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I am very disturbed at the recent ISIS terrorist acts over the last one week. Why would you attack your own religion during the most important festival period of the year? It is sad that when you are preparing for the holidays with your family that you cannot even go to the markets because of the fear of sudden death and injury.

It seems that ISIS is getting very desperate. Russia and US are just bombing the hell out of the terrorists with drones and smart bombs, effectively killing the top dogs of ISIS. The problem is that as they replace their senior management, the more violent and crazy ones start to take over. These new leaders will stop at nothing to make their mark in the world,like calling all members globally to attack their own countries on the holiest time of the year. This is just so wrong on all fronts! It is also apparent how desperate ISIS has become as they are choosing mainly Muslim countries to attack because it was able to attract new members there.

It is time now that all Muslims stand up to ISIS and recognise it for what it has become – a deviant group that has moved so far away from Islam that it should be branded as what it should be : “A terrorist organisation bent on destroying mankind.” I hope that the 99.9% of Muslims now would stand up to ISIS and say : “Never again!”

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri.

What if you could go back in time and get a record of a certain period of your life, way before electronic cards existed and everything was on paper only? Would you be excited to receive a snapshot of your youth many, many years ago?

While preparing for our high school reunion, I chanced upon the Alumni association and they told me an amazing story. A number of years back, one of the cleaners was about to clear an old storeroom in the school when she came upon many boxes that contained the original hardcopies of all the students who had studied in the school. They quickly realised the gold mine they had on their hands. The Alumni office promptly decided to digitized all these old past records of each individual that had graduated from the school.

Here we were today, brainstorming about what door gifts we should give at our upcoming reunion party. Why not give a personalized printed record of each individual who will be attending? When they showed me my record recently, I stared at the photo of a chubby 13 year old with details of my 4 years in the school, plus year end comments from the teachers/principal (“Study harder”, “can do better”  🙂   ) . Looking at my details 34 years later, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about it all, and how all our lives have turned out so differently. The innocence of youth long gone, replaced by each of our individual life experiences.

Hopefully, the old boys would like this unique door gift…

 

 

Is it just me or do I sense that most election results nowadays are trending closer to a 50/50 result all the time? Is it due to the fact that everyone is so wired into the world with information at your fingertips or is it that the political parties are too similar to distinguish?

Since Al Gore and Bush in 2000, we do see more election results which are won by a hairline difference. Brexit is the latest, with a less that 2% margin for the Leave winning camp. This phenonmenon is more apparent in the developed countries. I guess social media has a big part to play in this. Each individual can see in real time the views of the candidates and their parties. They can also actively participate in forums to discuss and share their views. Perhaps in the end, every politician from each party has similar opinions but express them in a slightly different way.

Interesting to see the next big one – the Clinton vs Trump mud-fest…

I have been a tech freak since my youth. I love to deep dive into new products and study them in detail on the pros and cons before buying. If the urge/need is still there after many days of contemplating, I will then buy it.

All through these years, I am just amazed that the cost these gadgets continue to fall drastically while the power and capabilities have grown exponentially. The first clamshell flip handphone cost $3,000 . Now you get a Samsung with the latest technology for a fraction of that. I used to spend a few thousand buying a built to order PC. Now I debate for days on a few hundred dollars. Maybe it has got to do with age and nearing semi-retirement mode. Lifecycles of products are now in months and laptops are so cheap… We are so wired into cyberspace that information flow is at lightning speed.

One of my favourite past time is to visit a well-known mall for electronic stuff, collect the shops’ latest brochure summary of products and study the prices of items I plan to “invest” in next. With eBay like local websites to help you hive off your old toys easily, this has reduced the pain of a new purchase. Just got my new toy today 🙂

 

 

Meet up with another friend today. He has been pursuing the fintech bandwagon via the P2P lending space for about 15 months now. It is tough going for him as he needs to get licenses in the ASEAN countries he intends to operate in. To date, he does not have a license in any country to operate yet. The P2P space seems quite crowded now, as I see a lot of money chasing too few loans and credit analysis seems weak.

As part of my education process to reinvent myself, I have been actively attending fintech seminars to try to see if there are opportunities which I can pursue. Everyone knows that this is the mega trend but no one has a clear road map on how this will evolve. Silos within banks will make the adoption of disruptive new technology even harder. Do you want to support an initiative that will make your current job redundant?

Startups are mushrooming all over and failure is deemed to be part of the  learning experience. For every successful one, a thousand may have fallen on the sidelines. Even for the successful ones, number 1 will continue to be paranoid that its lunch will be eaten by someone else. Number 2 will be even more pressured to fight the incumbent leader. Number 3 and the rest can forget about having a fighting chance to compete.  Uber/Grab, Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat, WeChat/Line …

 

It’s been splashed all over the news this week. I can’t help but wonder how wrong-footed the markets had been, caught with its pants down on this one. Commentaries are still ongoing and only time will tell if this was a right move or not.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents worth. While it is hugely disappointing for EU, UK had probably painted itself into a sweet spot. The long drawn process of exiting (new UK PM in Sep, invoking article 50, followed by a maximum of 2 years of negotiation) works to UK’s advantage and deepens the humiliation of EU. UK now has Juncker by the balls…  The longer the exit period, the more likely other countries might also follow suit. They might be forced to compromise frequently in order to get UK out the door in a faster time. England can then cherry-pick its way through the negotiation process.

England does 2 exits in a week too! Losing the 2016 Euro football match to Iceland… Boy, the British must be an embarrassed lot this week!

 

 

I remember my first experience with eBay many years ago, trying to sell a PDA I won at lucky draw. Buyer took up my offer and we arranged to meet near my office to do the exchange. That made me realized that the world is my oyster, that I can literally start my virtual shop at home and sell everything to anyone anywhere in the world.

IOT (Internet of Things) has steadily progressed and Uber/AirBnB has proven that anything type of transaction can be made more efficient, taking out the old ways of having many middlemen standing in between you and the manufacturer, marking up the price as the product moves up the food chain.

Nowadays, with the tip of your fingers, you can call up any information from your smartphone. We do not need to wait days for an answer or do research at the library. Instant gratification is the norm and social media has cultivated attention spans of only seconds.

I believe that this acceleration of productivity has not ended yet. With the introduction of driverless cars soon,  machines will start to replace humans. Hopefully, new jobs will be created then or we will be heading towards the picture painted by the movie Wall-e, where humans do nothing, eat and get fat while they let machines take over everything else. Is that a good thing?

 

Wife saw an interesting 2 hours course yesterday and referred it to me. I decided to sign up for it for a nominal fee. It seems applicable to me now since I am looking to start a business and I will need to know what financial help I can get from the government 🙂

The majority of companies everywhere mainly consist of SMEs (Small, Medium Enterprises) that can be small mom and pop shops to having sales turnover of at least $100 mio. In times of an economic slowdown, they are usually the ones that suffer a credit tightening as banks preserve lines for bigger corporations.

It was a good learning experience to learn that an SME can apply for a voucher, tax incentive, grant or loan to help it grow the business from this government entity. They even offer to fix an appointment for a dedicated person to meet up to help you walk through your requirements.

As an example, the Capability Development Grant (CDG). It is a financial assistance program that helps an SME build capabilities across 10 key business areas, ranging from raising service standards, adopting technology to staff training and overseas expansion. The grant supports a wide range of capability upgrading initiatives to help one grow its businesses locally and globally.

Will need to study this in further detail. As and when I start my business, I will need all the help I can get.

http://www.spring.gov.sg/Growing-Business/Grant/Pages/capability-development-grant.aspx