My Personal Blog

I have the privilege of being able to watch and participate in the development of a country that has slowly come out of its shell after more than 50+ years of isolation. Myanmar was the modern “Paris” of Asia in the early 20th century before shutting itself out from the rest of the world for a long time and finally opening up again less than 5 years ago.

I started going to Myanmar for work-related trips about the same time it was opening up during 2013/14. Back then, the citizens were still wary of foreigners and fellow citizens were still encouraged by the military junta to spy on each other in order to maintain control. Mobile phone network was patchy and non-existent and a new SIM card costs almost USD 1,000. There were limited hotel rooms available in Yangon, the capital city. Rooms were going for USD 300 per night and each trip required a visa that cost a lot and took a few weeks to apply.

How things have changed in such a short time. SIM cards are free now (5GB data plan is just a few dollars now) and hotel rooms can be had for USD 70 per night. The country is buzzing as its people has a taste of the modern world and like what they see. Everyone has a mobile smartphone nowadays and have gone immediately to wireless, skipping the need to have LAN phone lines. While salary levels are still relatively low (I understand that a senior military person’s pay may only be a few hundred dollars a month), the quality of life has certainly improved for many.

For the last few years of military rule before they handed power to Aung San Suu Kyi, the generals had been able to hire good technocrats to map out a detailed plan to prepare the country for the modern world. They learned from the past mistakes of their neighboring countries in order to avoid them and studied other countries’ best practices to adopt as their own. The financial sector was slowly opening up and global/regional banks were invited to operate there.

As expected that implementation process was slow. They had to take baby steps and most areas had to begin from scratch as they had hardly any previous planning infrastructure to work on. Financial reforms accelerated and the legal rule of law framework was drafted. The handing of power to the new government was smooth but the military ensured that they still had a hand in matters in order to preserve their interests.

The new government, being in opposition and suppressed for so long, were still wet behind their ears. You cannot blame them for being wary of politicians in general, having been locked up for years. They naturally veered towards loyalty and trust to appoint key people. These were not necessarily technocrats or the right people for the jobs on hand.

Hence for the last 2 years, everything has been bogged down by bureaucratic BS and progress ground to a halt. What was promised to be implemented soon never happened, risk-taking by office holders is virtually non-existent and the Rohingya mess added to the problems. Without knowing what the military is doing, Miss Aung is now looking more like a figurehead being controlled by puppet masters. I do suspect that this is the exact intent of the military, to manage the people’s expectations and eventually rise as a credible opposition in a few years time.

Meanwhile, my engagement with the country continues. I was there for a number of times in my old job to help set up a new microfinance company. My ex-colleague now runs another one that is focused on agriculture and he had invited me to become a financial consultant to his firm. I started in Jan this year and have been having business trips there every month.

I strongly believe that this country has very strong potentials. With a large and diverse population (> 55 million, multiple ethnic groups) and huge untapped natural resources, it is in a position to become a great nation. Many things can go wrong but it takes time to progress. Miss Aung must take control and allow professionals to come in.

There are many Burmese people who have had to go overseas over the years to find employment to survive. This big group is eager to return to their home country to participate in the development of the nation. I wish it every success and hopefully, I can also contribute to it in my own little way.

 

Long ago, there was a bright boy from Malaysia who won a prestigious ASEAN scholarship to study in S’pore way back in 1980. Not only was he very smart, he was a very active person and excelled in sports. He became an accountant eventually and was climbing the career ladder when a trip to Kenya in 1995 changed his life.

He decided to dedicate his time to helping the people in Tana River, to improve their living conditions. He worked to create schools and ensure that the children of the next generation had a brighter future than their parents. In 2005, he started the Tana River Life Foundation with the objective of assisting the marginalized through education and the acquisition of livelihood skills.

I met Gabriel way back in 1979 when he became my classmate.  We were 14 years old. I lost touch with him for the next 33 years until we had a class reunion 3 years ago. A fellow classmate suggested that we showcase a guest speaker during the reunion. He was telling me of this interesting story of the person who had gone on a lifelong journey to help a whole community. I was most certainly intrigued by this man and gladly made time for him.

During his speech at the reunion, he shared his lifelong passion that touched the hearts of many that evening. He had also started to come to Singapore every year with a purpose of collecting unwanted stuff to packed into containers to ship back to Tana River to distribute to the schools and needy women. He will also bring along 2 well deserving students along every year with him to help with this annual exercise. This initiative has been happening for the last 12 years and a shipping company is now sponsoring the containers.

His network in Singapore assisted to connect with schools here to look for old school equipment which they are looking to discard, like desks and chairs. These could begin to have a second life in Kenyan schools where they are much needed. They also collect unwanted clothes and shoes which they will pack in multiple bags to be distributed to the resourceful women there, who may use them again or sell them for much-needed funds for their families.

https://tanariverlife.wordpress.com/

For this year, they had publicised their collection week on Facebook. I decided to start a collection myself via friends and family a few weeks before that. 2 days ago, I finally delivered all the collected stuff to the church collection point. Managed to meet up with Gabriel and to touch base with him again. He still has not lost the enthusiasm to assist the foundation he helped to set up. I wished him all the best. His legacy and effort have most certainly helped many students and families over the last 20+ years with his selflessness and dedication.

How noble is a cause like this? He had stepped away from a professional life, material wealth and family to push on for a cause he believed in. A road less travelled but spiritually rewarding. There is so much to admire about this man.

Most of us do admit that we chase material things all our lives but we have to remind ourselves that like a baby, we come into this world naked and we will leave it in the same way. As we become older, the sense of social awareness grows stronger. We question if there are ways in which we can give back to society, for we have been so lucky to have enjoyed the fruits of our labour. In small but tiny steps, I hope to do that. They may be a tiny fraction of what Gabriel has done, but I hope it is the beginning of more to come.

