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Sometimes in life, you feel like a rabbit sitting in the middle of the highway facing an impending truck with high beam lights staring at you. You freeze in your tracks, paralyzed with fear, waiting for the truck to hit you. Alternatively, you can snap out of it and proactively try to do something to avoid it. Now is such a time.

It sure feels like the rabbit situation as we head into Dec. There are a number of red flag warning signs in the markets now that indicate that there is a crisis waiting to happen in Europe into winter. It is linked to Russia and its war with Ukraine.

The EU’s Achilles heel had been revealed since Feb as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine. Russia supplied 40% of the EU’s gas requirements in 2021 and the taps are slowly being turned off as the war has affected the energy sector. Since having a colder than normal winter in 2021, European gas prices have been up more than 400% to date.

The average European household monthly energy bill is likely to reach EUR 500 in 2023, triple the amount paid in 2021. That energy bill could represent over 20% of the household disposable income next year. European governments have already approved over EUR 375 billion in aid to allay these costs. It may not be enough if we hit a colder than normal winter in a few months’ time, no thanks to climate change. 2021 also had an unusually cold winter.

Russia has the largest natural gas reserves in the world and the EU is highly dependent on it. The Ukraine war had upped the high-stakes poker game as Russia uses gas supplies to try to arm-twist the EU to drop its support of the war. NATO countries have been sending more weapons to Ukraine to fight its troops on the ground.

To avoid an energy crisis, Europe is trying to build up its gas reserves as quickly as possible. As of mid-Sep, it has filled more than 84% of its gas storage capacity but is it enough if they get colder than normal winter again? While it is also trying to reduce its gas use with restrictions and conservation methods, a particularly frigid winter or faster Russian cutbacks could completely deplete the EU’s gas stockpiles very quickly.

The other major factor working against the situation is the inflationary climate that has caused central banks to aggressively hike rates, following the lead of the Fed. Covid had caused world demand and supply chains to collapse totally by more than 90+% in 2020 with lockdowns. Governments then started to print money like no tomorrow to support their economies.

America’s Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment of monthly $1.2k cheques had resulted in adverse inflationary pressures when the world moved to the endemic stage as it recovers. In 2021 alone, America increased its money supply by 30% and added to its already huge deficit.

After the collapse in global demand to a much lower base because of Covid, any increase would have easily sparked inflationary flames. The Fed’s three subsequent 75 basis points rate hikes have convinced investors that it is so serious about combatting inflation that going into a recession is a necessary evil

So I am quite certain that we are going to see a European shit show happening in a few months’ time. EURUSD has already dropped more than 5% within a matter of weeks. GBP’s troubles also starting to show. The new government recently pledged to cap energy prices in the next 2 years and proposed generous tax cuts. Germany also had to recently take over national and Russian energy assets in order to better control spiralling prices.

The stock markets are reacting very badly to the above news. Coupled with 2 other event risks we discussed before, all this is leading to an explosive end to 2022. We have the American mid-term elections and also China’s big meeting to re-elect Xi for a longer term. All these are happening in a few weeks’ time into early Nov.

Things are turning more negative now as bigger and wild market swings become common. Banks are also trying to wind down their trading books into year-end and this makes liquidity a growing issue too. It will be a tough 3 months from here till Christmas as we try to figure out our stock portfolios. There are so many moving variables that are out of our control. Putin threatening the nuclear card makes it even tougher to second guess.

The clearer trend is currently in currency trading. With the aggressive Fed hikes of 75 bps for the last 3 consecutive meetings, the USD has been strengthening against all currencies as the rest of the other central banks try to catch up. JPY is a definite loser as BOJ refuses to hike rates due to its unique issues. It is a clear sell.

GBP after the queen’s passing is getting hammered as the new PM Truss hands out a 2-year energy bill subsidy candy and tax cuts like there is no tomorrow. EUR is a mixed bag of disorganization as each country tries to frantically prepare for the cold winter. Even mighty Germany is taking over its big utility firms as well as the Russian ones located in the country.

There is the impending winter gas crisis that might tip Europe over the edge if the Ukraine war turns for the worse. This is a shit show that is waiting to happen and the probability is increasing every day. I am still trying to trim my portfolio of the weaker stocks and jumping into FX positions which have a clear USD strength trend (short EURUSD, Long USDJPY). May even buy some gas oil futures as a pun.

Big question marks: Putin, will China open up again? I am still optimistic that we may see a recovery into 2023 but talk of going into a recession is getting louder. These are very uncertain days which we have to weather through over the next few weeks.

