melted them and added base metals to increase the number of coins they had. Then there was a concerted effort to have a central control for money and so governments got into the act and started to issue notes backed by gold. The Fed then decided to de-peg the USD from gold in the 1970s and currencies were floated. Pricing was now purely based on demand and supply. Ther term Fiat money was born. The Fed can easily print as much money as they want to fund the growing deficit, as long and there is demand for it. The development of the EuroDollar market helped create demand then.

Along came the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 and all hell broke loose. The Fed was not the only central bank that continues to print money like there is no tomorrow. The rest of the big governments jumped on the printing machine bandwagon to try to save their economies.

With the evolution of Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies were born. The mysterious Satoshi Sakamoto brilliantly created Bitcoin. It was a fully transparent system, under no central control but yet highly efficient in executing transactions with minimal costs. It addresses the loss of faith many people have in the existing currencies issued by the wealthiest countries in the world. Central banks are now seen as being as reckless as the evil bankers who almost killed the financial markets back in 2008.

The current craze in cryptocurrencies means that anyone can simply create one out of thin air. As long as there is demand, there will always be a value for them. Just like any computer game, one can exchange real money for virtual tokens to use to purchase items to enhance your gaming experience. The virtual tokens are effectively “new” pseudo cryptocurrencies.

Where do we go from here? I strongly believe that Blockchain technology is the next big, big thing that will revolutionize all industries, just like what Uber/AirBnB had done over the last few years. Cryptocurrencies will be the by-product of this revolution and they will become more mainstream as a result. As for the many that are in existence, the top few will battle it out for survival as more uses are discovered. With the arrival of cashless transaction and eWallets, paper money will be a thing of the past.

I finally decided 2 weeks ago that enough of talk now, I need action. After reading about Ripple (XRP – $0.195) and the push by global banks to support it, I opened a Kraken account and funded it with USD to buy some. Last night, I had also bought my first Etherum (ETH – $289) ahead of the likelihood of a split of this currency in Oct. It is always wise to get your feet wet first to get a first-hand account. This is the best way to learn. I still have more to understand about cryptocurrencies and many more questions to answer.

As I had a lot of time on my hands nowadays, I do make use of my fitness gym membership quite a bit every week. To maximize the $155 fee per month, I had tried to visit as many of their 19 branches as I can. Having exercised in more than half of them by now, my favourites are the Fusionpolis and Clementi Mall outlets. Both are near my home and are located on the top floor (23rd and 6th) and they come with a rooftop pool each! I feel like I am staying in my own penthouse every time I finish off my gym session with a swim in my “private” pool. I am usually the only person swimming there.

I was wondering about how I can further make use of the membership and wifey asked why don’t I try the classes? Yes, why not? Starting this week, I attended 4 classes over 2 days. 2 of them was for yoga, which I last tried many moons ago and embarrassed myself by falling asleep and snoring during the last 5 minutes of deep “meditation”… There are now so many variations of yoga to try now. I did the Flow and Yin ones this week.

The other 2 classes were new experiences for me. I had always wanted to try them but am usually intimidated and put off as participants are all women and the men who do so look effeminate. Maybe as I am older now, I really don’t give a rat’s ass on what others think nowadays.

I did the BodyCombat class first and enjoyed the martial arts part incorporated into the moves. It was not as tough as I thought but the plus sized lady in front of me was sweating buckets and wetting the wooden floorboards (yucks!).

The other class I tried later in the week was Zumba. Wife and sis in law were always praising the instructors and the new classes with the pop music. I used to like to dance and during uni days and when we started working, I loved the jam and hop sessions and the big entertainment places like Fire. As required, the Zumba instructor used the most overplayed current pop song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi. The male instructor can really shake his butt, compared to all the women in the class. I was the only guy there besides the trainer, but what the hell! It was a nice and easy class, not too complicated as we all shake our booties vigorously.

New experiences which I can add into my overall fitness regime. My next half marathon will be in 2 weeks time. A few more things ticked off from my bucket list 😉