Category: Uncategorized

A pretty quiet week of reflection for me, catching up on my readings and doing my online AI course. Two things stood out for me this week. It started my thoughts on life’s fragility, that what we usually take for granted may suddenly be pulled away from us. One may not realize its importance until we lose it.

The first happened early in the week. A Myanmar contact of mine whom I have worked with for the past 1.5 years had a heart attack. He was warded into the Yangon ICU unit and had to do a stent operation immediately as his artery was blocked. Another 2 more were also blocked and the doctors decided that he should not be moved to S’pore for treatment until his condition stabilizes.

My friend works very hard and he is the group CFO of a big company managing many subsidiaries. He is just a year younger than me. We finally got to know each other better when we attended a forum in BKK in Jan this year. We spoke about our kids who were about the same age and retirement aspirations. He was looking for a place in Asia to retire in 2 years time as he does not think he will go back to his home country, having worked overseas for many years now.

He loves his food and we were always encouraging him to exercise, but he has no time for this as he was a workaholic. He is fully dedicated to his family and was very close to his daughter. He wanted what is best for her and had sent her to Canada for her university education last year.

He is much better now and recovering. A health scare like this would be a wake-up call to most of us. Hopefully, he will realize that and come to a better work-life balance, eat healthier and exercise regularly. We have but one life to give and we should invest in our body as it is the temple where we should cherish and provide our offerings.

As we near mid-life, we need to prepare for the next 30 to 50 years. In order to have a quality senior citizen lifestyle, we have to put in the effort to maintain the body that is already battered for many years. By then, we are not a spring chicken anymore. Aches take months to heal and go away.

The 2nd event of the week concerns a younger friend who is going through a tough period of his life now. He is finalizing a divorce that was due to infidelity on his part. I have known both of them for almost 20 years, both as colleagues and good friends.

As an outsider looking in, I have been able to observe from afar the lives of this couple. They had also been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for many years. This stress had probably resulted in them drifting apart slowly over the years. They are more like good friends rather than being husband and wife. She was more trusting of the relationship and had been getting closer to church for support, after multiple failed attempts to get pregnant.

With busy careers, both travel for work often and may not see each other for weeks at a time. He was starting to feel lonely in the relationship and temptation seeped in. There was no turning back for her once she realized the betrayal which was going on behind her back for more than a year. Things got ugly and lawyers have come into the picture. There is regret now but the wounds are too deep for her. Only time will heal, I hope.

As I am closer to him, we have been meeting frequently over the last few weeks. We go for long morning walks to help him get out of his depressive state and contain his panic attacks. His remorse and realization of losing a life partner of more than 20+ years are starting to sink in. He is at a loss now, feeling really stupid and angry at himself for not treasuring what he now realized was important to him.

I can only try to hear him out as a friend and comfort him. Saying that time will heal. When old doors close, other new ones may open. He needs to refocus himself on simple things like a daily schedule in order to prevent himself from getting into a depressive state of mind.

The 2 events remind me again of the fragility of life. What we take for granted may oftentimes be suddenly taken away from us. We can only try to prepare for such times, constantly question our actions to predict potential future consequences. One needs to always know what is important in our lives, to treasure and prioritize them above all others. That clarity will drive a purposefully driven lifestyle which will maintain health and happiness.

 

 

I was lucky, I had 2.

Both happened in the first 10 years of my work career. With so many changes in bosses in the latter half of my work life, I might have gotten a bit jaded by then and I might already have set a much higher benchmark for future bosses. But these 2 still stand out for me in my 29 years in banking.

Both of these bosses helped shaped and solidify my beliefs and foundations of what a great boss should be like. You walk the talk, transparency is important, do not assume that bosses can read minds, periodic one on one sessions are critical and come prepared.

Both of them overlapped each other and it was around the mid-nineties, just before the Asian Crisis had happened. I was just out of school with only a few years of work experience, having just switched jobs from a local bank to join the American bank where I would stay for the next 19 years.

