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Another week has passed, another global head in my company was made redundant… Sigh… It’s a sign of the times. Colleagues told me the victim was totally unaware of it as he was still in meetings that morning. Been there, done that. Had my meetings that fateful Dec morning in 2011 till 11+ am, suddenly got called into the room and given an hour to clear out. This was after 19 years with the bank. Brutal, but you may love the company but the company does not love you anymore. Thankfully, I had a nice package and managed to recover from that, though it took a long time to do so…

Came across this insightful article while I was trolling FB. In short, the 13 things the author suggests that we need to GIVE UP if we want to be successful are :

1. The Unhealthy Lifestyle
2. The Short Term Mindset
3. Playing/Thinking Small
4. Our Excuses
5. Fixed Mindset
6. Always Believing in the “Magic Bullet”
7. Aiming for Perfectionism
8. Multi-tasking
9. Need to Control Everything
10. Saying YES to Things that DO NOT Support your Goals
11. Toxic People
12. Need to Be Liked
13. Dependency on Social Media and TV

https://medium.com/personal-growth/13-things-you-need-to-give-up-if-you-want-to-be-successful-44b5b9b06a26#.31kwvaxcl

The one that stands out for me that I agree with instantly was 11. Toxic People. Never hang around them as they will drag you down and add to the negativity. The rest of the give-ups are insightful and I have recently discovered most of them during my break last Apr after I quit my old job.

By systematically applying most of them into my life every day, it felt like a rebirth of my soul again. My hunger for life came back and challenges don’t feel that impossible anymore if I put your mind to it and plan well.

For me, 2 of them are tough to follow : 12 and 13. Social media is here to stay. I have a need to stay connected and this has allowed me to do so many things, to reach out to a wider circle of friends in the most effective way and to keep in touch. I am still a sucker for wanting to be liked too… I dislike selfishness and always feel that by giving, we will receive. The positivity that I consciously project outwards will make my world a better place to live it.

Have a read and share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear all views.

 

 

Reaffirmation week for me.

After 3 months of hard work, I had finally completed my final exams in order so that the bank can register my representative license with the regulators.

Although I had been in the Treasury banking industry for 20+ years, I left it to join the buy-side in 2012. In my last job, the private equity firm was a subsidiary of a sovereign fund that invested in financial institutions in emerging markets. My rep license expired because I was away from the industry for more than 3 years. My new job required this rep license again and the only way I could get it back was to start at the bottom and do all the exams again like a fresh graduate. My initial shock was that I had to do a total of 7 external exams…

It was tough as I had not been actively studying for a very loooonnnnnggg time… I had to allocate time every day (weekday nights and weekend afternoons) in a disciplined way to ensure that I study for the exams, having registered for each exam one at a time. I had to finish all the exams within 3 months. Boy, was it tough. I failed one of them once by a few points and it was a tough one to swallow as my ego was hurt bad. On hindsight, that probably made me more determined to carry on. I knew too that my new job was on the line if I did not pass them and it was another motivation factor. My older son was worried about my odd behavior of studying and looking stressed, so he did once ask me : “Are you ok, Dad?”.

Finally, I completed the last of the exams this Thursday. It felt so good as I submitted all 7 certificates to the department to get them to register my license. It was a sigh of relief too, as well as feeling a nice pat on my own shoulders to say : “Well done, mate!”.

At 50, I was beginning to have doubts about myself and what I could do or will do going forward. I knew that I had to reinvent myself and get out of my comfort zone as the world had moved ahead without me. With age comes greater risk aversion and the propensity to take on more risk is low. I made the major step of leaving my old job last April to see if I can start a business and learn new skills, do new things and basically change my way of thinking to “Just Do It!”.

This period of studying for the exams taught me a few things :

• That if you set your mind to it, you can do it
• With proper and systematic planning, the probability of success is higher
• Repetition of a good habit re-enforces it
• That Age is only in your mind, you can control and change it
• The sky is the limit, let’s shoot for the stars

Although I am generally an optimistic person, this episode had made me even more optimistic about life in general. You can always be what you want to be. You are your own worst enemy. Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it.

I am trying to apply this to whatever I do now and also hope to influence my friends with my more confident outlook towards life and its opportunities. Let’s always stay happy and healthy, but most importantly, to never give up!

 

As we cross over to the other side of 50, it seems that our bodies are constantly trying to tell us something. After 50 years of wear and tear, our body parts are not the spring chickens of yester years and the machinery is getting worn out.

My parents’ generation had no concept of regular exercise as they constantly work to feed the family, then retire to take care of the grandkids. For my generation, there is an awareness that we have to regularly exercise to keep healthy, yet the body signals to you once in a while that we have to take it easy. Our short-term memory is not so sharp anymore and aches may take a bit longer to go away. We need to listen to our bodies and nourish it constantly with care. Our body is our temple. Everything in moderation.

