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I had 3 very meaningful dinners this week which are still fresh in my mind. They were memorable for the various discussions about life and the stages we go through.

I was in Yangon from Tues to Thurs for my part-time financial consultant role with a microfinance company headed by an ex-colleague of mine. He is an Italian who has vast experience traveling the world, having worked in numerous 3rd world countries to help improve their living standards via the development of new financial initiatives.

He (M) arranged the first dinner with a German consultant on Tues evening at a nice Italian restaurant, where we sat outdoors at the beautiful Inya lake in perfect night weather with a full moon shining on us. Like him, our new acquaintance (C) was also a 38-year-old, having spent time traveling the world in a lot of 3rd world countries for work. He shared that he was currently at the crossroad of his life over the last 2 years, having left his stable long-term job to strike out on his own as an enterprising consultant. He was also still recovering from a split up with his girlfriend, moving to Berlin to get away from it all. He always loves kids and was wondering where his life was taking him to now. M was getting married soon and was also wondering about his next phase of married life and hopefully kids thereafter.

Me, being the old fart here at 51, was asked if I had any advice for them. Maybe it was the wine, but I told them to basically embrace life, try to stay happy and then flow with our life journey to see where it brings us. I do sense that there is a fear in both of them that they may be running out of time, that their friends are all settled down with family but yet they are nowhere near that goal yet. We had a very deep and in-depth discussion about life in general. It was one dinner I would remember for a while, that we strangers in life had come together to share our thoughts and aspirations.

The following evening, M invited me to a home cooked dinner with his fiancee and a Catholic priest who was their pre-marriage counselor, as required by their church. I was totally impressed that the priest had spent more than 20 years in Asia as his calling. He was living in a small town that was an hour south of Chiangmai, Thailand for 17 years to service the Lord before leaving for Myanmar a few years ago. Though we did not share much that evening, I had a deep respect for his dedication and what he was doing.

The final dinner happened last night. It was a planned annual gathering of my male university friends from our Business Administration course, the class of 1990. We called ourselves the BizAd uncles. We met in the new officers Temasek club to relive the student days where we had a number of alcohol-induced happy sessions just before the annual exams every Feb to help lighten our stress levels. It was great to have the 9 of us talk about familiar old experiences and laugh over the many crazy things we did during our undergrad days and being amazed that almost 30 years have passed since then.

Cherish our memories, the chance and planned encounters. Learn and embrace life as we only have but one to experience. Never give up on it as there is so much out there to look forward to. Always be hungry, to be appreciative of all of our blessings and never look back with regret.

 

 

 

I realize that as we grow older, we become easily agitated and stressed. Our bodies are also telling us that the parts are getting worn out and aches seem to take longer to recover. I see myself get perturbed over little things and observed that friends are also like me, some exhibiting strange behaviours or retreating into their own world. Mostly happening in guys though. I guess women are made of tougher stuff or is it the male testosterone’s downside?. The likelihood of frequent bouts of depression is very real for my age group.

2 events this week triggered my need to verbalize this in my blog today.

We found out last Saturday afternoon that an ex-colleague had killed himself on 15 Feb. He apparently jumped off a building. I have last met him almost a year ago. He has been in the same bank for almost 27 years, right after graduation. He was also one of the last few persons from our group that was still there. During the chance meeting a year ago, he was telling me about how tough it was to remain in the bank, that there was pressure everywhere and competition from younger peers. I do know him as quite a pessimistic guy over the years, always looking at the negative side of things. He was finally retrenched late last year and had joined a fintech company. Another friend had met him a week before and did not see any signs of depression. What made him do it? He had 2 young kids and wife. Could friends have prevented it?

5 years ago, another close friend passed away in similar circumstances. I later learned that he was bi-polar and had stopped taking his meds. He had started acting very hyper and I had last seen him 3 months before the fateful day during a year-end get together and he was acting weird. Could we have done something then?

