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The Americans are really crazy. Non-stop multiple mass shootings only happen there and nowhere else in the world. And what do they do? Inaction for the past 20+ years and to deny the facts and reality. It has become even more frequent and predictable.

Let’s look at the statistics first. Between 1968 to 2017, there were 1.5 million firearm deaths in America. That’s higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the War for Independence in 1776. In 2020 alone, 45,000 died at the hands of a gun, more than any year on record and it was a 43% increase from 2010.

Year to date 2022 (Jan to May), there were 213 mass shootings which included 27 school shootings. The latest school shooting is the 554th one since the Columbine massacre in 1999 ie about 25 per year. How the hell does a parent feel safe as they send their kid to school daily? Why is it only in America that school kids have regular drills to practise for mass shooter incidents? Guns are now the leading cause of childhood deaths in America, even topping car accidents.

The latest school shooting: a craze 18-year old killed 19 children and 2 teachers in a cold-blooded matter after shooting his grandmother. A survivor heard him telling the murdered kids, “It’s time to die now”. The killer worked at Wendy’s to save up $4k to purchase 2 AR15 assault weapons the moment he turned 18 a week ago. And this was just 10 days after another crazy 18 year old kid went to Buffalo to shoot and kill 10 persons of colour in a supermarket while sparring and apologizing to a white cashier. White supremacy and replacement theory nut case.

So it seems like you are only safe in America and stands a higher chance of survival if you are white. All other races are game for mass shooters. America as a country has the highest per capita ownership of guns that is twice the number of the next 2nd country. Why do they need so many guns for? Why is there a fetish for semi-automatic assault weapons meant for war?

So what is the solution now? More guns!! Every pro-gun idiot wants to encourage everyone to arm themselves to the teeth. They even suggest that schools should be fortified fortresses and make all teachers carry a gun to school. This is madness!

The 2nd amendment right to carry arms has been taken to ridiculous levels. The forefathers were talking about muskets and pistols hundreds of years ago, not military-grade assault weapons of mass destruction. Texas, where this school shooting happened, actually made it much easier to purchase guns late last year.

Elected officials can’t seem to get their act together to try to prevent this from happening again and again. GOP and Democrats blame each other. Republicans are so full of NRA money that they oppose gun reforms or tighter security checks, let alone doing the easy step to raise the minimum age of gun ownership. There are many things you can only do at 21 or need to apply and qualify for a license but yet 18 year olds currently can still easily obtain an assault weapon of choice.

Senate filibusters and the need to get 60 votes means that passing gun reforms are dead in the water even before they are proposed. Democrats have a slight majority (50+1) and need at least 10 GOP senators to pass the new policies. But the GOP votes as a block and refuse to budge or even try to negotiate a compromise.

It ironic that GOP is fighting Roe Vs Wade to protect the unborn babies, yet they refuse to protect the young ones that are already born. It is an outright contradiction. Wouldn’t making it harder for young teenagers to buy AR15s by raising the required age to 21 be a simple stop gap measure? No, they want more guns and make it even easier for everyone to own more guns. Madness!!

Americans are proud of their freedom and democracy but shouldn’t they be ashamed that they have the most number of gun deaths in the world? Inaction for more that 10 years after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and nothing has changed. Schools are no more a safe space but a soft target for innocents to be slaughtered.

90% of all Americans support some form of gun regulation but are held hostage by the minority and pro-gun lobbyists. The elected officials are not listening to the will of the people. They are blind to the violence and only worry about their re-elections. The current state of affairs is truly pathetic for a country that calls itself a superpower. It cannot seemed to get its act together for this specific national disease.

Nothing changes. We await the next massacre. Picture this: A mass shooting happens in a gun-friendly county and all the residents whip out their guns to try to shoot the perceived shooter, turning it into a Wild West movie set shootout. The police come in and see so many people with guns. Erring on the cautious side, the police assume that all are active shooters and proceed to mow down all of them with gunfire. The casualties will be horrendous. A shitshow is in the making and is likely to happen sometime in the foreseeable future.

Are we on track to get back to normal again after more than 24 months of the once in a lifetime pandemic? What is a Normal anyway? Does the Old even exist anymore?

Everyone is trying to figure out how to get back to the previous way of doing things but yet this episode had totally changed our perception of the way things can be done going forward. We are likely to have a WFH hybrid model and business travel just doesn’t make sense anymore with Zoom calls. Why waste hours and days when everything is just a video call away? It boggles the mind to remember how inefficient we were at doing business in those pre-Covid days.