The first boss (F) was just 5 years my senior but he had a fire in his belly that was super infectious to all of us. He taught us to work hard but to play hard too. I remember one of his first team meetings well… He introduced himself and said that he was the captain of a ship. His goal is to direct the vessel and bring the team forward. If one member falls down for the first time, he will help to pick him up. If the same member falls down a second time and slows the ship, he will take out his gun and shoot the person.

That last statement made everyone in the meeting sure made all of us sit up in our chairs immediately. His message was crystal clear. We all have to be team players and given one chance to buck up, but we cannot afford to become a drag to the team after that.

He was hired from overseas to stir a sleepy team and invigorate the business. He sure did. I was energized to perform and laser-focused on what I needed to do after that. I frequently seek his counsel and he shared freely his thoughts and advice to whoever needs it. Even after he left for another bigger role overseas in less than 2 years, I continued to reach out to him periodically. Later, he did also helped me to secure a new role within the bank that eventually lasted me another 10 years. There is a part 2 to this story of how we worked together again later in my career, which I will cover later.

The other great boss (B) I had was soon after the first one. He was an all-knowing supervisor that seemed to always know more about the person before the one on one meeting had even started. He always does his homework before the meeting started, gathering information from all unlikely sources. He was a sharp inquisitor and in every session, I could feel that I was “brain-fucked”. He could question and probe till one just had to spill his guts out to him.

At this stage of my career, I was pushed off the cliff into the deep end because half of our team had suddenly abandoned the ship and moved over to the other corporate desk. As I was the longest-serving member (3 years) in the team, I became its new head by default. And then the Asian crisis arrived at our doorstep. With just a 5 man team and running the ASEAN treasury desk, I was stressed out of my wits.

He was always at the background, guiding me and giving me subtle pieces of advice. I learnt from him the phrase “I may be wrong, but…”. It made the suggestion more palatable and less confrontational. He supported me constantly even though others talk behind my back and indicated that I was too inexperienced to take on this supervisory role.

The unforgettable moment came in 1997 when the Indonesian economy was collapsing. My team made a trading error which was discovered at the end of the day. It did not help that on the same evening Suharto was rumoured to have had a heart attack. The USDIDR currency moved quickly from 3,000 to 3,900 within the day and it was a Friday evening. I was totally at a loss on what I had to do by then.

I requested to see B immediately to update him on the situation. One look at me and he probably knew that I was about to lose it. He calmly told me that it was OK, just go cut the position and call him any time over the weekend if I want to. To calm me further, he told me that he had bigger problems on his hands that run into the millions of dollars to settle.

I went back to my desk and liquidated the unwanted USD 2.5 million position. The loss was around USD 700,000. I could not sleep for the whole weekend and I expected to be fired when I return to work on Monday. It did not happen. Instead, B asked me to write an error report and tasked another seasoned colleague to review the episode to get down to the underlying issues to suggest procedural changes to beef up the system. This was to prevent a similar vent from happening again. Being short-handed was one of the main reasons – we had a non-professional clerical staff that was helping out and hence the error. I believe that this case and another case of mine (rogue Japanese Relationship Manager trading USDJPY) became textbook study cases of the private bank in the years that followed… 🙁

I am still in touch with B. He moved on to bigger roles and did very well, eventually became the CEO of Asia. He just retired last year and has recently started a Fintech company in HK for the new gig economy. An extremely likeable guy.

I believe that great bosses happen when the stars align themselves when the people and situations presented to us and the chemistry was right. It does not last long, at best a few years and then we all move on. But the treasured moments and memories shared in times of hardship and stress remain with oneself forever.

A previously great boss might not remain as one in the future, as people and conditions change over time. I had the opportunity to work with F again many years later as he opened up an opportunity for me after I was retrenched. By then, he was a changed man, being very bitter that life has not given him the opportunities that he had given others. This second round of working under him was extremely difficult for me. Ultimately, I could not even trust if what he was telling me was true or that he had a hidden agenda every time we spoke. Even my wife warned me about not believing everything he said. He lost all interest in his job and I had to figure out most of the things myself in a toxic work environment. Eventually, I had also resigned 9 months after he left.