We just had a nice family vacation in Bangkok last week before our older son returns to the UK soon to finish his final year. It was a great family bonding session. Also celebrated my 29th wedding anniversary last night and the completion of our younger son’s dance performance that happened on Friday evening. Looking forward to a new consultancy project and the Skillsfuture course that will start in mid-Oct for 10 weeks.

Life is mostly about being in the right place at the right time most of the time. Sometimes you are being dealt a wrong hand and given lemons. You then have to learn to make lemonade to make the best of the situation.

Queen Elizabeth’s passing this week is a celebration of the life she had. She was born into royalty and had to figure out the way she wanted to run it. It was never an easy position to be held in such high esteem and be blamed for anything that could go wrong under her watch. Her immediate family issues certainly didn’t help, coupled with the long history of British colonization and the decline of the once great empire during her 70 years as queen. But she had a good life and made the best of it anyway, regardless of the rocks and stones being thrown at her.

That is the topic of discussion this week. Each and every one of us should give thanks for what we have been served and count our blessings every day. It provides a sense of peace and contentment while removing the jealousy of comparison with others that poisons the soul.

We celebrate small happiness events every day and this prolongs our overall well-being happiness index. I wake up every morning and determine the thing that would be the highlight of my day. It could be a morning jog, a lunch with friends or just having a beer while watching the sunset. Big happiness events, like buying a car, come too infrequently. You have to work hard to achieve them and hence small happiness works well to fill in the time gaps. It helps to prolong my overall feel good happiness. My motto in life is to stay healthy and happy all the time.

I have been lucky in life for the chances I was given. I choose not to dwell in the negatives but to celebrate the positives, to embrace them wholeheartedly. Our tiny little red dot of a country gained independence in 1965 and one man’s (LKY) steely resolve managed to pull us from a dirt-poor nation into a first-world country within one generation.

I was born in 1966 and was able to ride the 50+ years of the most profound rise and economic development of Singapore. From school to my work career, I have benefited from the strong long-term planning of this tiny nation. It has risen from nothing to become one of the top countries in the world, bar none. Even China’s leaders had consulted with LKY for direction to eventually craft their socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.

My birth timing was perfect. I was able to ride the wave of development growth and the opportunities that were presented to my generation. We rise with the tide as the world evolved. Our country had nimbly navigated the waves that bashed us, turning obstacles into growth opportunities by planning many steps ahead.

1974 oil crisis? Develop the oil refinery industry here and start to buy gold as a foreign reserve hedge. 1987 financial market crash? Make us a top financial centre where MNCs want to set up regional headquarters here. 1997 Asia financial crisis? Make us the centre of strong legal infrastructure where ASEAN countries prefer to litigate here. Crypto winter now? Plan to become the leading government to push for standards for crypto advancement rather than banning this potential future trend.

S’pore proved to the world that it can always punch way above its weight for any issues of global importance. Even superpowers periodically check in on our views to try to get an unbias opinion and advise. And I am so lucky to be born here, so comfortable that I never had the urge to work overseas LOL. The downside? This became a negative for us citizens as we had hardly have any overseas work exposure.

Given that I was born so near the 1965 independence date, I can see the stark economic differences between people than are just slightly older than me who did not fully enjoy the growth as much as my generation. There is a lady who operates a prawn noodle shop in Ghim Moh hawker centre that I frequent every Sat morning for breakfast. She is very smart and can articulate well. She is only slightly older than me, perhaps no more than 10 years.

Yet she is happy for what she had achieved, coming from humble beginnings in the 1950s where having a full belly was a daily blessing. From that low base, she had experience the prosperity that feels huge for her. With more education, she could have gone much further. But yet she is contented with what she has now.

I was a 1960s baby who came in at the right time where education was available to all who wants to learn. University became a possibility and not just a piped dream. Career opportunities in the recently developed financial sector in the late 1980s swept us all into the economic expansion phase miracle.

Our lives had very different trajecktories and outcomes because of our different born dates. Yet we are both thankful for our daily blessings as we give thanks to a healthy family and the ability of our children to realise their dreams. The country has provided for us and we should pay it forward by providing guidance to the younger generation, in the hope that they want to leverage on our past experience.

Bottomline, our brief times on Mother earth is what we make of it. You may be handed a silver spoon or lemons at the beginning and the future outcomes can be vastly different. External factors can also nuture your path as you seize opportunties that pass you by.