QR codes, contactless payments and contact tracing have accelerated tech adoption in a big way. Even the uncles and aunties have to pick up the skills, or else they cannot utilize the CDC vouchers nor go visit the wet markets anymore. Tech adoption has accelerated tremendously over the last 2 years. I even was impressed about myself being able to finish 2 full time courses (6 and 3 months of classes, project work and tests) totally over Zoom without ever physically meeting my classmates…

Now that Omicron is behind us and that we have a very good chance of getting out of this Covid nightmare, everyone is rapidly trying to get back to a resemblance of the way things used to be. We managed to do a recent trip to New York cautiously as restrictions were relaxed. Now we are told that for those that had the vaccinations with boosters, getting Omicron perhaps will provide the best additional protection from future variants!

I had been a sucker on organizing class reunions for more than 10 years. Somehow I enjoyed the planning process and seeing people getting nostalgic to meet up again after leaving school eons ago. The last one we had for our secondary/junior college (class of 1982/84) was in 2016 and we had a birthday cake to celebrate all our 50th together. We had 128 attendees that day. The thinking was to do another one again in 2021 to celebrate our milestone of being able to withdraw our CPF at 55. But that did not happen, thanks to Delta.

My co-organizer and partner in crime met up recently for breakfast and talked about the possibility of finally being able to do another reunion again. We might call it “The year after CPF withdrawal Reunion” to reflect on our age and nearing retirement. We decided to kickstart by polling our classmates via our FB groups and email. The response was generally positive. So at least it confirms that that everyone is getting more nostalgic with age and are itching to hook up again to talk about the good old days.

Now comes the tricky part for the planning of the logistics. We targeted a mid-Aug date at the earliest. It will also provide sufficient heads up to everyone to lock in the date. But before we officially anounced the date to everyone, we need to check out possible venues and book a location. Post-Covid, this is the toughest thing to do now. Thanks to inflation, prices are higher and there are still some restrictions left for large group gatherings. We decided to asked our classmates for leads and recommendations and a few kind souls have responded.

We may all have to wear masks during the event and have sit down meals instead. We have started contacting some places and asking for quotations. The other issue that pops up: in the unlikely situation that the event has to be cancelled, we might lose our deposit. It happened to another group of friends last year and they had to sell all the T-shirts they had printed for their event to recoup their costs.

We are thinking of perhaps asking for a token booking fee upfront from those that indicated that they are coming. This shows commitment and also reduces our financial planning risk. With epayments like PayNow available, this logistical part could be handled better now. Let’s see how this will evolve as we try to lock down the venue within the next few weeks.

My NUS FinTechSG course finished in early Apr after about 3+ months. It was a good deep dive intro by the School of Computing but a bit too brief and intense at times for a non-IT guy like me. Time to look forward to what I should do next for my lifelong halftime learning journey.

Luckily for me, the government funding for mid-career switchers like me was renewed for this year and most of the new courses will be launched in the May/Jun period. Time to do some homework and attend the briefing sessions to get a sense of what I want to do next. No sound or follow up from the Fintech e-speed interview I went to in mid-Apr though.

While I like to get into the more sexy topics like AI and Cloud Computing, my limited IT knowledge may be a problematic hurdle. I might have to lower my expectations and pitch for those courses and jobs which I can pivot to by leveraging on my past marketing experience. Let’s see how it will turn out. We plan to fail if we fail to plan.

Latest estimates are that the recent asset meltdown has whipped out more than $9 trillion of value year to date, much more than when the bubble bursted for the 2008 GFC or the 2000 Internet craze. This equal opportunity bear market had already caused the world’s 500 wealthiest persons to lose $1 trillion of their portfolios.

While it is comforting that everyone is also suffering one of the worst few months in recent history, had anyone seen it coming?? Bears have been shouting for more than 14 years since the massive easing by central banks to save the markets after the 2008 GFC. Is this it now or is this just another buy on dip strategy that has been so successfully played out over and over so many times? Are we heading to a recession or is the Powell put going to be activated again?

This is like a death by a thousand cuts situation where the frog in the pot is being boiled. While the slide in prices was over weeks, the dramatic drop still caught many by surprise. So many well know stocks are now less than a third of their highs now. Many others like Chinese stocks are only a tenth of their 2021 price. The savage bear had clobbered all asset classes and none were spared.

It was the turn of cryptos this week. They were supposed to be an inflation hedge but that did not work now. Even Gold prices are down. The trickle became a stampede when one of the stablecoin was threatened. Everyone decided to get out at the same time.

The main culprit? Luna token and Terra UST stablecoin. They are interlinked as the creators had devised an algorithmic mathematical process to ensure that the peg between them would automatically self adjust to maintain it. Until it didn’t work this week.

