An FT article hit me in the nuts today. I shared it with some friends and most agreed that this trend is already showing itself in Asia, while the article states this as a fact in London now.

The title reads : “In search of the missing office minority – the over-fifties”. Apparently, we hardly get to see anyone over fifty in the workplace nowadays, unlike the good old days where people worked well into retirement age. It seems that the over-fifties are a dying breed in the office and “old” people continue to disappear from the work scene.

As we live longer, the irony of the whole situation seems tragic. If we have at least 20 to 30 more years to go, then where do we go from here? I happen to be on the wrong side of fifty very soon and this thought scares me. As we move gracefully into the sunset, what comes next?

https://t.co/OC1vHLecex

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1f76a3fa-20dc-11e6-9d4d-c11776a5124d.html#axzz4AEec4tet

 

This was one of the exceptional Mondays where I had a really pleasant day. With my sisters and brother in law, we had a lovely day excursion up north.

The destination was a small town where the pace of life was slower. A large shopping mall was the town center and it was surrounded by lots of shopping, food outlets and spas to entertain us for a while.

We headed off at 9 am and the scenic car trip took us about an hour. We started off with a late morning tea break while the car was sent for a comprehensive cleaning at an unbelievable bargain ($5). This was followed by a leisurely lunch as  we chillax… We then split up for our individual hedonistic shopping pleasure, as we all had different taste and preferences. Finally, a foot massage to end the perfect day. We headed home after some last minute grocery shopping (some prices were more than 50% cheaper), knowing that it was a fulfilling and well spent day.

 

 

Had a bit of a nostalgic adventure today. I was at the gym of my Alumni club and it happened to be located within my old uni campus. I had been thinking of doing this before and today was as good a time as any – to take a walk through the campus that I spent 3 years of my life to obtain my degree, to try to relive the happy moments I had there more than 26 years ago.

Though the campus looks a bit run down now, most buildings seemed to have been frozen in time. The majority of the lecture and tutorial rooms are still there, except that there are more new add-on structures over the years.  I visited quite a few of the canteens (the way to the man’s heart is via his stomach) to check out if my favourite food stalls still exist (nope, all have disappeared).  The sports center had just been demolished, making way for a new one. This was our favourite place where we spent countless hours at the swimming pool, sometimes in between lessons in order to get a great tan. My 3 years of hostel living was also a great exposure to the uni way of life. This was also the place where I met my future wife to be. I see more new hostels now while some of the old ones are gone. Ah, to be young again…

I remember the orientation camps we went through, the yearly D&D balls we attended with the dress up themes and being involved in some of the organizing committees, AIESEC games, plus some of the crazy things we did during campus hostel life. Some of the friendships we developed then and have cultivated over the years have turned into a group of really close good friends. I will be celebrating our 50th together this year with this group and our spouses on an an overseas trip!

We were still so young then and not jaded by the real working world yet. We had no fear and were excited to face the future in front of us. It is unbelievable that it was such a long long time ago, but the memories and experiences are still so fresh in my mind, like it just happened yesterday.

 

 

 

 

A newbie like me had no idea what the fuss is all about when one insert hashtags in social media. Naively, I thought it was just a way for my post to look cuter… So I signed up for a free Udemy course on Hashtag Marketing today. What an eye opener this was !!!

This has enlightened me on the power of social media on the internet. This totally transforms the way we do internet marketing. The sky is the limit and the world is your audience. There are countless ways you can maximize your marketing campaign and it is only limited by your imagination.

I discovered that there are tools to help one choose effective keywords to link and compliment your original hashtag to get greater coverage : RiteTag, HashTracking, Keyhole, Trendsmap. Then there are search engines (Twubs, SocialMention, TagBoard) to refine your hashtags in order to zero in on targeted audience (could be by geography or product preference). There are also analytic tools like Twitonomy to provide statistical data and track the hashtag hit rates. You can even do a reverse enquiry and send your marketing message to the users of these keyword hashtags, to zoom in on the people who are most likely to buy your product. Finally, there are websites (JVZ00, ClickBank, OfferVault) that provide a list of online products you can sell, to earn commissions that are as high as 50 to 100% of the sales price!!!