I just had my school reunion recently and I am amazed at how differently we all turned out at mid-age now. We could never imagine individuals carving out careers into different fields that were totally unexpected when we were 18 year old teenagers. We can only cherish the old times and the nostalgia now while celebrating our milestones as we head towards our next halftime journey.

Let’s all give thanks and count our blessings every day.

It was a hilarious week of American shenanigans as we saw the ex-president’s lawyers trying to justify themselves with every crazy reason possible, only to be shot down one after another within hours.

If you try to defend the indefensible, you start to dig a deeper hole and make yourself a bigger fool than you are every time you are caught lying. After a while, I lost track of the many lies that were said and simply come to the conclusion that this man cannot be trusted anymore.

It was mentioned that this was an insider’s job that spills the beans to the authorities on the dangers in the Mar-a-Lago compound and he was furious to want to know who was behind it. Hence the crazy push to want more information to be made public even though that will hurt his case.

He is back to his usual tricks to rally his MAGA troops to get them into a frenzy and trigger possible violence against the FBI. Then he offers to lower the heat which he had started!! How magnanimous!! LOL. I hope that the rational side of the GOP party will finally wake up to the nightmare that he is toxic to America and get rid of him once and for all.

No man can be above the law no matter who he is. One can continue to spew lies and reinvent alternative facts. It speaks volumes of the morality of America when such an immoral character can become president at any cost. I really do think that it is the beginning of the downslide of the country. It is starting to look comical that a person can really screw himself and yet his followers religiously defend him at all costs, blaming it on the deep state and various conspiracies. Throw logical thinking out of the door with the kitchen sink and the baby.

It is laughable to the rest of the world that this farce is continuing to distract the superpower nation from more important things like infrastructure and climate change agendas. Petty-partisan politics have crippled both parties to indulge in actions that do not benefit the majority. You can only look good if you make the other side look bad at all costs. Even when the majority of citizens agree on a certain cause of action, they will simply reject it in order to spite the other side. It simply makes no sense as to how a democracy should be run.

That is why I subscribe to the notion of having more than 2 political parties as a long-term solution. There are many that are disillusioned with both parties and do not want to vote on the binary choice presented. There should be a 3rd or 4th party that gives the platform for more ideology and political views. Chris Cuomo called this group of people free agents in his podcast. Andrew Yang is proposing his new Forward party as an alternative independent party.

Hopefully, this will break the deadlock between the current 2 incumbent parties and knock some common sense into the politicians. The will of the people could be better served this way. While we do see the disasters of other countries having too many fragmented political parties that sometimes result in small parties becoming kingmakers and tiebreakers, surely this is a small price to pay for the current American political mess, no?

Over in Asia this week, the major news was the fixing of the political dates for China’s re-election plans. The top management is supposed to retire after every 10 years but Xi is trying to make a pitch to go for a 3rd term now. The start of the process to get re-elected will be on 16 Oct. Xi is trying his best now to contain the fires of Covid and emerging economic issues like the housing crisis till then.

He needs to rally his supporters behind him and also ensure that his enemies do not sabotage his attempt to do the impossible, to get a third 5 years term. He strongly believes that he needs a longer runway to ensure that China remains on the correct footing and does not deviate from its longer-term strategic road map.

The US mid-term elections will also be around Nov too. Hence these 2 high event risks are closely watched by everyone. Markets could become highly volatile as traders watch every move and try to figure out how to navigate the turbulent waters till the end of the year while making sure that rising interest rates do not bring us into recession as we fight to tame the inflation monster.

It is quite difficult for me to fine-tune my portfolio, given that it had been hit quite hard in the first 6 months of 2022 with the general market’s meltdown. Thankfully, the past few years had been good market rallies but they had resulted in too many excesses which had been wiped out this year. I wonder if the old levels would come back again.

After the Oct/Nov event risks from the American midterm elections and Xi’s re-elections, I think that the supply chain issues would have eased and the interest rate hikes should have cooled inflation reasonably by then. Inflation should be under control then after 2+ years of Covid shutdowns. If things do not turn around by early 2023, I am afraid that the central banks would start to print money again to jump-start their economies.

We are already into Sep now and the weekly countdown has begun. We are heading into interesting days ahead…

Two comments over the last week stood out for me. The first one summarizes the topic this week. It was from one of our ministers who said: “We sleepwalk into conflict”. This perfectly describes the situation now in the 3 conflict zones around the world, namely Ukraine, Taiwan and Myanmar. I will attempt to forecast what is the endgame for each of them in this week’s blog.