Then on Tues early morning, I got an unusual Whatsapp message from another close friend. I immediately tried to call him back but after 3 tries and no answer, I decided to call his wife and another friend. I was concerned because we were talking about the recent suicide of our ex-colleague and he mentioned that he was having his “Departure Day” in that message… I guess I panicked and jump the gun a bit. He was actually referring to the fact that he had just been served notice of retrenchment, after 18 years in that bank. He was also in the toilet and hence did not pick up my 3 frantic calls. We agreed to meet up that night and a group of us had drinks and a good conversation thereafter. I will continue to reach out to him frequently to check on him.

I have been down that retrenchment road before and knows what it feels like, to have the rug pulled out from under your feet suddenly after 19 years in the bank. I felt lost for a long time as I struggled to find another job after having more than 60+ interviews. I do not wish that upon anyone, but the reality of life now means that my age group is the most vulnerable, as we hit our halftime buttons. The body is also not handling stress as well like a 20-year-old anymore and it reminds you periodically of your mortality.

My motto nowadays is to stay healthy and happy. I try to set new goals in front of me, to work towards and to exercise frequently. New challenges like skillsfuture courses and e-learning projects keep me on my toes. They help me to focus on concrete objectives I want to overcome. I am also trying to move away from the banking sector and use my previous banking experience plus the new skills learned to pivot into new jobs and adventures, like my latest Myanmar consultancy role.

I also believe that regular exercises will provide one with a healthy lifestyle. The periodic adrenaline rush which will support the well being of a person naturally. My quarterly half marathons signups provide me with a pipeline of goals.

Many small happiness experiences are better than one big, infrequent happiness. So reconnecting with old friends and meet up sessions with close ones are very important to me now. These are my small happiness moments. As always, the family must come first and my kids’ future is our number one priority.

All the above will keep my head firmly planted on my body and help me withstand any wayward thoughts that I may come across. Depression comes easily but we must build defenses to overcome them.

 

 

 

Started the week on Monday with some quality time with elder son before sending him back to army camp. Then I was off to my final evening class of the term to take my last exam paper. Getting a thrill taking tests nowadays, am I ok? Will need to sign up for a 2nd 6 months term 2 soon to complete my Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics. Term 2 looks to be more interesting with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and relevant practical applications.

We are all looking forward to the long CNY weekend where there will be a lot of good food and quality sharing time with family and friends. We have had the last of our 3 reunion dinners on Thursday evening at our home. I had spent a few weeks buying the stuff for the steamboat meal which I totally enjoy doing every year. It gives me a great sense of belonging and satisfaction, creating new treasured moments with loved ones and to honour our elders.

It has been a tradition for many years that we have a set of visitations to do for the first 3 days of CNY. The family clans gather together for a feast,  general merrymaking or to catch a movie together. It is rewarding to see the kids grow up over the years while our parents and ourselves have aged considerably.

I do treasury these times as they provide new warm fuzzy memories of the closeness we share and hopefully set the traditions for the next generation to follow, to honour and treasure the family and friendship ties that bind us all together.

 

It is that time of the year again. This Chinese New Year is on a short Feb month and a day after Valentine’s day. My usual 3 annual reunion dinners have started since last Sat, firstly with my in-laws family, then today with my side of the family and finally on the actual eve of the CNY day (on 15 Feb) with my immediate family, parents and parents-in-law.

I always look forward to preparing the 3rd reunion dinner, spending a few weeks beforehand to conceptualize the menu and then going around buying the stuff at certain seafood places open for business during this period of time. Like last year, it will be a steamboat buffet again. So many interesting things to buy and so little time remaining. You just feel the festive mood everywhere you go, especially in the wet markets.

Had 2 very interesting catch-ups with old friends this week. CNY is an excuse for everyone to meet again for a nice meal and drinks. The first happened on Thursday night for a gathering of ex-colleagues for a Loh Hei dinner. We all shared an interesting period of our careers during 2005-2010, surviving the GFC crisis and living out our motto : “Work hard, play hard”. It was nice to see all of them again, as we have moved on with our work life while cherishing the times where we doubled our budget but yet having lots of fun along the journey. After a few drinks, we had also decided to “encourage” 2 members to get together. We agreed to regroup again in April for another dinner at another nice zhi char shop.