I was lucky that in my 29 years of work career, I have had 2 great bosses. Some people may have worked all their lives without ever encountering one. I count my blessings. It is my wish that everyone should have at least one great boss in their working lives.

A strange thing that happened to me this week. A good friend suggested that I have a chat with someone that may have a job opening that could interest me. We met on Friday afternoon and the first thing she said to me was: “I read your CV. You could be my boss.” That about ended the opportunity discussion before it even started. So we talked about everything under the sun after that. She kindly offered to pass my CV to the group level for possible further chats. Well, that’s that then.

 

 

 

For human relationships, everything is based on trust. When that is gone, nothing else matters, even when faced with facts and logic. I will come back to that again later.

What a week this was, on the American political front. The dam is breaking on the Trump induced White House stonewalling of information. The deafening silence of the GOP party was finally broken by a lone voice, a conservative by the name of Amash.

Amash had fired off his first tweets last week and broke ranks with his party. He provided his views on the Mueller report that was based on his personal understanding after studying it for a while. He followed up with another longer tweet this week amidst condemnation by the Tweeter-in-chief  (“Loser!”) and fellow Republicans.

Amash then had a town hall meeting earlier this week in his county where he provided his views and did a Q&A session. I watched the video on youtube with interest. He was very calm and professional throughout. I was amazed that some attendees were just hearing this alternate view for the first time. They had only been listening to the Fox news echo chamber till now and had never heard about the arguments from the other side before. Note to self: I must watch Fox news periodically to understand the opposing views better in the future, however hard it will be.

Then within 24 hours, another big bomb was dropped as Mueller decided to give an 8 minutes impromptu speech to the world. He reiterated his report findings and stressed a few points he wanted to convey. He is still trying his best to stay politically neutral and confirms that he will resign from his post immediately. It was another crazy 24 hours as both sides try to spin the speech to suit their end games. Trump weighed in to emphasize the false narrative that he is innocent beyond doubt again.

The White House’s moves to turn down Congress’ requests for further information is also slowly being overturned. More evidence is leaking out. Pelosi wants a tight case before she will use the “I” word. It looks like they will move to the next step of holding an Impeachment Enquiry, to see if they have a case to proceed to the next logical step of impeachment. This would be a smart way to develop a strong, ironclad case.

Trump then lashes out to divert attention from himself by hitting Mexico with tariffs, trying to link that with the demand to slow down illegal immigrants flowing into America. Are they even connected?? These people are fleeing violence from their own countries. The irony of it all is that almost 50% of all guns causing the crimes in their countries are illegally obtained from the lax gun laws in America!! They should address the core issue of the problem while the NRA is opposing to further gun control. Having new tariffs would just cripple Mexico and hurt US consumers instead. It will not reduce immigrant flow.

Meanwhile, China is slowly but surely fighting back too. It will draw up a blacklist of names and treat them like how the US had treated Huawei. Its retaliatory tariffs against US goods has also kicked in today. The threat of restricting rare earth exports to America is also being shelled out as China provides 80% of its needs.

In all human relationships, trust is most important. Trump is breaking down these long term relationships with constant unpredictable and maniacal lashing outs. It is impossible to negotiate with someone when all trust is lost. How can one negotiate in good faith if the other side just wants an “I win,  you lose” endgame?

The same goes for personal relationships too. I met up with a friend this week who is going through the initial steps of a divorce. When one side discovers what had happened behind her back and loses all trust, then perhaps there is no point to continue on this marriage charade. Regrets are too late as the other side uncovers and realised about multiple occasions where this trust had been breached. I cannot imagine the pain being suffered now by both sides.

Work-wise, I had a number of calls this week with potential lenders to the microfinance firm I am providing consultancy services to in Myanmar. We have a 07 Jun deadline to aim for submission of lenders’ proposals to make use of a subsidy program called LIFT which will take over the FX hedging risk. I hope that we can successfully target half of the 10 names we spoke to.