The Ukraine war with Russia just entered its 6th month anniversary this week. This protracted war of attrition has caught both sides by surprise. Russia had lost a lot of its soldiers and equipment fighting a nation that simply refused to surrender. Ukraine shows its determination to fight on, thanks to the constant supply of weapons from Europe and America.

While there is a promise by Ukraine not to use the equipment to launch an offensive on Russian soil, it is starting to employ guerilla tactics to test grey lines and push the envelope on what it can and could do.

It tried to fire “stray” missiles into nearby Russian towns but probably deemed it to be too risky to poke the bear and antagonise its overseas supporters. Instead, it then decided to start to attack Crimea now. Logically, this area did belong to Ukraine which Russia forcefully annexed in 2014. So it seems like fair game to them, that they are “trying” to take back what used to belong to them. It seems to be acceptable to the UK and USA as they have even stepped up to provide more sophisticated weapons like drones and strategic missiles to them after the Crimea attacks.

Russia has also seen the depletion of its equipment and now threatens to increase the number of soldiers and use the new supersonic missiles that they have developed recently. I see no end in sight for now as the escalation to a higher level is inevitable. Winter is coming soon and Europe will suffer from the cut in oil and gas supplies from Russia which is difficult to replace. The world just hopes that Putin will not use a nuclear weapon if he is forced into a corner.

For Taiwan, the Pelosi visit now allows China to up its game permanently at a higher heightened alert status for the foreseeable future. From the American angle, the main reason is not just standing up to China alone. Taiwan is now a more reliable purchaser of American military equipment. Being the top semiconductor producer in the world, there is also a strategic interest to want to steer all its production capacity away from America’s main competitor, China.

The move to decouple the 2 biggest economies is not a healthy long-term strategy. It will create more inflationary pressures for all. America’s anti-China rhetoric since Trump will come back to bite its ass. By not firing a single bullet, China has conquered many parts of the world (eg. Africa, Asia) via money politics. One belt, one road initiatives and generous government-to-government loans are diminishing America’s military might strategies. Its military lobby simply cannot allow this to happen.

Myanmar is the saddest story of the 3. How can a 300,000 persons strong military control a 55 million population? It had been closed to the world for 50 years before opening up less than 12 years ago. Signs are pointing to the country clamping up again very soon, to go back to the old ways of isolation. Most foreign investments have left the country.

The previous leader has been sentenced to increasing years of jail to silence the opposition. Civil war has started in regions around the country. All indications point to mass military suppression of the rioters for a very long time. I am so bearish that I quit my Myanmar consultancy job last Dec after 4 years. I cannot bear to see the destruction of what had been built up and feel helpless as an outsider who is unable to contribute anymore.

Myanmar looks like it is going back to dark times again as there are no possibilities of a strong opposition uprising. The military has the full support of China for strategic mutual win-win objectives. It is certainly depressing to see a country that is full of potential disappear again from the world map.

The 2nd comment that made me stand up was from the Clubhouse app chat room I listen to daily while exercising in the mornings. It is such a profound and simple message. “We RISE when we LIFT others up”. Help others from the good of your heart and expect nothing in return. The reward is satisfaction and warmth in your soul. I strongly believe in paying it forward. One should count our blessings daily and help others as much as we can without any expectations of returns to make it more enriching and fulfilling.

Just like to end my weekly blog with a recap of my agenda for the rest of 2022. The class reunion has just concluded and I think we all had a great time catching up with childhood schoolmates again. I am looking forward to a short trip to Bangkok with my older son and wife in mid-Sep to spend quality time with him before he goes back to the UK for his final year of study.

I signed a new consultancy contract this week with a firm that excites me with its possibilities. It has solar, ESG and Fintech all rolled into one. The CEO is also trying to create a viable carbon credits trading platform using crypto/blockchain technology. These are the things I have been preparing to pivot into for the last 4 years of lifelong learning which I can hopefully apply. This may result in a full-time role next year too.

I have also been accepted into the Rise 2.0 FinTech program which will be for 10 weeks. The target start date will likely be just after my BKK trip and goes into mid-Dec. Then we have a planned family vacation to France to end the year with a bang.

The next 4 months have been planned and will keep me busy with various projects as a result of planning and luck since Apr. I am positive that my lifelong learning at halftime will bear fruit as it energizes me in the near future.

And the “Post-CPF” reunion party is finally over on Thurs evening. It is a completed project for now until the next one, which may be in 4 years when we all hit our 60th – another big figure change event…

The whole planning process started in early Jun as my previous co-organizer and I had the same view that it could be time to do a reunion again as we move into the Covid endemic stage for good. The last one was held in 2016 when we turned 50. We had promised to do the next one when we turn 55 in 2021 and can collect CPF, but that was not meant to be. That is why we named this reunion a “Post-CPF” party.