The value of Luna suddenly dropped off the cliff to become almost worthless in a matter of days as too much new supply was created by the algo and the selling exacerbated the price free fall. The suddenness of the action made it a shitcoin immediately. This in turn caused the Terra UST stablecoin to fall below its 1 to 1 peg to the USD to less than 30 cents. As UST was a stablecoin, it also affected USDT, one of the most popular stablecoins at the moment, threatened to bring down the whole crypto ecosystem.

All cryptos went into a sudden free fall which triggered more margin calls on leveraged positions, leading to more selling. BTC, XRP and ETH dropped like a brick as uncertainty within the market asked if the very foundation of the crypto markets was at risk. Crypto billionaires basically lost their shirts this week, losing from 60 to 99% of their wealth within days. And we are talking about big numbers here.

Let’s analyze the big picture now and try to make sense of where do we go from here. The 3 main macro themes at the moment are the Ukraine/Russia war, Oil price and China’s Covid response. By predicting what will happen to each of them, perhaps we can logically come to a better near term projection to help us adjust our investment strategy.

The Ukraine war has been going on for too long and Russia does not seem to be gaining ground. The US is openly mocking Putin by sending billions of new weapons to them. Every important American political person is lining up for flights to meet up with Zelensky every other day. Russia’s annual military budget is about US$ 66 billion and America is already promising at least $44 billion to Ukraine to date.

Russia’s tanks, ships and equipment are being decimated all over the cities of Ukraine with sniper missiles supplied by NATO, the US and other countries. Spring is coming and the roads become muddier for the Russian tanks to advance, even as they become sitting ducks for the shoot and forget anti-tank weapons.

The world has ganged up against Mother Russia. It is in a no-win situation while the war is costing them more than a few billion dollars per day. The forecasted short war has dragged on for too long. Latest rumours of a coup to get rid of Putin could eventually come true, besides talk that he is ill with cancer. I do not think Russia can keep this up any longer as they are running on empty soon. The nuclear option is scary for everyone and hopefully a rational solution prevails.

Oil prices have been struggling to go higher to stay above $110 per barrel. This level is too attractive for oil producing countries to ignore. Non-Russian producers will glading pump more to sell as it will also be seen as a pro-Ukraine stance besides earning more revenue. I sense that the US oil frackers will also be turning on their taps very soon as the price is above their breakeven cost of $55. Biden may be more sympathetic to them as it will also help to arrest inflation.

Oil had broken above $100 (high of 147) 3 times previously (2008, 2011, 2013) and dropped each time back to below this level quick quickly as suppliers rush to take advantage to lock in high prices for future delivery. Latest US inflation numbers last week surprisingly showed a slight drop. As long as the Fed is on track to raise interest rates by 50 bps twice in Jun and Jul, I think inflation will be well contained.

The past few weeks financial markets correction is actually a much needed pull back from all the asset bubbles that have been created during Covid. Newly created asset classes like SPACs and NFTs needed to come down to earth with their ridiculous pricing of “nothingness”.

Finally, we have China with its zero Covid strategy. There was a report that they are fearful of forecasts of 1.6 million additional deaths if they remove all Covid restrictions like the rest of the world. To be honest, the US has about 250,000 deaths related to the annual flu season every year for a population of 300+ million. China, with its bigger population, will therefore also have at least a million deaths from flu this every year anyway. The elderly do pass on annually regardless of Covid.

China has to weigh against being pragmatic versus being overly cautious to decide what is best for its people. Their supply chains have to be working to prevent citizen protests from getting out of control. They will have to let go of Covid restrictions eventually to rejoin the rest of the world.

In summary from the above 3 topics, I do see a return to normalcy for the financial markets soon. Perhaps it is a good time to selectively use up our cash reserve to buy on dips our favoured assets. I am still a crypto HODL and will aim to buy more of the top ones. I will need to do more research on stocks to carefully utilize my remaining free cash, given that my portfolio of Tech and China names had not been doing well recently.

Then again, as the markets have shown last week, sentiment may prevail over logic and we may again get another black swan. Like Terra Luna, the 6 Sigma probability event means that the machine ain’t suppose to be broken until it suddenly does.

The world had just bounced back from a once in a 100 years black swan Covid event. I have no doubt that it is resilient enough to weather this current bear market to come out stronger to face the brave new world.

Yes, we survived our New York vacation and returned home safely on Thurs to a country that has almost no Covid restrictions anymore. It feels nice yet strange that we are seeing normalcy for the first time in more than 2 years.