I attended an aptitude test last night for the Data Analytics program run by IBF which I wrote about in my previous blog. As expected, I was the oldest guy in the room of about 60. My chances are getting slimmer… The 50 MCQ questions were not easy and most of the people there probably know way more statistics that I do. But at least I tried.

Going for my next half marathon tonight. The Sundown run is one of my favourites as it begins just before midnight, running into the night. It is a different running experience, as it is much quieter and cooler than doing it in the day time. Humidity can be much higher and it can get worse at night. It is always a nice feeling for me when I reach the finishing line in the dead of the night though to cheering loud music.

 

 

 

 

 

A shortened week due to a public holiday on Monday. Then it was off to Yangon for my monthly financial consultancy work from Tue to Fri. This was one of my longest trip for a while, having to spend 3 nights there. The agenda was packed with meetings and discussions with deadlines to work towards.

We had hired a Treasury manager who finally started in Apr. It was timely as there was a lot of work we needed to do, to line up the funding pipeline, track and complete the drawdowns of much-needed financing for our marketing teams to lend to the end clients as demand outstripped existing funds and capital.

It was good to know that much work has been done in the last 17 months and our loan portfolio has grown by a factor of 3 times. We have a more robust infrastructure for future growth, yet we are already starting to prepare for a digitalization road map and strategy to enable us to move to the next stage of growth.

It is so exciting when you see an energized senior management team leading a fast-growing company. We can literally see the fruits of our labour and feel the warmth of appreciative customers. To be able to help farmers get out of their poverty and living from hand to mouth existence is a reward unto itself.

We had 3 nice dinners of mainly western and Italian food with wines on this trip. The last night was especially memorable as our colleague brought us to the largest fruits and vegetables market in the evening. This market is open 24 x 7. Given that the country had closed itself from the world for 50+ years, the place was stuck in a time warp. While we can see progress as all shops were piled high with stock, the whole market seems unchanged and reminded me of photos of Singapore from the 1950s.

Things are brighter now since the country opened up about 5 years ago. People are eating better now and everyone seems to have a smartphone in their hands. The middle class is rising fast. Now that they have seen what the outside world can offer, everyone is hungry for more.

As my fellow consultant and I crossed into our second half, the rewards are less about financial. It is more about the satisfaction of seeing the company grow and that we can use our past experience to value add to the economy.

More FDI (Foreign Direct Investments) are starting to pour into the country again. The government is more aware of the bottlenecks preventing businesses from growing faster and becoming more proactive now. Infrastructure investments are also timely as the city cannot handle the modern load capacity and traffic jams are a given everywhere in the city.

The future is bright but I wish that the central government is able to capture the opportunities more aggressively as they have slowed developments for the last few years after opening up. I believe that its citizens are now ready to embrace the future.

I have been on a life long learning journey since going on gardening leave from my last banking job in Jun 2017. Since then, with the timely arrival of the Skillsfuture initiative to retrain mid-career PMETs, I have embarked on a path of self-discovery to plot my halftime road map.

I had written about the journey taken so far in my previous blog post so this week’s personal ramblings will be on the future, the next step. As I move deeper into new learnings that interest me and also to help me set a course to help pivot from my past experiences into a new niche, I cannot help but realise that this happens to be the future road map for all industries too. Getting ahead of the curve is very important.

As a global finance centre, Singapore has been very welcoming to overseas talent to build up its reputation as a premium banking location. The downside is that many citizens are displaced and replaced by foreign talent as this is an attractive place to be. It is at the heart of Asia where it is fast growing. With the advent of AI, more jobs will be lost to technology. We need to retrain and upskill to prepare for newer jobs that will appear in the near future.

The government has realised this and had started the Skillsfuture initiative to address it. I fully embrace this as it provides me with a lot of opportunities to upgrade myself. I need to be hungry enough to seek out my path, using the tools that have been provided. The website myskillsfuture.sg  https://www.myskillsfuture.sg/ already has more than 25,000+ courses where one can use keywords search to find a topic that you may be interested in.