We polled our schoolmates to get a sense if there is any interest as the virus had already locked us up for more than 2 years already. It was a gamble we had to take to decide if we wanted to press the button to proceed. Another group of classmates from a school police uniformed group (NPCC) tried to do it last year but had to cancel it. They eventually resorted to selling the T-shirts they had already printed to recoup their sunk costs.

Once we felt that the interest was high enough, we kickstarted the search for a suitable location to hold the event. This took a few weeks while we fixed a date in Aug. It should be sufficient time with a 2 months heads-up for everyone to diarize into their busy schedules.

We found a venue after asking for a few quotations and physically visiting the top 2 candidates to check them out before finally deciding on the one we wanted. We then had to put down a 50% deposit to secure the date we wanted. The quote was for 100 pax with a dinner buffet and with taxes, it was $66 per person. Coupled with door gifts and other costs, we decided to charge $80 per head. At the last reunion we had in 2016, we charged $60. So with raging inflation now, I guess this was a workable number. The buffer was for door gifts and other expenses, plus the invitation of teachers to join us at no expense to them. As we are doing this on a pro bono basis, all surpluses (if any) will be donated to the school fund.

Then there was the anxiety of Omicron transmission in enclosed indoor environments for large crowds. The only option for us after paying the deposit was to postpone the event to a later date. So to assure everyone, we told them that we will be providing weekly updates as part of a marketing campaign to keep everyone abreast of the latest situation. If the venue and authorities implemented new curbs, we would have to follow accordingly.

My generation of 56 years old uncles and aunties are not too tech savvy nor appreciative of social media. Most have a distrust of placing too much faith in sharing private information with the world. Our main medium of information dissemination was via the 2 Facebook groups created for our secondary and junior college years. Then we set up a FB event page to track interest (“Going’, “Interested” and “Share” options) so that we can plan the logistics nearer to the date to commit a minimum number for the dinner buffet.

The other way was to send good old traditional emails to a growing DL: distribution list. Then someone complained that they don’t want their email address to be seen by others and so we had to BCC the entire list. We now have 200+ email addresses to send to.

Then the spamming started. 2 months before the 18 Aug actual date. I created a marketing campaign to provide weekly Sunday updates. The aim was 2 fold: to provide information if the event would proceed/postpone and to hype up the excitement into the actual day. Because I had to ensure that we had a wide audience network, each message had to be sent 4 times. 2 via the FB groups (class of RI 1982 and RJC 1984), once via the FB event page and finally 1 more to the email DL list. If one belongs to all 4 channels, then the person will be spammed with the same message 4 times LOL…

Into the final days of the event, I did daily spamming (Mon to Thur) on the expected agenda and location details etc. That evening, someone told me that he had to come because of my spamming 😉 Well, I guess they can delete or block my spam messages if they had wanted to…

Finally, the day came. I went a few hours earlier to help prepare for the event. We needed to decorate the room and set up the registration desk. Fortunately, we had a group of volunteers who kindly agreed to come early too. At 6 pm we welcomed the first guests. The school also sent some students to interview some of our attendees and the head of the Alumni club came to check us out too.

The 4 hours passed by pretty quickly and we were done by 10 pm. Everyone had a lot of fun reconnecting with old childhood friends again. I see so many happy faces and hugs amongst classmates who have not seen each other for more than 30+ years. This is our reward for organizing the reunion. It warms my heart.

Spamming – that’s why some came LOL

The last-minute surge in attendees based on previous reunion trends was not reliable and did not happen this time. It was the opposite. We expected 110 to show up but only 96 eventually came as there were a lot of last min cancellations. Thanks to Covid, some were still uncomfortable with big crowds. All the teachers who are now in the high-risk group sent their apologies, even though we had invited them to attend for free. Others were more cautious as they had a cough or flu this week. It was totally understandable.

We had a lot of leftover door gifts which we sought to sell away at the end of the evening in order to break even. We had guaranteed the venue a minimum of 100 persons for the dinner buffet. There were also other additional costs associated with the event, like door gifts and decorations. Luckily, we managed to just barely break even. Some had also kindly offered to top up more to help and we thank them for their offers which were eventually not needed.

Well, this reunion is a wrap now. We will update our database from the attendance forms filled to use for the next reunion. Hopefully, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we should be able to have another one in 4 years’ time as we celebrate our big figure change to our 60th in 2026.