I was in New York for the last 2 weeks getting to know the city better again after my first and last trip there in 2005. My wife was there for a business trip and I tagged along for a vacation with my younger son who joined us from Paris. He was there with his med school classmates for a well-deserved group vacation which was delayed from last Dec due to Omicron.

The weather was erratic, hovering between 7 to 18 degrees Celsius with some sunny days and light rain but mainly cloudy and overcast. We signed up for a number of free walking tours where you tip the guide at the end based on what you think it was worth. This concept is very popular in Europe and previously, we had good experiences mainly in Italy.

We did the New York introduction, Financial district/Chinatown/Little Italy and Manhattan at night walking tours. Also visited the Statue of Liberty and the 9/11 museum monuments. Security was not as tight in 2005 as it has been more than 20 years since that unforgettable attack on the twin towers.

There were 2 main takeaways I had while there. Firstly, everything was so freaking expensive and chargeable!! Even leaving your luggage in the hotel after checking out was $5 per piece per day. The compulsory tipping was crazy as they want you to tip at least 20% as a service charge for all the bills. The total bill would come to you with the government tax add on of about 9% and a suggested tip of 18/20/25% to choose from, with the numbers breakdown to help you write it down before signing off. I rather they just add service charge upfront and be like S’pore with only 10%.

Dollar for dollar, prices were slightly higher than in S’pore but the USD/SGD exchange rate is 1.3800 making the final amount much higher for us in SGD. One cannot get a decent meal for less than $20 per person. A slice of pizza with a drink is the cheapest at under $10. Inflation is sky-high and it is reflected everywhere.

There was the other major takeaway I got from New York: Marijuana/Cannabis/Weed. I could smell it everywhere, especially while at Times Square and most public parks. Apparently, the city finally legalized recreational Marijuana last year and it has seen an explosion of business since then.

I see one-man stores being set up in the public parks, and food trucks selling weed candies everywhere. Every seller has a particular weed mix to push and you just get used to knowing the smell as it is in the air all the time. New York became the 15th state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana and many weed companies are rushing to open up in this new market space which is estimated to be worth $7 billion.

I guess this is a blowback to the last 10+ years of synthetic drugs thanks to the TV series “Breaking Bad”. The opioid crisis where the manufactured drug made addiction so severe. A gram of these impure manufactured synthetic drugs can kill you – Prince, George Michael etc. Hence I believe there is a return back to naturally cultivated drugs again. Marijuana at least is naturally grown and less likely to become fatal. The argument is that it is no worse than getting high on alcohol or smoking a cigar.

Covid now seems to be an afterthought after 2 long years of restrictions. The light symptoms of Omicron have encouraged most countries to reopen, even as new variants continue to show up. Everyone is fed up with lockdowns, masks and vaccine fights. Are we near the finishing line soon? Can I stop the weekly Covid count on my blogs? My blog today is week 114. Is Covid becoming harmless and like the common flu going forward? Can we move on back to the life we knew pre-2020?

We had a pleasant surprise during the trip when S’pore announced a relaxation of Covid rules from 26 Apr onwards. No negative test is required for entry into the country anymore after this date. That was a great relief for us as New York continues to be a hotbed for Omicron and the latest report indicates that 55% of New Yorkers probably already had Covid before.

When we were getting ready for our flight to New York to begin our vacation, a family member tested positive. We were worried that we could not get a negative test 24 hours before our SQ flight as that was the minimum USA requirement to board the flight. Thankfully, everything turned out alright and we had a great family vacation. The highlight was our short trip to Niagra Falls in Buffalo at the end of the trip. That ticked off an item on my bucket list – we saw one of the wonders of Mother Nature.

It was a strange and difficult week for the financial markets. The Fed finally hike interest rates by 50 points on Wed and DJI rallied by 900+ points as they promised not to have 75 points hike in the near future. Then all the gains were given back and more the next day as it fell 1,000+ points. Bonds and all asset classes fell in tandem on Thurs too.

There were probably a lot of margin calls as the weakness of the markets had been felt for weeks and this sudden shocking turn around was the last straw for a number of highly leveraged investors. Cryptos going into the weekend fell too as margin calls were further triggered into this 24/7 space.

We do know that the Fed is likely to hike another 50 bps twice in Jun and July but is this enough? It depends on the outcome of the Ukraine war which has been affecting oil and commodity prices. Sanctions on Russia could remain for much longer which could exacerbate the squeeze on raw material prices. Supply chain issues can get worse if China continues with its zero Covid restrictions.

