Author: CheckW

A week of restlessness for me, wanting to do something more while sitting in front of the computer screen every afternoon for a few hours, trying to optimize my time.

Saw too many youtube videos, thanks to the orange president and his son’s crazy tweets this week. Signed up for more online courses but sad that Coursera is now a fee-based service. Thankfully, Udemy is still around and there are many free ones to try. As a friend had recommended, I am now doing 2 short courses on Mindfulness.

My friends and I did check out a possible business opportunity this week, but it seems that we all want to be silent partners to provide the funds but not wanting to do the hard work, nor do we have any relevant previous experience to contribute to the business relationship. I really do not see what is the value add I bring to the table to a successful entrepreneur other than trying to throw small money at them, which they may not even want.

I had talked about wanting to do something different now as it gets more and more difficult for older PMETs like myself to survive and stay in the banking industry as technological advances like blockchain disrupt the status quo. Now is the time that I walk the talk, learn new skills to seriously upgrade myself to prepare for a new career path. I had just signed up this week for another evening training on how to start your own small business that will start in Oct.

In 2 weeks time, I have also planned a fact finding trip to Chiang Mai on my own to check out and do some research on some existing retirement resorts. This was my pet project last year. I am also on the lookout for business opportunities there as I really think that the Indochina region has huge untapped potential. This will lead to another trip to Bangkok in late Aug to meet an old friend to explore other business leads.

While I never know what all these will bring me to next, I must not stop exploring and learning. While these actions invigorate me, the fear of the unknown is always lurking very near behind me. With age comes risk aversion, a greater fear of failure. The millennial generation is now taught to welcome failure as a learning tool, to embrace change for it is the only constant nowadays. I will have to openly accept this new paradigm shift in order to reinvent myself and remove my old mindset.

 

Although every day seems to sometimes drag along so slowly, time does flies and it is already 3 weeks into my 3 months of gardening leave. There is my personal urgency to want to do as many things as possible, plan events, explore opportunities and finalize on what I want to do next. But I was mainly occupied with doing a lot of exercises, morning gym sessions almost every day. But this week, 2 events made me smile.

The first happened on Monday, where a group of good friends and myself finally attended a course which we committed to sign up for last month. The course was heavily subsidized by the skillsfuture initiative and on top of the early bird 10% discount plus another 50% discount for being above 50 years of age, the eventual bill was ZERO!

This is a 8 weeks (3 hours every Monday evening) course on the Science and Business of Wine. It was interesting to see a wide range of participants (17) from all walks of life as we had a get to know you session to kick start the first lesson. Looking forward to networking with everyone else over the subsequent weeks. Besides us “ex-bankers”, there was another one. The rest were from diverse sectors like F&B, hospitality, asset management and chemical industries.

We had 4 wines to taste that evening and 3 were actually quite terrible. Maybe the instructor was trying to manage our expectations and looking to start at the bottom?  Each of us was given a thick booklet as course notes to study and there would be an assessment at the end of the 8 weeks course.

http://www.sp.edu.sg/wps/portal/vp-spws/pace.courses.short.list.details?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/lib-pace/internet/short+courses/science+and+business+of+wine

Anyway, the 4 of us celebrated our first lesson completion by having a shot of Yamazaki whiskey and finger foods when it ended at 1045 pm.

The next memorable event happened on Tuesday. It was a lunch gathering that was fixed a few weeks ago. This is actually a periodic event I started a few years ago with a group of university guys from our facility (Business Administration, class of 1990). We created a Whatsapp chat group which we used to (1) wish each other happy birthdays and (2) share dirty jokes… The last lunch happened in Apr last year and I thought it was timely that we had another one.

We had a final turnout of 12 guys and everyone was busy catching up with each other, learning about the ages of our kids (the oldest was already 24) and reminiscing about the old days in uni where life was simple where we had not faced the real world yet.

Lunch was 2+ hours long and it was followed up with another coffee session with a smaller group till almost 5 pm. Amazing how time flies by and it has been 27 years since graduation. Some of us are already at the tail end of our careers and have already moved on to the next phase of our lives, into our 2nd half-times. We all agree that we have truly crossed more than the half way mark of our lives that it is ok to be addressed as “uncles” now…

My favourite picture of the week : the Putin and Trump image below. It is timely since they officially met up yesterday and the outcome is as expected. Lotsa bromance and fake news. Guess who is the puppet master and the puppet here?

 

Wife and I attended a session organized by the Parents Association of the elder son’s school this morning.