The second meal happened yesterday for lunch. A schoolmate from my secondary days brought the 8 of us together for a catch-up lunch. Some of us have last met up almost 2 years ago. One is in politics now and he shared some interesting stories with us. I am amazed at how he can do so many things as he is also a CEO of a listed company. Hats off to him! Generally, all of us have crossed into our second half and are thinking out loud : “What should we do next?” We agreed to meet up again in April.

Nice get together experiences are treasured memories as we get older. Although they provide short-term happiness, these experiences enrich the soul and make life much more pleasurable as we reconnect with old friends to establish new memories while talking about the good old times.

Just like to share the latest article from one of my favourite writers, Michael Lewis. He gives a fresh perspective on the state of the crazy American politics :

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-09/has-anyone-seen-the-president

 

 

After a stressful last week, it was nice to settle into a nice quiet one. I had a catch up with good friends mid-week and reconnected with a few that I have not seen for years.

As one gets older, it seems that we humans tend to want to get in touch with friends from our younger days. I am living proof of this. Besides having fun organizing school reunions, it felt good to meet people I have not seen from a long time ago and also to see others being able to do the same. I had probably organized about 4 or 5 of them in the last 6 years, all thanks to FaceBook. My generation is now more receptive to it as a social media tool and its advantages. The millennials and kids seem to have moved on from FB into Instagram and Snap, calling FB an old person network!

Looking at the banking sector which I have been a part of for the last 27 years, my resolve is hardening that I should pivot into another industry and try to leverage on my past work experiences in banking. With Blockchain coming and the effect of “juniorization” (a term to describe the current banking mindset – fire MDs and hire young people (VP and below) to replace them, lower costs and damn the experience required for the job), my chances of re-entering the industry are getting slimmer by the day.

I need to forge ahead and reinvent myself. With the Myanmar Treasury consultancy job in place, it is one more step for me towards realizing this objective. I believe that my current evening classes on Business Analytics will also be my pro-active investment to help future proof my career going forward.

Another interesting meeting I had with an ex-college also reaffirmed my belief that there is much more to work life outside of banking. We had a very interesting conversation about what we want to do next. He is well connected and actively sourcing for interesting one-off deals, some bordering on the James Bond 007 types! There seem to be pockets of deals with good payoffs that we can pursue. They are by no means easy but given our stable financial foundation now, we are able to spend time chasing them, as they energize us to “solve” them. I will have a follow up discussion with him next week.

Yesterday, I had also met an ex-colleague that was older than me. Being a grandfather now, his focus is towards his grandkids. Financially stable, he wanted to do something that enables him to give back to society. We discussed the opportunity in Myanmar as a Risk advisor and at this stage of his career, this role interests him. I had organized a follow-up call with the CEO next week. I could see myself being like him in 10 years time. He is very into Tai Chi and I hope to learn a few moves from him in the future.

Cryptos…  serious diahorrea of prices going on. Not helped by the latest hacking incident in Japan. There is a lot of Asian government crackdowns on the euphoric rise in easy money trading cryptos in the last 2 weeks that is taking its toll on prices. The Korean premium is now gone. My 500% is now down to 200% gains. Have started to take some money off the table, at least to recoup some of the initial capital and starting to realize some of my gains in XRP. I still think that the over bearishness is overdone, compounded by a risk-off mindset as Dow drops (FANG super stocks overpromising results unfulfilled) and bond yields creep up (30 years US Treasuries above 3% for the first time in many years). Need to continue to trim my portfolio to increase cash holdings, to get ready for any buy opportunities during the big corrections.

 

It was a week where family and work pressures came to a boil. Thankfully, I had strong support from my wife to help me weather through it.