It is difficult to decide if it is the right time to average down or if this is the bear market that we have been waiting for since the 2008 GFC. Rates have remained low for so long and it had inflated all asset classes. But can this cheap money trend be reversed as America pumped in 30% of new money to support the economy in 2021? The US Dollar is currently riding high as a safe haven currency but if it ever collapses, then it is game over for the financial markets.

Will China and Russia be able to move away from the global dependence on the US dollar now? That will be a tragic blow to the Fed’s magic printing machine if it comes true. This year has been off to a terrible start since Jan and more volatility is expected into this month. I wish I have a crystal ball to see into the near future…

I like to start off the blog to say that I regretted selling my Tesla shares a few years ago. If I had held the 200 shares I bought then till today, it would have been worth USD 1 million now, I kid you not.

At that time, pre-split, I was comfortably buying and selling within the $150 to $350 range. Until the mad man surfaced and started his Twitter tirades. He hinted that he wanted to take Tesla private at $420 and funding had been secured. It was not really true and the SEC came after him. He fought back and Twit even more messages, like a kid trying to defy his adult parent.

I decided to hit the exit button after that as I had no clue what he would do next. He was like an unhinged man on the verge of a breakdown and living in his own La-La land. I was unable to evaluate the stock fundamentally by then. Then the epic battle with the shorts happened and it was squeezed to $900. It stayed there for a while before surging again to $2,000. Then Tesla did 5 for 1 stock split. The new price become $400 and it then moved to $1,000 recently.

Assuming if I held my original 200 shares, it would have been 1,000 shares worth a cool $1 million now from a $30k investment, a 33.33x times home run. I would have been able to use some of the spare profits to swap my old 10+ years old car for a new Tesla 3 easily. A lot of funds who shorted Tesla all the way up left a trail of blood in their battle against one man with a vision. At the same time, a lot of believers of Saint Elon retail investors have now achieved the “Fuck-You” money to retire, thanks to this genius.

I finally read the book on Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance during my Covid quarantine in Oct 2020. I wished that I had read it much earlier and be converted to a hardcore fan before I decided to sell my shares. It opened my eyes to why he is the way he is. His brilliance is to think big and bet it all. He was a systematic strategist who could out think anyone once he put his mind to it. No problem was unsolvable once Elon is committed to it. Failures were learning experiences for him. So I decided to get in again at $600.

His SpaceX story was also fascinating, plus the Solar City acquisition as well. How can one of the original founder of PayPal pivot into Space and EV cars so successfully? SpaceX also has Starlink that provides internet access via satellites. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he recently offered StarLink to them within a weekend!!! He just sold all his properties and now wants to travel to Mars…

His nonsense is part of the appeal of someone who has been there, done it and now become the richest man on earth. He anchored a recent SNL (Saturday Night Live) comedy episode and revealed that he has Asperger’s Syndrome too, a form of Autism. That is why his mind is wired very differently from you and me but that made him capable of doing the impossible with sheer mind will power – his superhero power. He was also teasing people to buy a shitcoin crypto called DodgeCoin in the show which many bought into his words, me included. That didn’t end well though, but he was just kidding…. 🙁

He is one of the biggest stars on Twitter with 82 million followers. He doesn’t care what others think and loves to tease and troll his followers for fun. Recently, he asked them if he should sell 10% of his shares. Someone suggested that he donate funds to solve world hunger. He pushed back to say that if they can come up with a strong solution, he will donate $6 billion immediately.

Eventually, he did sell 10% of his Tesla stock holdings but it was due to the stock options that were granted to him a long time ago which was expiring soon. The Strike price was below 10 when it was issued to him while the current market price last year was $1,000. He was immediately saddled with a huge tax bill which he had to exercise the options and sell them straight away. For 2021, he will pay $11 billion to the IRAS. This will be the biggest tax payment on record in history for an individual in America.

He loves to keep his fans from guessing what is on his mind. Being the richest man now with a $260+ billion fortune helps. He doesn’t give a shit to anyone, even the SEC. His brain is wired so differently that he cannot take a “no” or “cannot” as an answer.

This week, he dropped a new bomb again. He talked about creating his own social media company a few weeks ago and then became the largest individual shareholder of Twitter. He had ideas on how he wants it to be run to optimize its potential. He originally wanted to be a board member and then decided against it.

Then he announced to the world that he might as well buy all of Twitter and take it private for a cool $43 billion instead. Talk about the balls this guy has… He wants to share Twitter’s source code to the public and create a level playing field for the freedom of speech where all voices will be heard. Just like the Clubhouse room “The Million Man Marathon” which I listen to daily – all views are heard from all sides of the spectrum. And he wants an “Edit” button on Twitter too LOL….