It was about the process of university application for the year 6 students as they wind down their activities to seriously prepare for their A levels exams in Nov. The topics centered mainly on the overseas application process for UK and US varsities, the timelines, and options available.

What came out from the session was a major underlying theme. That our 18-year-old is on the brink of moving towards adulthood and full independence. While we parents would like to continue to over protect them and worry too much, we have to accept that they are grown up and learn how to let go. The parents (I)-know-best attitude has to be replaced with a more consultative way where we seek to learn about their views rather than trying to ramp everything down their throat.

I marvel at the various stages our kids have gone through, from total dependency and listening to all our instructions to the teenage phase, with its mood swings and hormonal changes affecting the mental and physical state of mind. I do remember my 18-year-old phase quite clearly, where I questioned the meaning of life and my purpose in this world.

I guess this generation is very different now. My parents came from a very different background where putting food on the table was the main objective for them to provide for the family. They had no idea of what higher education means and could not afford to provide guidance to us. We had to be independent and decide for ourselves. For our kids, we parents are now very much more involved with this process, having the hindsight of experience to hopefully guide them along the way. But this may not necessarily be a good thing as we might not be able to let go and allow them their freedom of choice. While we still like to spoonfeed them, we have to resist this inclination. They are on a journey of discovery now, ready to fly from the safety of the cocoon into the University of Life.

I hope that we have had provided them with a strong infrastructure of a mental and moral framework in order for them to begin this phase of their voyage of independence. I will have to watch my tongue and try to be more as a friend rather than a parent from now on. I hope that they will share with me their inspirations and discussions, that the old man can probably be of some value add.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Uberization of everything is coming.

The Uber CEO finally quit this week. Now the board of directors is frantically trying to replace him and add more senior management. An article highlighted the irony of it all. Uber has been trying very hard to use technology to replace humans, aiming to move to driverless cars as the next quantum leap. As it had grown exponentially over the last few years, it had also accomplished it with a minimal of senior management positions, hence they are now scrambling to hire key positions to create a semblance of a normal well staffed senior management team. I guess Uber had already preferred a top light management team under the old CEO.

We can clearly see that the tech firms are coming into non-efficient sectors that have fat margins to eat their lunch. This has caused prices to fall, benefiting consumers. Driverless cars will be the next big thing that will wipe out a whole industry of truckers and cab drivers.

Look at AirBnB. People don’t want to stay at hotels anymore and hotels have to cut prices just to entice vacationers to book accommodations. We bought a week in Marriott Vacations in 2006 and now have decided to sell it at a loss as it is not viable to pay high yearly charges and limit our vacation options when we can have the world of unlimited quality choices at a cheaper price.

One cannot imagine what it was like before Uber/Grab came into our lives. The days of a cab driver having the upper hand are over. Cab booking centers? Dead. Taxi uncles who don’t use these apps? Losing business Big time. We have seen the future and will never want to go back to the past. Same for social media. Being so connected to the world nowadays provide an adrenaline rush that is unmatched in the pre-internet days. Once you have tasted the manna, you don’t every want to go back to the prehistoric ways of the dinosaur anymore.

Uberisation – Wikipedia

 

Yes, my final day at the office yesterday. Walked out the door after only 7 months. Had a Friday after office hours drinks and then a nice Jap buffet dinner with the kids. Time to move on and not look back.

A mid-week surprise on the first famiLee saga then went full blown on FB (a sign of the times for social media). Information has been flowing out hard and furious over the last few days and it’s too early to make a call. There is always 2 sides to every story and the animosity seems to run deep. Bottomline, I guess all family feuds seems to be about $$$ in the end. So sad to see that 2 brothers are now at each other’s throats while the sister becomes a sideshow. Too much in the open now to take it all back… The Pandora box is now truly opened.

An old song caught my attention this morning. It brought me back to a time long ago when I was eighteen, having just finished my A level exams and waiting to start a new chapter in the army. I was the only one that had a driving license and a group of my neighborhood friends would cruise down the East Coast highway with a borrowed car. We would then play this song at full blast over and over again and singing it together at the top of our voices with the windows down and the wind pushing against our faces.

Ahh.. Life was simple then, no worries and feeling great as we face the world as young adults into the unknown. And here we are 33 years later. Where did all these time fly to? So much had happened but yet those innocent moments of pure ecstasy are still so crystal clear in my mind.

Forever Young : Alphaville (1984)

Let’s start in style, let’s dance for a while,
Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies.
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst,
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don’t have the power, but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music’s for the sad man.

Can you imagine when this race is won?
Turn our golden faces into the sun,
Praising our leaders, we’re getting in tune
The music’s played by the madman.