My younger son was feeling unwell for the past week, having dizzy spells and fluctuating high fevers. We thought that he recovered over the weekend but he vomited on Monday morning and we decided to bring him for a blood test. The results showed that the markers for his liver and gallbladder were off the charts and the doctor recommended that he be warded immediately. His chest pains were also getting more intense. A series of further tests had to be conducted straight away.

At the same time, I was preparing for a term test paper that evening for my Business Analytics night classes and my first official trip to Myanmar as a Treasury consultant to take up my position as ALCO Chairman. It was a difficult time to have so many conflicting demands happening at the same time. The specialist doctor saw him and assured us twice that he was not in mortal danger, which was assuring but yet as we see him in pain, it was heart-wrenching. Thankfully, my other son was in the army camp for now and my wife decided to take urgent leave from her hectic work.

After completing my exams that evening, I went home to collect my stuff for my business trip and headed to the hospital to spend the night with my son. At that point, I was still unsure if I should go to Myanmar. A number of bank meetings were already set up to introduce me and I had to meet senior management people to prepare for a 1st major meeting on Thursday and a training session on Tuesday.

His condition stabilized by Tuesday early morning and I decided to head directly to the airport at 5 am. The next few days were a blur as I immersed myself in this new role but was checking on his condition every few hours. My wife was so strong, she held the fort all by herself with some help from our close friends. More tests were requested by the specialist and so the hospital stay was extended to Thursday.

Meanwhile, I shortened my trip by a day, pushed some meetings to Thursday morning and then purchased a new one-way Thursday afternoon flight home. He was discharged on Thursday afternoon and further appointments were arranged for next week, one with a heart doctor next Tuesday to get a second opinion about his chest pains, to help ease our concerns. Meanwhile, some of the test markers were still high due to the unknown viral infection. A follow-up meeting with the specialist was also fixed for next Wednesday. His junior college term starts next Friday, so I hope that all would be well by then for him to enjoy his new term.

This was a week I never expected, a lot of escalating anxieties with twists and turns to the unfolding story. Thankfully, I could depend fully on my strong wife. She has always been the pillar of the family and she did a brilliant job handling the family crisis.

 

We had a fantastic ride up in the last month of 2017 for all cryptocurrencies.

My newly created crypto portfolio from end-Sep was already up +500% by then, mostly thanks to XRP which went from $0.20 to over $3 in a matter of weeks. As I told my close buddies, this was indeed the forming of a bubble and I was trying to enjoy the ride while it last. My biggest mistake was not to take some profit as I was greedy. I was also on vacation most of Dec, away from my PC and not being able to place orders securely.

My strategy at the start was to go into the top 10 cryptos to maximize the bang for the buck for my initial capital. I figured that the biggest ones would have sufficient liquidity to get in and out. By then, Bitcoin (XBT) was also getting too expensive in absolute value to initiate a meaningful new exposure. The others had a much lower price to enable me to create a sizeable position.

The more research I did on cryptos, the more I realized the shortcomings of Bitcoin relative to the newer ones. They were better than XBT in terms of speed, transparency(and/Or)secrecy and quick adaptation to newer applications. Etherum (ETH) was one such competitor that was created by its 23 years old founder. I read about the hard-fork he did recently to recover from a hacking/thief incident. This, in turn, created another new crypto called ETC (Etherum Classic). ETH was already $288 per token by the time I bought it in late Sep. It is currently around 1k.

Ripple XRP was the other one that showed a lot of promise as many banks were open to adopting it for new blockchain initiatives.  I decided to bet most of my “ready to lose it all” capital on XRP as its token cost was only 20 cents. The main setback was that it does not have a limited maximum amount like Bitcoin (21 million tokens), but its potential supply was quite huge (running into the billions).

The crypto euphoria ends abruptly by the second week of Jan as a series of negative news took a toll on it. Asia was the speculative fever central of cryptos worldwide and a number of Asian governments had started to announce that they want to control or shut down unlicensed exchanges. Korea was the one country that was especially crazy over cryptos and their exchanges were usually commanding a premium of as much as over 40% in terms of prices. KRW was a very much controlled currency and I could see active pumping of prices happening every Sunday afternoon (cryptos trade 24 x 7). Coinbase and other American OTC exchanges also announced that they will begin to exclude Korean related OTC prices from their price aggregators. This only serves to accelerate the downward spiral of prices, up to 50% for some within a week.