As one of Twitter’s biggest shareholders, the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal stated his opposition to Musk’s takeover bid. And guess how Elon responded? With a Twit, of course: “What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?” – to the country that rank’s one of the worst in the world for press freedom. Ouch and bad burn… the irony is scorching.

Elon might have grand plans for Twitter, but he might also walk away if his bid is rejected and therefore earn a nice profit when he sells his stake. Absolute power corrupts? This will be the ultimate test – the new owner is the biggest customer/mouth piece too.

On the personal front this week, I finally had the courage to pull out an unsalvageable tooth that had been bothering me for years. Root canal and crown done previously could not saved it. Implants next.

I finally completed my NUS FintechSG course and signed up for an e-speed interview with a potential FinTech company on Wed. I think the 10 minutes session went well but let’s see what happens next. Looking forward to finally having a physical meet up with classmates next week after 3 months of Zoom classes. Then its off to New York for a break, thanks to my wife’s business trip. I will be back in May to plan the next steps of my halftime journey.

Things are slowing returning to normal again. The last 2 years seems like a long nightmare we have just woken up from. Though it felt like such a long period of time, the last 24 months also felt like they have passed us like a blink of an eye.

S’pore is finally opening up and masks are not required outdoors while outlets are allowed to open beyond 1030 pm. I have been conditioned to go home and sleep early and I am not sure if I can have late nights anymore. Further relaxations are in store for 19 Apr.

Live music is allowed now and I went to the same venue last Sat to watch a band play where I watched my last performance back in Mar 2020. At that time, I requested the song “My Corona, I will Survive” (as a parody to “My Sharona”) as my private protest to the unknown virus. I had no idea that our world would be turned upside down for the next 24 months.

Going outside for a few hours while been trapped inside the house was the norm for a long time. My daily morning runs felt so precious as I breath the fresh air around me, wary of keeping a large social distance from anoth human being. Even going out for half a day was infrequent when we navigated the ever changing restrictions as the various strains swept through the world. Better to err on the side of caution in the absence of data before vaccines were available a year later.

This week on Tues, I finally completed a full day outdoors! Went to the gym in the morning, met friends for coffee. Visited the National Gallery and then my favourite Sim Lim electronic mall before heading to Dhoby Ghaut to do my regular blood donation. Came home by 5 pm filling very satisfied that I had done a lot that day.

My NUS FinTechSG course has also come to an end this week after 3 months of Zoom classes with 30 classmates. The 3rd module consist of 2 topics – Blockchain Smart Contracts and Algo-Trading. Our concept project presentation on voting using smart contracts, Blockchain, NFTs and Metaverse which I mentioned last week went OK. The trainer was a bit impatient to want to get it over with and felt that it will not work for countries as large as America. Oh well…

Overall, this course by the School of Computing enabled me to dive deeper into the technical side of Fintech topics. I struggled with Module 2’s DevOps/API concepts while trying to pick up HTML, CSS and JavaScript programming languages. It was a good intro for me into the nuts and bolts of FinTech as I don’t think I will will be able to do so if I tried to do self learning.

We would have a e-Speed dating-like interview session this week to meet up with potential employers. It will help me assess my marketability given my past experience and newly acquired skills, given the ageism disadvantage. Meanwhile, I have proposed a face to face meet up with my classmates next week as we have never done that at all throughout the course via Zoom. It will also be good to do some FinTech networking while celebrating the 19 Apr reopening too 🙂

Before I reassess my next steps game plan after the completion of this course, I will take a break for now. This is thanks to an opportunity to join my wife for her business trip to New York. We will be there in late Apr with our younger son.

The last and only time I was in New York was in 2005. I will now have the time to fully explore the city and feel its vibrancy coming back to life after Covid. Like us, they had battled the virus that had ravaged big cities. New York was one of the major epicenter of the virus. The residents did not know what hit them and they suffered a lot of casualities. It has a long history of fighting back (eg. 9/11) and I would see it first hand on how it is making a comeback and leaning to be normal again.

The Metaverse and NFTs are concepts that I was originally very sceptical about. Just like ICOs and SPACs, I think that they are a bunch of scams pretending to fleece the man in the street. My views have changed a bit this week though.

I attended a SmartNation event on the Metaverse and NFTs which our FinTech Prof had introduced to us. The 1.5 hours of presentations were chock full of information that opened my eyes to future possibilities. It also helped me to conceptualize my smart contract project which was incidentally due this week. I will elaborate on what I came up with later.

Actually, the concept of the Metaverse has been around us for a long time already. The many video games we play over our lifetimes will, like reading a fiction novel, transport us to strange new worlds where we are immortal beings conquering monsters to achieve a goal. Countless hours were wasted as we pretend to be something we will never be in real life to get that adrenaline high.