Has a bit of a shock this week when I heard that a good friend confirmed that he tested positive for colon cancer. He will remove the tumor next week and go for more tests to determine the next course of action. Our prayers go out to him.

I remember another drinking buddy many years ago discovered he had pancreatic cancer like his dad and passed on after 7 months. He faced it bravely and even composed his own obituary, wanting all his friends to have a great time in his wake.

My close friends talked about this before, on what songs we would like to be played at our wake. This was after another friend passed away suddenly a few years ago. My song was “Silent Lucidity” by Queensryche because it had great symphony music and lyrics. I figured that if I have the time to prepare for my impending wake, I will list down a playlist I want my sons to play the MTVs from youtube (with lyrics) to let my friends understand why I chose these songs. I know this all sounds morbid, but I was always a stickler for being prepared all the time. All of us will eventually face this path, its how you want to go out with a bang or quietly…

Silent Lucidity by Queensrÿche

 

It was a very busy week for me work wise but at the same time, it was a rewarding time.

Had to go to HK for a business trip from Tues to Fri. Full agenda of meeting up with the senior people and being involved in 2 ongoing projects that are going to be very important for me this year as I am the Account Executive (AE), project owner for both. Though I have a number of people to help me with the implementation of the projects, the buck stops with me. The marketing teams want to push for an aggressive launch date while the IT guys would like to provide buffers for a later date in case of unexpected delays. Lots balls to juggle and the clock is ticking…

It was Valentine’s day on Tues and there we were, 5 guys having dinner at Dan Ryan’s, surrounded by couples and pink balloons/VD decorations…  hahaha, so lomantic… We had lotsa beer and meats (1 Tomahawk steak and 2 slabs of ribs). Wife was on a business trip too, so I sent her some flowers to her Boston office.

The IT team brought me to the HK Jockey club the following night. It was the mid-week races and we had a good time there, more beer and fried food. We started a small pool and the 8 of us would take turns to decide on a number to bet on for each race. For every race, we betted everything on a Win – it only pays out if our horse comes in first. There was a total of 8 races that night and after losing every single one, we reached the last race at 1030 pm. Given that we were in HK, we decided that we should choose horse no.8 just for the fun of it, to bring us good luck. The odds given to it when we bought the ticket was 1:37 . When I saw it, I figured that it was more “throw-away” money down the toilet. Just before the race started, the odds went down to 1:17 . Our horse started from being in the second last position and slowly made its way up. I thought that it was game over at the finishing line but my colleagues started shouting that we had won. Imagine, the amount of winning we had was more than enough to cover for the whole night – HK 160 became HK 5,920 !!! Amazing!

Moral of the story? Never give up! There is always a bright side to things. And of course, always count your blessings lah.

 

 

What Singapore does best is strategic planning. That has ensured our success since our founding in 1965 and of course, the strong leadership and zero corruption tolerated. I believe that I should give praise when that is due and well deserved.

As a country, we are now at the crossroads again. The world has gone into a protectionistic mood, no thanks to Brexit and Trump and more of the same from Europe soon (Le Pen and others). Growth is pathetic at best and uncertainty super high. No one seems to be clear of what can happen next after 9 years of low inflation and slow growth from the GFC in 2008.

The government had started a committee called CFE (Committee on the Future Economy) almost a year ago to try to plot the country’s strategic direction for the next 10 years. The report was published this week.

The CFE propose 7 main strategies :

1.   Deepen and diversify our international connections
2.   Acquire and utilize deep skills
3.   Strengthen enterprise capabilities to innovate and scale up
4.   Build strong digital capabilities
5.   Develop a vibrant and connected city of opportunity
6.   Develop and implement industry transformation maps
7.   Partner one another to enable growth and innovation

The full report is 143 pages long and there is 15 pages executive summary in the attached link below :

https://www.gov.sg/microsites/future-economy/the-cfe-report/read-the-full-report

How does this affect us? There will be more details coming out in the coming week and government policies and subsidies will be geared towards these areas as the country refocus on what is important to ensure our survival in the long-term.

I had lunch with a group of close friends this week and we were talking about our Plan B, what to do next since some of us are into the retirement stage. Given that the country has provided us with a roadmap for the next 10 years, perhaps we should align our interest to this and figure out if we can create a business proposition. That is our homework for the week. Hopefully, we can come out with a coherent plan to execute. As Yoda says : “To do or not do, there is no try.”