I think I have a most unusual hobby in the world – I like to organize class reunions :-0.

Over the last 10 years, I had done 4 and one is coming up next week. Most are for my secondary and junior college class of 1982/84 and one for my university cohort. Each reunion gets more elaborate due to encouraging positive feedback. Generally, we have at least 100+ attendees except for the uni one that was only 28.

It started in 2012 as I was trying to find new meaning to my life after suddenly being retrenched from my 19 years at an American bank. I was busy trying to get interviews for a new job, doing more than 60+ one-on-one face-to-face interviews over 10 months. I needed something to relieve me of my job hunting stress.

Meanwhile, I had a lot of time on my hands in between interviews. Organizing reunions became a way to direct my energies away from the depression I was feeling after being cut off at my knees at the height of my banking career. I decided to throw myself into this new initiative and single handedly organized 2 reunions within a span of 3 months.

The first was in May 2012 and it was a smashing success as we had a good turn out (RI/RJC – May 2012). The second one for my uni batch (BizAd – Jul 2012) was less well received and we only had 28 people. We all had a good time for both gatherings as we reconnected with old childhood classmates again. The flow of food and drinks certainly helped.

This started my purpose driven motivation journey to organize more reunions. Seeing the happy faces of classmates who have not met for years suddenly laughing over the many crazy things we did as kids was so fulfilling for me. While the gathering is over in a few hours, the reconnections continued long after the event. Many who had left S’pore had also made their way back home just to attend the reunion and it really warms my heart.

It may be due to the fact that we are getting older as nostalgia becomes more important and there is a greater appreciation of it. Almost 40 years ago, we were young and carefree without a worry about the future. There was no handphones or computers and even internet in the 80’s. I sometimes wonder what we did in-between all the free time we had as social media and youtube videos were non-existent then.

My regret is that I should have done more in my student days with better time management. On hindsight, I had alway admired the ones that could do everything and were also all-rounders. Good at sports, studies and even had time to be a counselor. Amazing!! I wish I had a mentor to guide me then to help me optimize my full potential. I am trying to do that now as a mentor to undergrads to pay it forward to fill the gap I had then.

There were 2 more reunions in 2015 and 2016. Each became grander than the last as I gain experience in using social media like Facebook and roping in another person (KT) with the same motivations as myself to want to do it. We invest our time and effort on a pro bono basis and also bear the financial risk as we only collect payment at the door on the day of the event. If there is a surplus at the end of the day, it will be donated to the school fund for students. The amount may be small but it is the thought that counts.

For the 2015 reunion we featured a classmate who had an unusual life journey, taking a road less travelled. He went to Kenya to do charity work in 1995 and started a foundation to improve the lives of villagers in the Tana river delta region. He makes a trip back here annually to collect donated clothes and used school equipment to pack them into containers to ship back to Kenya for distribution to the people. A classmate suggested that he participate in the reunion to create greater awareness to his foundation. His higher calling is such a noble cause.

We decided to do another one in 2016 because it was the year we all turned 50, the halftime marker for us. We had a big birthday cake to celebration all our birthdays with some teachers whom we invited to join us. The Alumni office had managed to digitize our secondary school report cards and suggested that we print them as a unique personalized door gift for attendees. That was memorable, seeing my 13 year old face and my so-so exam results LOL…

After that reunion, we promised to take a break and do the next one 5 years later when we hit 55 and are able to touch our CPF monies. It was suppose to be in 2021 but then Covid happened. As we reached Jun 2022, KT and myself had the same thinking that maybe the time has come for the next reunion.

We polled our classmates to get a sense of interest and decided that there is enough momentum to go ahead. We decided to call it the “Post-CPF” reunion party now. The FB event page was created and we started a weekly marketing campaign to drum up interest via social media and email distribution lists. Hopefully, the messages go viral and the outreach is widened.

As of now, we expect about 110 to attend. Like previous ones, there could be a last minute surge in RSVPs that would make our logistic planning very tricky as we need to finalize everything, especially food, 3 days in advance.

Today is T minus 5 days to the reunion. We are at the final leg of planning and nearing the finishing line with many moving parts. We have a core group of volunteers that are critical to make this reunion a success. It is an invigorating experience to plan and hopefully our efforts are appreciated. Most importantly, everyone should have fun as we treasure the new fun moments with our childhood buddies. Auspicium Melioris Aevi!