The Japanese developed Cosplay to further extend gaming into the real world where we will dress up and hide under the disguise. This cloak of invincibility can let us act out our deepest fantasies. I remember a number of fancy dress events I attended over the years. A few were memorable ones where my colleagues didn’t even know that I attended and asked why I missed such a great party the following week. No one knew that I was at the D&D undercover and it felt liberating to totally immerse into my character.

Many other examples abound. The 2018 movie “Ready Player One” was based on a book written in 2011 about the idea of full immersion into an alternate reality as the real world was in a depressive state. The game Second Life started in 2003 with the same idea and there were many others like SimCity.

With tech advances, the Metaverse is now ready to be taken to a whole new level and its possibilities are limitless. There is scalability and the sky is the limit as multiple worlds like Loki’s Marvel Multiverse alternatives. Having split personalities in the virtual world will be the norm. I can be a Wizard avatar in one and a raving psychopath character killing kittens in another. Living in the real world will be so boring in the near future if you can do everything in the virtual dimension.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are another recent new asset craze that has griped the world by storm. We see looney prices being traded for non-existent objects that uses Blockchain to track ownership. As I read more, I begin to understand that they can evolve into many other uses we are only just beginning to discover.

The event I attended had a speaker who was young and very in tuned to the NFT world. He is helping others to find value in this space and imagining new and creative ways to leverage on this new phenomenon.

Anyone can create a unique NFT himself while the ownership is trackable on the Blockchain. Artists can create one of a kind work of art aka Beeple style and continue to receive commission/royalties everytime the ownership changes hand.

NFTs can become status symbols because of the uniqueness of ownership. You can be in an exclusive members only club where entry is only possible when you present your NFT membership card. It becomes a utility token with exclusivity rights, like early bird entry into NFT purchases before the public can get access.

Though we can be flooded with limitless NFTs, some may become much more valuable than the rest. Therein lies the magic. That this can happen makes the acquisition of rare ones even more exciting. Just rich nerds with their crypto riches can spurge on these one in a million NFTs that one one can have.

This leads me to my FinTech group project. How can I utilize Blockchain, Metaverse, Smart Contracts and NFTs to resolve a current process that is creating unneccessary bipartisan tension that has trust, transparency and fraud allegations? Can we have a solution that uses Tech to solve an age old problem?

I will try with my voting concept paper – how can we make it better with technology? Can there be a better way to do this? Can we maintain voter identity secrecy while making the process more transparent with almost zero risk of fraud? Is a fully trusted solution possible with Blockchain?

My proposal at the moment is basically a macro big picture concept and there may be finer details that needs to be iron out. We have available IT with Cloud Computing to address various parts of the process, to strengthen security and improve trunaround times. This will in turn make it extremely difficult for scammers to penetrate as the window of opportunity is tiny and results are in real time. We can have an election done within 24 hours using mobiles and virtual reality (VR) tools.

On the day of election, all elligible voters will be notified to immidiately log into a secured app that uses 3rd party verification to determine if they are who they are. This can be in the form of Google Authenticator, AI/Facial recognition or a SingPass equivalent.

Once that step is done, a unique individual NFT is auto generated for the individual. This NFT linking to the person is recorded in a private blockchain ledger run by a trusted 3rd party eg. the voting commission. This step is 2 fold: (1) to mask the identity of the voter as voting is secret, (2) to ensure that only authorized individuals can past this first test.

But we go one step further using NFTs. The unique NFT is now uses as a utility token for the voter to enter into a Metaverse environment of virtual polling stations. Only a verified NFT can trigger an avatar that will allow the individual to vote.

Once the vote is cast, the info will be recorded into another blockchain which has a public ledger of smart contracts linking the NFT to the vote. A real person has therefore voted. This blockchain will be subdivided by location/township and the results (votes for candidate A or B) will be tabulated in real time.

This creates another layer of identity masking to protect the voter. It also provide the greatest level of public transparency as anyone can see the results in real time. The risk of fraud is zero as every individual voter is using his own mobile to complete the initial step and a VR tool to vote.

Millions of voters will have only have a 24 hours window to vote as the process has been greatly simplified and user friendly. The results will be instantaneous and real time. The Public Blockchain ledger is accessible for all to see. No one can have the ability to alter or influence the votes as it is encoded and forward building.