It is like you are now a one-man advertising agency. You choose the online product you want to sell and then create a targeted marketing campaign using hashtags to reach the desired audience, constantly fine tuning the tags based on real-time market analytics. How powerful is that?!?

Another strong woman to highlight today : Sheryl Sandberg

It is amazing what a super woman like her had done so far, actively managing FB and pushing the Lean In initiative at the same time. Yet personal tragedy that struck a year ago could not stop her irrepressible spirit.

She advises the Berkeley graduates to count our blessings every day, that finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience. She teaches how we can bounce back from hardship via the three P’s – Personalization, Pervasiveness and Permanence.

Great thoughts of the day I learnt today. It’s a highly worthy message I should share with my friends :     http://m.omeleto.com/224862/

What is Failure? Is it a lack of success or is it a process of learning, picking oneself up and becoming stronger in the process? Is it good for you and should we encourage it?

If you ask someone from a startup, the probability of failure is expected to be high but then success when it happens is so much more fulfilling. Do we shelter our kids from failure (hence the strawberry generation of entitlement) or do we let them fail, abet occasionally to toughen them up for their own good to face the real world?

Came across this article today that is making the rounds in the virtual world. A Princeton professor has listed down his failures in his CV. Let’s embrace them and perhaps learn from failures. It is a celebration that we are all human after all and that it is ok to not succeed sometimes.  C’est la vie !!!

Click to access Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf

 

Mindset change has to happen first. Firstly, we have to realise that we are behind the curve and are willing to want to change, to reinvent oneself. For me, it was the realization that the old banking economy I was in for the last 26 years was dying big time, that the new economy is going to make old dogs like myself redundant. The cutting of expenses was more important than preserving experienced talent. What next?

As a first step, I am approaching this from the perspective that I require help to upgrade myself. I need to learn new skills in order to compete with the Millenials. I have had some online training experience in my previous jobs, so this was not completely new to me. The timing was also ripe that the government is encouraging this trend with subsidies for an individual to sign up for online courses to pick up new skills.

As I dig deeper into the area, I discovered the Coursera and Udemy websites. There are so many free online courses there for you to get a taste of each new subject first. This is not as easy as I thought.  The most difficult part is to narrow down the ones you think you are interested in and then giving it a shot. Meanwhile, before I left my old job, I had mentally committed to myself that I will do at least 10 of them in the next 6 months.

Currently, I am in the midst of the following free online courses : (1) Entrepreneurship – from Idea to Launch and (2) Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python). Having taken computer science during my junior college days, I was interested to see what new computer languages are out there. The name Python came up. As I run through this course, it reminded me of Basic Plus which I studied more than 30 years ago! Being an entrepreneur was also something I wanted to explore, besides attending the numerous fintech seminars that are being held nowadays.

Indeed, there are tools out there to teach an old dog like me some new tricks in this new age economy. Need to consistently push on to improve myself.

 

It all started when I was an 18 years old kid. I was servicing my army time in national service. At that time, I was just posted to a team within an air force base after my 6 months of basic military and signalmen specialist training . During my first day there (I remember vividly that it was a Saturday. It was a half day working session and we knocked off work at 12 noon), a jeep collided with the motorbike our sergeant was riding within the camp. He was badly injured and was on medical leave thereafter for a number of years. After the accident, our team decided to do our part. The group of us organized a trip to the general hospital blood bank department to donate our blood for his numerous operations. I continued to donate every 3 months after that first time whenever I can, till I left the army.

A few years back, I started this process again as there was a blood donation center near my office. I could simply drop by during lunch time to do it. To date, I think I have contributed a total of 25 times.

As I run half marathons every 3 months, I try to time the blood donation a week before the run. Psychologically, I feel that this gives me a boost before the run as the body replaces its lost blood with a new supply after the donation. I remember reading about Russian athletes extracting their own blood during off-peak season and then pumping it back to their body just before a crucial run to get better results…. 🙂

Actually, the main reason for me to donate : To provide a history of my contributions to the blood bank. This comes in handy in the future if a friend or a loved one may require it. The blood bank requires the patient to replace the blood used for these operations to ensure that supplies are replenished. So I can theoretically “volunteer” my donated reserves to the patient.