A while ago, I wrote about the craziness of the American gun culture. Faced with so much evidence and violence, they continue to advocate more guns as a solution and refused to adopt common-sense regulations to reduce senseless killings. We will never understand them as their form of democracy and first amendment rights seem too alien for us outsiders.

In America, conflict is encouraged and debates can now go violent in these Trumpian times where fake news is anything you do not agree with, even if they are facts that can be proven in court.

Internal politics is sometimes interesting to an outsider like me. They can fight all they want as it is their country. But sometimes their actions affect the rest of the world and the logic is warped with a heavy dose of self-interest.

This week, it is about Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. I see it as totally unnecessary and provocative and only done to serve the interest of a minority. Stepping on a dragon’s tail and not expecting a response is utterly stupid.

China had given multiple warnings about the visit but the Americans continue to poke and fan the anger. Now we will see China’s reaction in full view with the triggering of the 4 days war exercise as a lesson on how they can surround Taiwan and take it over. Six exercise regions around the island plus missiles were fired across the country. There was the use of their most advanced aircraft and supersonic missiles as a show of force.

Biden is now seen as a lame duck president for not having the balls to order Pelosi to postpone her trip. This was just after a one-on-one talk with Xi the week before who was also explicit about the likely consequences of the trip. Then we see the administration scrambling later after the visit to try to contain the situation. Totally unnecessary.

Pelosi was a long-time anti-China hawk since her Tiananmen visit 31 years ago in 1991 as a young congresswoman. Perhaps this urgency of the visit is to cap her political career, being 82 years old now. There could be another political angle to this too. The GOP opposition was unanimous in their support of her trip. Ahead of the Nov midterm elections, this could be a ploy to negate the argument that Democrats were soft on China.

There has been too much China-bashing in recent years from everywhere, encouraged by the Americans. We outsiders can see many one-sided arguments while China’s point of view remain silenced. Yes, both sides are sometimes wrong, but biased reporting is jarring.

America seems to be very threatened by a competing rising superpower and is making all attempts to slow down or stop the inevitable. The use of military power is all they have ever known and here comes the new kid on the block that doesn’t use a single bullet to achieve that aim.

China uses soft power to win over countries while trying to win them over. With initiatives like One Belt One Road, they rely on their recent confidence in building new infrastructure to expand their area of influence. America on the other hand promotes its huge military industry and continue to start conflicts to feed the need for more weapons. Look at Ukraine and the flooding of American weapons to fight Russia. It is boom town Charlie now for companies like Lockheed and others American manufacturers with a flood of new orders even as expiring equipment is being “donated” to Ukraine.

China refuses to condemn Russia and tries to stay neutral, even going to the point to not supplying drones to them. But the continued push by the Americans to press China’s hot button will move them away from positive global initiatives. They have just announced that China will stop all work with America on climate change, military and business cooperation.

With inflation due to the Ukraine war and supply chain bottlenecks, the last thing America should do is to further alienate another global super power partner and flex its muscles when it does not have to. China will now prefer to look inwards to its own economy, rather than depend on overseas demand alone.

It is already working with Russia to try to break away from the overdependence on the US dollar and the Swift financial system by creating an alternative currency like the RMB or a new digital blockchain linked CBDC.

America looks like a mess now. The right-hand does not know want the left is doing. Everyone is jockeying for political power. No wonder Andrew Yang has decided to create a 3rd party called Forward recently. GOP and the Democrats simply cannot and do not want to work together for the common good of the country. They rather talk down or shame the other side instead of doing good for the citizens.

As an interesting aside, with the help of the US after world war 2, Taiwan had marked out their ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone – see map below). If you look at it, you will notice that it encroaches on mainland China, covering cities like Xiamen and Fuzhou. Technically, if China flies its fighter jets in its own area, it will enter into Taiwan’s ADIZ. China recently did try to draw up a more equitable ADIZ but it was not well received.

After Pelosi’s visit, China announced 4 days of a military exercise that covered 6 regions (see the pink boxes on the map below) which surrounded Taiwan as a show of force and what a future invasion would look like. China’s hand was forced as its many warnings fell on deaf ears and it had to react accordingly.

This escalation of tension is totally avoidable. The trip could have been delayed for a while or cancelled. It serves no purpose to further isolate China while the rest of the world is putting pressure on Russia to stop the Ukraine war and try to bring down inflation. There is much downside risk with little to gain. Americans are crazy to want to trigger this new tension.

It will be Aug soon and we only have 5 months left to the year.