What’s next? I am half way through my MOOC online course on AI in Finance. Thanks to a friend, he showed me the path to the next step. He was in the mailing list of IBF (Institue of Banking and Finance) and receives regular updates on developments in the banking sector and possible job opportunities. This was part of the benefits from the retrenchment exercise which he was unfortunately placed into about 2 years ago.

He forwarded an email from IBF to me a few weeks ago that prick my interest immensely. They have started a new Profession Conversion Program (PCP) along the lines of which I have been pursuing. https://conversion.mycareersfuture.sg/Portal/ProgramListing.aspx?source=PCP

What is PCP?

“Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) are career conversion programmes targeted at Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs), including mid-career switchers, to undergo skills conversion and move into new occupations or sectors that have good prospects and opportunities for progression.

• Place-and-Train: PMET is hired by a participating employer before undergoing training to take on a new job role.
• Attach-and-Train: PMET is provided with training and work attachments, in advance of job placement, through industry partners in growth sectors with good future job opportunities.”

In particular, there was a new launch on 4 areas of job demand and they had worked with a number of financial institutions to target 70 candidates for mid-career switches in the following areas: Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, Full Stack Development and Data Analytics. The duration was between 18 to 24 months and there was a full-time student allowance of up to SGD 5,500 per month. Not bad, right?

As I did not have the necessary qualifications for the first 3 and was already very into AI and Business Analytics (my recent Temasek Polytechnic Specialist Diploma), the natural choice was Data Analytics: https://conversion.mycareersfuture.sg/Portal/ProgramDetails.aspx?ProgID=P00000422

The group of us signed up for the first briefing session on 26 Apr. The moment the 4 of us entered the auditorium, we immediately raise the average age substantially….  hahaha. The room was full of 20 to 30+-year-old attendees and I felt so old. So I guess mid-career to them doesn’t refer to 50+-year-olds… Their briefing pitch was quite clear and they explained the screening steps required. Data analytics was the last topic of the session but I could not stay as we had a family outing to an Ed Sheeran concert that evening. The upside was that we found out that one of the lecturers was an ex-Citibank old-timer and she thought I looked familiar!

Our group sort of wrote off this IBF initiative after the briefing session. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It fitted into the grander scheme of things for my plan to pivot my 29 years of banking work experience into a newer and higher demand area of Big Data analyzing using AI concepts. What the heck, I thought to myself, I should just apply for it just for the fun of knowing I did. Yoda says: “Do or not do, there is no try”.

So a few weeks back, I drummed up enough courage, dust off my CV, updated it and sent out my online application. I included my recently obtained Business Analytics Diploma for greater impact. Maybe I should have added a cover letter too, but they did not ask for it specifically. So I figured that I should just let my experience do the talking instead. The closing date for online application was 31 May.

I was pleasantly surprised on Monday when IBF sent me an email requesting an interview on 31 May! I guess they liked what they see so far and want to get to know me better. I move to the next step with no expectations. I will aim to do this on my terms, hoping to marry this with my existing Myanmar part-time consultancy work. Let’s see how this will work out, one step at a time.

I will be going to Yangon next week for my monthly trip, then it will be a week of preparation for my next quarterly half marathon (Sundown).

I had slowly come to the realization that we are not a nation of book readers. Our top selling book list seemed unchanged for months on end. Crazy Rich Asia has been on the top 20 list for a number of years and most book positions hardly moved. There must only be a very small group of book readers then.

Bottom line, if you ask family members or friends, they will find it hard to tell you when they last picked up a book. It could be the social media onslaught, the Netflix/YouTube video buffet or just too much school or work-related distractions that simply occupy too much of our time.

Instead of dedicating an hour each night before bedtime to read a good book, most of us will probably be glued to our handphones watching videos or scrolling through our social media. I am guilty of that. There was a time when I was serving my national service in the army that I was reading one book a week to kill time. But they were mainly storybooks and there were no mobile phones or internet then.