One recurring theme continues to come to mind for me : start a retirement village. I have talked about it in detail in this blog. I tried to start it last year but was unable to. Maybe its time has come now? I need to explore this again. It will be a first to market advantage if I can pull this off.

Meanwhile, we should also continue to brainstorm on other possible ideas too.

 

 

You cannot avoid reading about Trump in the last few weeks. It’s Trump this, Trump that, a bull in a china shop, an 8-year old let loose in a candy store.

Have to give it to the Donald for starting his term with a bang, not giving a F&%K about anyone. Well, at least he is trying to live up to his campaign promises and trying to do whatever he said he would do but within less than 2 weeks.

Most thought that he would tone down on his campaign rhetoric once he is in office but boy were we surprised that he continued with his hard-charging tactics into the White House. He continues to behave like an impatient CEO driving a business (into the ground?) and making snap decisions based on instinct rather that like a strategist that would look at the end game and then work backward. Even his inner circle are mostly left holding the baby later and trying to explain half-baked ideas that have not been carefully thought out.

His tweets are having a life of their own. One of my dealer friends is lamenting that traders now have to be on stand by every morning at 3 am to watch for his new tweets to see what they have to sell or buy immediately… The article below sums up this phenomenon very well :

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/arts/trump-twitter-and-the-art-of-his-deal.html?_r=1

He uses his tweets as temporary distractions, to sway the journalists and moves on so fast to the next topic that the media cannot catch their breath before the next big thing explodes.

The next interesting article I came across was surprising from a least expected source, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-filter-and-immigration

He believes that the Donald is a Master Persuader for both the left and the right. Like a businessman, his first offer on the table is always the most extreme so that there is room for him to negotiate. The chaos that is created will help him please both sides later – (1) To tell his supporters that he has tried his best but the country will not allow him to go further and (2) To negotiate a softer approach with the anti-Trump camp to lead them to believe that he is moving away from the extreme first offer. Hence a win-win for him. He is flipping the world around on its feet, taking a totally unexpected and non-politically (and more business minded) strategy. Will it work? Only time will tell. Are we closer to WW3? He is trying to lead us to think that we are heading there and aim to justify the means to his end game.

 

 

 

We welcome the year of the Fire Rooster today, happy Chinese new year everyone!

It is a time of get-togethers, quality family time and lotsa eating and drinking in excess. I look forward to the reunion dinners and I usually have 3 every year. Last night, we had it at our place with my parents, my in-laws and my sister, as we have been doing for a number of years. We did something different this year and I prepared a traditional steamboat dinner. Took me a few weeks to prepare, to buy the required ingredients. As usual, I overdid it and created the mother of all steamboats. I think we had enough food to feed twice the number of people we had last night. Nevermind, the balance of the remaining food can be used for a delicious porridge meal in the following days.

I cherish these elaborate dinners because it is a means for the extended families to get connected again in a very deep way, where 3 generations come together over a meal. As the 2nd generation, I pay respect to my parents as they age another year while we instill in our children the need to respect our elders and cherish the valuable moments.

The first 3 days of CNY is more of the same, house visitations and getting to meet people who you may only see once a year, usually at such occasions as we all congregate at the home of the eldest relative to pay our respect to her. Thanks to social media, we can now record all our group photos to share with everyone and record the event.

Here’s to many more of such meetups and merry-making!

 

Well, we had Trump finally taking over last night. Will come back to that.

It’s been a strange Déjà vu kind of week for me. Into my 9th week of the new job and a bombshell was dropped on me on Thursday. My boss, the one that made it happened and hired me, announced that due to expense cuts, his team and another one will be merged. Hence his role is made redundant and he has been let go. This was a veteran of the bank, having spent 29 years here since graduation. He seems to have taken the sudden news pretty well, considering that he was told about it only 24 hours ago.

I empathize with him as it happened to me too, as I was given the pink slip and let go because of expense cuts on 01 Dec 2011 after 19 years with the bank and given an hour to clear the desk. C’est La Vie, that’s life… Need to move forward and engage with the new boss asap, I guess.

Anyway, back to my favourite topic of the moment, the impending start of the Trump presidency. Someone seems to have figured out the reason for his vigorous nightly tweets. It is to divert attention away from other more serious matters, to create a distraction. As the master of Twitter and deflection, and being someone who does not even trust emails, the social media has provided him with a perfect channel to satisfy his penned up needs to get instant gratification from adoring fans. A recent study has concluded that in the past 12 years, the candidate with the stronger social media always wins the presidential elections (ie. Obama’s 2 terms and now Trump). Before that, we had no Facebook as social media is only a recent phenomenon.

It will be interesting how historians will record and explain social media many years from now. It is still evolving, a new virtual eco-system that is constantly changing. It makes the world a smaller place for all individuals.