Workable? Some fine tuning needed – how to provide enough VR sets for voting? Maybe dumb it down to a gaming screen on a PC or mobile? It is now harder to hack as there are at least 3 independent Factor Authentication (3FA) that combined NFTs with the Metaverse. My presentation will be on Wed. Let’s see how it goes 🙂

It has been exactly 2 years ago in Mar 2020 that we started to shut down because of Covid.

It will be no April fool’s joke on 01 Apr that our country is finally telling the world that we are reopening for business and pleasure/vacation now! With a pre-flight negative test result, a totally vaccinated visitor can come to S’pore without quarantine requirements anymore.

Last week, further restrictions on easing were announced. 10 people will be allowed to gather for meals outside instead of 5. Mass gatherings for events will start to happen and masks need not be worn outdoors anymore. Some sense of normalcy is finally coming back after more than 24 months of lockdown limbo.

It seems just like yesterday in Mar 2020 when we were wondering what the Covid situation will develop into. I had started to wear a mask outside at the wet markets and some friends thought that I was being overly cautious. Mask prices shot up and I had to scramble to buy a box at $25. It is now back to less than $3 and even given out free if you buy a certain amount at the supermarket.

We know much more about the virus now. Vaccines came almost a year in Jan 2021 later. Most of us are well into our booster/3rd shot by now. Test kits are also easier to buy and use nowadays. Compulsory quarantines for all initially when you return to S’pore. You are even allowed to isolate at home now if you tested positive and it’s just for a few days.

We went through the alphabet for the virus variants, each became scarier than the previous one. Just when it seems that we have overcome Alpha, Beta came along. Gamma was thought to be less severe, then Delta came for the encore which really smacked the world upside down with its deadliness. We could literally see the Delta waves sweeping across the world as deaths piled up everywhere.

Everyone was scrambling to roll out the vaccinations even as the anti-vax voice came out in strong resistance. There were heated debates of both sides trying to call out the other. Are you for science or against it? Is there a long term effect? Too many opinions and not enough data history to show the effectiveness of the vaccines. Do you want to roll the dice and take a chance, or do you just want to improve your odds to survive the next mutation with the shot?

Omicron was the last to arrive late in 2021. All of us were surprised at how mild it was, given that it was 7 times more contagious than Delta. With version 2 BA2, it was spreading even faster. By now, we now have seen some relatives or immediate family members getting Omicron. There isn’t a stigma anymore and one just needs to isolate at home for a couple of days until the contagious period is over.

Getting used to ever-changing situations kept us on our toes and isolated at home most of the time. Over time, we adapted and trained to stay and work from home while trying to keep fit. Nightlife means watching Netflix and sleeping by 11 pm. Hopefully, Mother Gaia had a chance to repair herself during this time as travel was minimized. But evidence on Climate Change says otherwise.

Just as we thought we would get out of this mess, mankind has a way to maintain the tension. Putin decided to start a war. Tightening supply chains via sanctions will cause stagflation worries in the coming months. It is like getting out of the kettle into the fire… 1 month into the invasion and the fighting continues.

I like to remain optimistic that we are at the tail end of Covid, that the virus has mutated into a milder form like the flu in order to survive. Hence we should not be afraid that a newer and deadlier variant might emerge anytime soon.

The western world is trying to drag things out for Putin. The longer he remains in this no-win invasion of Ukraine, his resources will be depleted. Even as he might have miscalculated, this does not mean that he may not do something crazy as he gets more desperate. Hopefully, sane minds will prevail and he might find a graceful exit out of the mess he created.

I am into the final leg of my 3 month NUS FinTechSG course by the School of Computing. The first module was relatively easy with Design Thinking. I struggled badly with module 2 as a non-IT person trying to learn 3 programming languages within weeks – HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Then I jumped off a cliff trying to learn DevOps front, middle to back end integration. There were projects that I struggled with and had to seek help. But at the same time, it was refreshing to deep dive into new knowledge and concepts which I might not have been able to do on my own without the push from a structured course program.

The final module is the one that attracted me to this course originally. We will get to know how Algo-Trading works and learn how Smart Contracts are created. They will introduce me to practical tools I can hopefully use to enhance my investment strategies and better understand blockchain technology.

Finally, the course will also help us network into the FinTech space via e-speed dating interview sessions. Some of the fintech companies looking for people will present job opportunities to us. We will then connect if both sides are interested to explore further.

My goal over the last few years was to pivot my banking experience into a consultancy career. I now hope to do another pivot into the FinTech space based on the knowledge I have picked up in recent years via the courses I had completed. This will make me stay relevant in the fast-changing world as I embark on my next halftime journey. Where this will lead me, I do not know. I just am certain that I need to proactively plan ahead because if I do not plan, I will plan to fail.