In America, you can tell that they read a lot more as the best seller book list constantly changes. Authors do book tours and appear on talk shows to promote there books. They even have signing sessions at bookshops and millions of hard copies are sold. Everyone has a story to tell and if they have participated in an important event or knows of someone who has, they can put their writing skills to good use. Even aspiring wannabe authors can create ebooks online to give away or sell them for 99 cents to make decent money. There is a huge audience of avid book readers that are always on the lookout for the next book to read.

I thought that I read more than most people. I subscribed to business magazines and read widely. I needed to be updated on the latest financial news and constantly seek information. Whenever I had the time, I would be holding newspapers or magazines in my hand to read.

For my new year resolution this year, I had resolved to read 10 books for 2019. To date, I have completed 4.5 books so far. I list them in my Notes app and try to do a one paragraph summary to remind me of the books read.

2 months back, my old uni friend KT introduced me to a whole new world of ebooks which I could read for free. He told me about the app called OverDrive which we could download for free to subscribe to. Once in, we can link our NLB (National Library Board) account to the app.

I was amazed that our public national library has a stock of most of the latest ebooks. The best thing is that they will automatically be deleted from our devices once the book reaches the due date. No need to physically return the books anymore. At that time, I was reading the hardcopy of Lee Kai-Fu’s “AI Superpower” book which I had purchased for $26. When I searched for this ebook, NLB had 27 ebook copies available!! I could have saved my money and read for free!

My friend used this app to read 40 books last year and he showed me a summary of the books he had read. While travelling for business, he becomes a serious reader and cultivated a habit of borrowing free ebooks to read on his iPad. I was blown away and felt small as I only had a target of 10 🙂

I have started to introduce this app to a few groups of friends. There should be no excuse to read if the world is your oyster and the ebooks are free, right? Not true, because the person must first want to read more. I am a marketing guy, so I try my best to convince them. But ultimately, I should walk the talk. I should begin the reading habit myself. I should double my book reading goal this year to 20, yes?

 

 

 

Perhaps my timing was good or maybe it was the divine powers above that had led me to this data analytics to AI (Artificial Intelligence) journey. I have learnt a lot in this short 2 years ride but there is still so much more to absorb. The more I plug in the missing information gaps in my understanding of this subject, the more I become fascinated with what had been achieved so far and what can be accomplished in the near future.

After my last working day in my old banking job in Jun 2017, I decided to continue my learning journey in earnest. This initiative started in bits and pieces from 2012 with the discovery of Udemy and Coursera web portals which allowed me to study whatever interests me at that time. Social media topics were big at that time and being an active user, I went into topics like hashtag and affiliate marketing and even started my own blog. When I put my mind into something, I will usually stick to it stubbornly for quite a while (case in point: playing Pokemon Go).

By 2017, the stars had lined up for me to embark on the next phase of my learning journey. The government initiated Skillsfuture push was fully underway. It aimed to help older PMETs like myself, to learn new skills that were relevant to the current world, to reinvent ourselves in order to adapt to the realities of our disappearing jobs.

After completing a few fun courses like Wine and Starting a Business, I had to ask myself: “What’s next?”. How can I utilize my past work experience to pivot into another industry where I could possibly have an edge over younger and more tech-savvy competitors? How can I monetize my 25+ years of banking experience?

In my previous sales role in the American bank, we were developing CRM (Client Relationship Management) systems that were getting bigger and better by the year. We were constantly discovering new powerful tools to help increase revenue via the data mining of client information we had. As the system software is enhanced and improved, we could add in yesterday’s end of day information to the database and move towards real-time updates.

This planted the seed of data analytics in me as a next step. By using my past work experience, perhaps I can pivot into the world of data analytics to provide a business edge, by driving the optimal review process of a company’s database.