It has been an interesting and difficult 2022 for most of us as markets turmoil and aggressive rate hikes curb the excesses of loose monetary policies since the 2008 GFC. Weak portfolios aside, there is a window of hope that markets might recover by early 2023 after some big event risks late into the year (mainly happening in Nov) as I had covered in my previous blog.

I had been actively working on my game plan for the near future since returning from my New York trip in May. The stars seem to be aligned and hopefully it would be bearing fruits soon as planned.

When I came back in May from my vacation, I was wondering “what’s next?” for my halftime journey. I had finished a 3+ months full time course with the School of Computing’s NUS Fintech coursebecause I had wanted to get deeper into the nuts and bolts of the technology to see if I am up to it. There were also a number of classes like algotrading and smart contracts in the later modules which interest me.

My conclusion after that course is that it is quite difficult at my age to pick up tech skills like coding and cloud computing. For most of the classes, I was lost by the time we were midway into the lesson. The younger classmates seems to be able to pick them up easily. I do not have a competitive edge against the tech savvy younger generation. I then signed up for 2 more classes in Jun and Jul to understand the power of Excel and Tableau for greater data visualization as these were linked to a goal I set for myself in my 2022 New Year resolution list in Jan.

Look back to the courses I did to date, I guess I have to pivot to Fintech using my other strengths as my weakness (getting on par for technical IT skills) will not make me stand out against the Millenials. My main strengths with be my past banking experience, people management skills and the ability to think like a C-suite manager to get tech projects done. I can be a successful bridge between senior management and developer for Fintech projects.

I then signed up for the RISE 2.0 program https://bcg-rise.com/rise-2-0 by the Boston Consultant Group (BCG) which I had recently completed the aptitude and interview stage. The new format is a compressed 10 weeks of full time study versus RISE 1.0 last year which was for 6 months. It fitted nicely to my expected schedule for 2022 which I will explain later.

I had also applied for IBF’s TFIP program https://www.ibf.org.sg/programmes/Pages/TFIP.aspx again this year as I was unsuccessful in 2021. It is a full time training program followed by an attachment to a Financial Institution which last from 12 to 18 months. It has a very attractive allowance to help citizens do a mid-career pivot to switch into a Tech career. I chose Business Analysis and Agile Project Management this time as we can only pick 2 and I believe that they can leverage on my strengths as I mentioned earlier. The aptitude assessments has just been completed and the next round will be the interviews with the chosen FIs. Shortlisted candidates will likely begin classroom trainings in late 2022.

2 other things came along to occupy me for my remaining 2022 timeline too. The first one was the revival of the idea to do a class reunion post-Covid. The last one was held in 2016 and we promised to do it again when we turned 55 but that could not happen last year. Given that the pandemic had decisively moved to an endemic phase now, we decided “why not now?”.

Reunion planning kicked off in May/Jun. We looked for feedback to gauge interest before securing a venue. Then we started a marketing campaign in FB and via email to encourage people to sign up. I am very excited to return back to normal with big group gatherings again and to celebrate nostalgia with childhood friends again.

The second thing that occurred: I had very interesting exploratory discussions with 2 old friends on possible business opportunities. One concerning fund raising that may happen in late Sep in S’pore. He is based in HK and may need someone to help with the contacts and arrangements. We will discuss more as we reach the dates as he is also planning to join the reunion in mid-Aug.

The other discussion was more fruitful. It resulted in a consultancy contract that will start in the last quarter of 2022 which may evolve into a full time job sometime into Apr 2023. It has an ESG angle linked to the production of solar panels which may lead to carbon credit as a financial product. This excites me on the many possible opportunities that has yet to be explored. It can result in the creation of a new ecosystem that is win-win for all and whose time has come. The recent horrendous scorching weather was a reminder that climate change is real and staring at everyone’s face as we see record historical high temperatures everywhere.

With the above, I think my 2022 calendar is pretty full now. I just need to ensure that the timings line up. I would also want to fit in my family’s expected vacations – a short BKK trip in Sep followed by a longer Europe one into Christmas at year end.

So the timeline is as follows: Class reunion in mid-Aug, have a short BKK vacation in mid-Sep, start RISE 2.0 for 10 weeks from late Sep into early Dec, start my consultancy project in Oct and see how the TFIP application goes.

Meanwhile, I would also be looking to fine tune my portfolio to hopefully catch the pick up in early 2023 as the Fed pumps the accelerator again to prevent a recession.

I strongly believe that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Doing nothing is not an option. I want to constantly drive my halftime journey to the way I want it to go. There are times when nothing seems to be happening. But if I continue to push and explore, new doors will open ahead of me.