Forever young,
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, and ever

Forever young,
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young.

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don’t they stay young?

It’s so hard to get old without a cause
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse
Youth’s like diamonds in the sun,
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn’t happen today,
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
Oh let them come true

Forever young,
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever,
Forever, and ever?

Forever young,
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever,
Forever young?

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever,
Forever, and ever?

Forever young,
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever?

 

Next week will be my last week at work after my short stint of 7 months. Did not work out, hence time to move on. They gave me 3 months of gardening leave though…

It really forces me to think about what I want to do next. I had been exploring about branching off to a non-bank role last year and this job came along. Money was not bad and I thought that I could give it my best shot. Back to the drawing board then.

I have been reading about the government’s push to help PMETs via the skillsfuture initiative. They finally acknowledged that there is a group of people with a lot of work experience but have been displaced from their old jobs due to various factors like technology and age. Hopefully, this initiative can help tap our experience for a win-win situation.

I discovered that they are many existing courses which I can engage and participate in, to learn new things and reinvent myself. Talk is cheap and I need action. I completed a number of online courses last year – on various topics like social media and new programming languages. Now there are part-time subsidized courses which I can sign up for. These are from a few weeks to months. They also do give out certifications at the end of the courses.

I have been speaking to a few of my close buddies on these courses for a while. Finally, I have decided to sign up for 2 for a start. The first one, the science and business of wine, will start next month. It will be a good intro to the F&B sector and to network with like-minded people. The next one is for 6 months and starts in Oct – Business Analytics. I have always had an interest in big data and maybe I could translate this into a new passion for a career change which I can also leverage on my past marketing work experience.

Will also be re-exploring possible business opportunities, looking to go to some Indochina countries to check them out. My previous job opened me to this part of the world where I had to go to Cambodia and Myanmar regularly for work.

I have also managed to save up a bit from my current job and this could last me for at least 6 to 9 months before I need to tap into my savings. Given that this is the 3rd time I am taking a break from work, it does not seem to be too scary now. I am excited to explore what is out there for me. In the worst case, I can still go back to the Private Banking sector as I had renewed my professional bank certification. Sounds like a workable plan for now. Time to execute it.

 

Another week at work with some interesting twists…

Is it a sinking ship feeling? Another 2 key persons just quit this week after I did so the week before. One of the key persons who introduced me to the job had also decided to throw in the towel after 10 years. He has had enough and thinks that the new management is destroying the value of what the group had created. He was looking to move in the last one year to a non-bank related role and the opportunity finally came along. The other person is a well-liked chap who was good at his job and has been in the bank for the last 4 years. He decided that the bank has lost the plot and heading nowhere. A brighter prospect came along and he grabbed it.

I am getting just so skeptical about the future direction of the banking industry. Major downsizing exercises continue and machines are taking over. Over regulation and total compliance roadblocks have made most businesses impossible to grow or even thrive. I forsee fintech making breakthroughs in the near future that would accelerate this decline. The blockchain enigma will soon be solved and systems like Swift will collapse. The uberization of banking solutions will compress revenues even further. Look at hotels – prices have collapsed as AirBnB and the internet are allowing the consumer to bypass middlemen and obtain the best value for money proposition at the lowest price every time at the click of a button. Industries are getting irrelevant overnight. The fat spreads that sustains an industry is wiped out as internet efficiency destroys old rules.

Where do we go from here? At least the world now has a common enemy. Trump’s rejection of climate change has made him earth’s public enemy number 1.

 

Things are moving at a very fast pace this week at work.

After 6 months on my new job, I decided to submit my resignation. The new supervisor and I agreed that maybe it is best that we cut loss and parted ways. He was amicable enough to also give me 3 months of gardening leave after serving a 1-month notice.

I don’t think that I have worked this hard for the last 6 months in my career before, but I guess it was not enough. Given that the original supervisor that hired me was retrenched barely 2.5 months into my new role was the first sign that things would go south very fast. With the only person in my team then resigning 2 months later, it made matters worse. The new person in charge probably already had a game plan in mind and I guess I am not part of it. Some colleagues tell me that this role had traditionally had a number of predecessors doing an impossible global role and all of them had not lasted long. I guess I broke a new record here.

Been there, done that. If a company doesn’t want you, it is time to move on. No point staying as it gets uncomfortable for both sides. Funny, my last 3 supervisors were Aussies… Maybe it is a pattern that I cannot click with them…  hahaha.

Failure is part of life. I am more accepting of it now. Just have to take it in the right way and move on. Back to the drawing board to plan on what I want to do next.