I searched around for appropriate Skillsfuture courses which suited my objectives. I also wanted to challenge myself, to see if I could perform outside my comfort zone. Finally, I found a course that checks all my boxes and as a bonus, it will lead to a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics.  https://www.tp.edu.sg/courses/part-time-courses/industry/ict-and-media/specialist-diploma-in-business-analytics

It was a 12 months long program that conducted evening classes 5 times a month. Because of my age, I also had a huge 90% subsidy for the course fees. I decided to jump head first into this without fear. It started in Sep 2017. As expected, I was one of the oldest students in a class of 26 that consist of younger and more tech inclined people.

The first 6 months were a struggle for me as I tried to grapple with alien IT concepts and new data mining software. Going back to school again was challenging, yet exciting. I felt young again and even looked forward to the assessments and project work, I kid you not!

Very soon the course ended in Sep 2018. By then, I had a taste of what systems are out there to data mine effectively. It also got my feet wet via projects that required presentation skills to bring across the findings in a persuasive way. This course brought me up to date on the huge possibilities of Big Data and the tools that are easily available to create models and spot trends. The human now has all these tools to play around with, to gather insights which the naked eye would not be able to detect.

Around this time, the Alpha Go phenomenon happened. https://www.alphagomovie.com/ Within months, the developers used newer machine learning techniques to develop a better version called Alpha Go Zero which basically utilized reinforced learning to learn and challenge itself. It eventually managed to completely defeat its predecessor (by 100 to 0 games). https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/ Within a year, it set off the new global nuclear race by China, which set a national directive and road map on how to become the world supremo in AI. With lots of data available and little privacy issues, China believes that Big Data is the new OPEC oil product to AI.

By this time, my interest in AI and machine learning had deepened a lot. I hunger to know more and also to plug the gaps in my knowledge of this subject. I took an introduction to Fintech MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) to familiarize myself with the foundations of this industry, before signing up for another one on AI in Finance. They led me to various articles which opened my eyes to what I had been doing during my projects in the night classes which helped to make sense of what I had done, to see how they relate to machine learning and AI.

I feel that AI is now not as complicated as it sounds. They are generally extremely narrowly focused but they can do that specific task exceptionally well. The building tools are easily available. The difficult part is to clean the big data and provide the human touch to direct the analysis in order to produce quality models to help predict the future.

My Alibaba study trip to Hangzhou late last year also helped cemented my views that China was way ahead of the AI game. The AI Superpower book by Lee Kai-Fu also emphasized this point. The general consensus is that 30% of current jobs may be taken over by AI in the next 10 to 15 years. This is not something to be taken lightly. Looking around us, the signs are already here. What if driverless cars become the norm? A whole industry of human drivers will be displaced…  My old job as a salesperson can be easily replaced by a robot-advisor that can provide a summary of the best expertise of the top 1,000 professionals through reinforced learning.

My group of friends are also now looking at a chatbot investment opportunity that utilizes AI to refine and improve itself. The opportunities to apply itself into all aspects of the company is mind-blowing. Become an HR (Human Resource) domain expert for all employees? sure. Be an automated online response resource for all external client enquiries? Easy.

It is so fascinating to see how AI can be applied to almost anything. We take certain things like Uber, Airbnb and social media for granted nowadays. But there are multiple AI tools in the background that are customizing solutions on the fly in real time for the clients. Can you imagine that we did not have them only a few years ago? Neither do we want to go back to the days before we had these tools at our fingertips now.

The choice is clear. We will accelerate our AI developments from here. More amazing discoveries will be made and what we think is not possible now will become the norm in the near future. The future is so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pokemon Go mobile phone game started almost 3 years ago in July 2016. In the beginning, whole families like mine got into it big time. We had numerous family outings specifically to “catch them all”… The servers crashed as Nianti (the game developer) couldn’t have anticipated how successful it would be globally.

If you look at how the game was created, Nianti was indeed very ingenious. It leveraged on a well-known franchise that had started in Japan and which remains very popular even after more than 20+ years. There was a naturally large niche group of game card players that would initially hop on the new game quite easily.