Where do we go from here? I still strongly believe that BlockChain is here for the long term and it is going to smash and destroy the way businesses are conducted. Cryptos are just a by-product of this earth-shattering movement that will be coming. The very idea that governments think that they can control cryptos is just this – wishful thinking. Its very existence was borne of a desire to escape from fiat currencies which central banks have been abusing for years since the GFC days of 2008. Very soon, they will start to realize that they cannot control something that cannot be controlled, does not respect borders and which is manned by the masses in a fully transparent way. The open ledger of blockchain managed by millions of individuals will trump over man-made central banks.

My strategy now? I have been expanding into more cryptos, having gone into 16 types to date. Some can only be traded via Bitcoin and ETH crosses, hence it was also an opportunity for me to take some profit in XBTUSD/ETHUSD and reinvest the funds elsewhere. Kraken has been a bit buggy of late, so I have also initiated the process to open another account in Bitfinex to hedge my bets on unregulated exchanges just in case. I am still bullish on XRP, my biggest holding. I hope that I can take some money off the table if it reaches its old highs again. As I have told my friends, I may want to recoup back my initial capital and then keep the rest of the positions to partake in the crypto journey.

We can see that various asset classes are starved of volatility in the era of easy money and hyper asset inflation. Cryptos are the only game in town that provides this adrenaline rush of Vols. We will see more opportunistic players coming into this asset class in 2018 to try to profit from it. As more people come into this area, we will see a validation of Blockchain and cryptos as the next evolving step of a big technological trend.

 

After sending my older son to NS last Wed, the 3 of us went for a vacation in Yogyakarta. We figured that since he has a 2 weeks confinement period in camp ahead of him and that younger boy only starts junior college in Feb, we should do a short trip now.

Wife has been gushing about this place for the last few months as friends who had been there were posting nice photos on FB. Seems like a place with rich history to explore and be close to nature.

We stayed in the Pheonix hotel, which was a smaller replica of our Raffles hotel. It will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and we could see the laid-back majestic nature of the hotel environment.

Upon arrival in the morning, we began with an afternoon tour to Prambanan, which was a national park that was a UNESCO World Heritage Site as it was more than 1,000 years old. Our timing was not too good as there was a heavy downpour. Watched a cultural show in the evening before we called it a day.

The next day, we visited the Jomblang cave in the morning. It was quite an adventure, being lowered 90 meters into a sunken cave and then walking another 400 meters to watch the spectacular sights of the waterfalls at the opening on the other side of the cave via the mid-day sun shining down the hole. Magical! The afternoon was spent doing water tubing along the river of Gao Pindul. It was indeed a very physical and eventful day.

We had to sleep early that night as we had to wake up at 3 am to watch the sunrise at Borobudur. The Hindu cultural influence started in the 8th century but by the 15th century, Islam had taken over. We reached Merapi mountain in the late morning to watch up close the still active volcano which was last in action in 2010 with 400+ casualties. Took a 4-wheeler on the bumpy road to get a first-hand account of the disaster. This was followed by a nice Ullen Sentalu museum visit to get to know more about the recent nobility history of Yogja to better understand the Javanese culture.

Wife had to go back the next day for work and we had a chill day with massages at the hotel. Son and I stayed for another 3 days for more father-son bonding sessions. We did a cycling tour of the Kota Gede village and visited the Parangtritis beach, saw a lot of shopping malls and ate a lot. It was good to have spent quality time with him.

This was an enriching trip to the old capital of Indonesia. I never knew that there was so much history (more than 1,300 years) of past civilizations and fantastic natural sights (caves and mountains). The place is like Singapore in the 1950s, very laid back and of a time long ago.