In order to create and map all the Pokemon stops and gyms, it had also developed another game prior to launching Pokemon Go to collect this data. This new game rewarded players for geotagging and naming interesting locations as the main game objective. Using this crowd gaming effort worldwide, it was able to utilize the mapping data as the building blocks of Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Go had all the elements of being a first in the world of mobile gaming which on hindsight, was totally revolutionary and took gaming to the next level. It also had mass appeal to many different age groups. Young and old took it by storm as it becomes a family bonding exercise for parents and grandparents to connect with their kids and grandchildren. It has also become an obsession for some hardcore players who spend a lot of funds to buy the virtual stuff to enhance your game. As you can guess it, Asian countries were the top revenue contributors in the world.

The unintended consequence was that a whole generation of older players from the age of 40 to 80 would be hooked to the game. Because you need to walk in the game, it was also a form of exercise for couch potatoes. Older folks started to treat this as an opportunity to stay healthy, walking many kilometres every day. New friends were made and groups of strangers interacted frequently, to share the passion of completing the tasks.

New online stars like TrainerTips were born overnight on Youtube. He was a fanatical player of Pokemon game cards as a young boy and hence developed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the game characters. Coupled with his efforts to being a budding influencer on his Youtube channels to create video content, it was a natural jump for him to eventually become the go-to online Pokemon guru. He created daily videos and sold merchandise on his Pokemon channel, travelling the world to events and becoming an ambassador of Nianti. Not bad for a twenty-something who was developing a career out of a passion and making good money too…  https://www.tiredofmydayjob.com/trainer-tips/

As for me, I am the only Pokemon Go player left in my family. I have been faithfully playing this over the past 3 years to develop my player levels (38 now). It was also a form of distraction to make my half marathon training runs and overseas trips more interesting. I don’t think I have spent more than $50 on this game so far though. There are news reports of an elderly man in Taiwan that holds 21 accounts and spend almost $500 every month! He reasoned that he has lots of time to kill and this game has given him a purpose in life, to set objectives and make friends. Well, good for him! As long as he can afford it and this makes him happy and healthy, why not?

The reason I wrote this blog was that for the first time in S’pore history, the company decided to have a Safari Zone event in our waters. Sentosa was the designated location and it was over a 5 days period. I decided to apply for a gaming pass and got one for the last day, which was on Monday. Apparently, they issued a total of 125,000 passes for this event and they were all eagerly snapped up by the trainers. 90% of them were allocated to local players. Imagine! I was not that lonely player after all!!

I had a nice breakfast at Vivo City on Monday before the event started at 10 am. I then took a nice walk over the bridge to the entrance of Universal Studios to “check in” using my account and the QR passcode. Once in, a lot of features were unlocked and special monsters were visible for capture. I had a short walk towards the beach where the main event was held along the beach shoreline.

I saw so many people there and wondered if most of the adults and students took leave from their jobs/schools on a Monday or were actually playing truant instead? There was a sense of community as they had set up big tents for the 3 different clans of the game (Red, Blue, Yellow). Instinctively, I went to rest in my clan colour only. Laughable? It sure was to a non-gamer.

There were so many Pokemon Stops to spin and new shiny monsters to catch. People were walking up and down the beach and taking cover during the occasional rain showers. Everyone seemed to have a determined purpose to catch as many as they can. The tourists there must be wondering who all these crazy people were from, all concentrating on their handphones and blindly walking in a zig-zag matter, up and down the beach. Before I know it, I had spent 4 hours there and caught quite a few specially featured monsters there. Time to have a late lunch.

For the rest of the week, I was down with a flu bug I had caught from my recent China vacation. Then it was to Yangon for my monthly financial consultant job. Friday was to attend an event linked to skills upgrading for mid-career PMETs. It was a bit disappointing as it was different from what I have imagined it would be, based on their website information. It was actually targeting the younger age group and not us 50+ uncles.

Anyway, my family rounded off the start of the weekend with the much anticipated Ed Sheeran concert. It was better than I expected with the talented young singer who gave a brilliant 2 hours performance. Time to get back to my online classes and exercises next week.