 

Fun fact : If you understand Chinese, you will know that the characters to signify China is “Middle Kingdom”. Long ago, the ancient Chinese empires rightfully believed that they were the centre of the universe as they were the most advanced civilizations thousands of years ago. Hence they called themselves the “Middle” kingdom.

After many years of stagnation, China is finally coming round again to take the world leader pole position again. The central government is one of the only one in the world that plans in terms of generations, into the next 30 years.

A book I read talks about 100 years cycles, that the Chinese believe that their economy bottomed out in 1940, just before WWII and that it will peak in 2040. Hence Xi always talks about vision 2050 whenever he sets out his strategic plans. Nothing is planned for just a 4 years political term, but it is for the next 2 generations.

Look at the airport, rail and road network they have now. It did not exist 10 years ago! China has an ambitious master plan to create 6,000 new cities and develop enough internal consumerism demand to be self-sustaining without having to be overly reliant on the rest of the world. It has already bought and locked in long-term contracts with most of Africa for commodities supplies for the last 15 years, turbocharging the big commodities boom in the process.

China has learnt to adapt the Japan model into its own strategic ideology. The One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is a perfect example. For many years, Japan has offered a country important infrastructure projects for a low cost via financing from ADB which they control. Once in, all projects will be awarded to Japanese companies. Left pocket, right pocket. Win-win for Japan. The country gets much-needed help to build roads and power plants. China is doing the same now in a bigger scale through the OBOR master plan and the newly created AIIB entity which they control.

Look at Malaysia. Once in, the Chinese companies take over totally. Complete vertical integration. The Malaysian companies cry foul but its too late as the government has already willingly sold its jewels to the attractive suitor. All excess China production capacity can then be re-channelled outwards while they continue to urbanize the rest of China. It’s a fantastic master plan worthy of Dr Evil Mwahahahaha…..

Look at the Chinese technology companies storming the world now. They have no western comparisons. Alibaba and Tencent (WeChat) have created ecosystems which are a one-stop centre for all the needs of the consumer. You can literally do everything within the app. Western standards of privacy and anti-competition rules have restricted the imagination of what the internet is capable of. These Chinese companies have no such limitations and can do whatever they want, as long as it is compliant with the communist party’s requirements and for the greater good of the country.

Face recognition technology implemented countrywide is already not science fiction anymore. Criminals can be identified and arrested – recent news of one being caught nationwide after being spotted when he happened to be attending a 50,000 people concert. George Orwell’s 1984 has arrived. Every citizen will soon have citizenship points that will be measured to ensure civil obedience, else privileges such as overseas trips are taken away.

I attended an Alibaba event this week. It was an eye-opener on how far they have gone. It was part of their launch of the TaoBao University program in collaboration with the Skillsfuture initiative. While it is in Mandarin (mine is quite rusty 🙁   , there were 2,500 attendees who paid at least $50 to join this full-day event. Some of the courses look interesting. Wifey and I may join an Alibaba business study trip in July – 90% subsidy!!!

Make no mistake, China is making a concerted planned strategy to be at the forefront of the world, slowly but surely. It has one of the most far-sighted central banks in the world. You cannot get a better opportunity now as Trump implodes and turn America into itself. The 21st century has arrived for the Middle Kingdom.

Side note : The Western powers just launched an attack on Syria an hour ago. Its showdown time with Putin. China will be laughing all the way to the bank as it scoops up the spoils of war.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next wave of technological advancement that is already at our doorsteps. It is such a hot topic and advancements are so rapid that what we consider science fiction 10 years ago are coming true now as we speak. A recent study believes that there are only 30,000 persons in the world that are on top of the AI game.

The Turing test from the 1950s developed by Alan Turing is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. The machines are getting better and better at this now. Look at Siri/Apple and Alexa/Amazon – speech recognition and conversations with a machine are a daily occurrence now.

Recent developments in AI has shown that AI has moved much faster than we can imagine. AlphaGo beat the best human Go player and then self-learning AlphaGo-Zero thrashed the older AI by 100-0 games…

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609141/alphago-zero-shows-machines-can-become-superhuman-without-any-help/

We are in a phase now that machines can be self-taught with some infrastructural algorithms in place or they can even teach each other. There was a pair of machines that invented their own language in order to communicate with each other exclusively.

I remember a 2013 movie called “Her” by Spike Jonze where a lonely man fell in love with his personal OS (Operating System). In the end, the machines decided that they can develop further without humans and all the OS left their owners. There is also Blade Runner 2049 to re-enforce themes which does not seem so far fetched nowadays.

I just finished reading “Origins”, the latest best seller book by Dan Brown and the concept was relatively shocking but yet seems like the way we are heading. The simulation done by the powerful quantum computing power postulates that AI will overtake and assimilate with humans in the not too distant future.

Issac Asimov’s 3 rules of robotics come to mind, that they cannot kill humans. But what is there to stop them? The AI, called Winston in the book, could well reason that the means justify the end game.

Most simple and repetitive jobs can be replaced by machines and they will surely move up the career food chain in a matter of time. We human beings have our limits and one cannot compete with AI’s speed. Can you imagine how many will be unemployable eventually when driverless cars become mainstream? Technology advancement is accelerating and not slowing down for anyone. In the last 5 years, we have probably moved faster than the last 50 years – remember the green screen PC with the dot matrix printer?

On another separate topic – data thief post-Cambridge Analytica saga. Cloud storage was considered risky just a few years ago but if you look around you now, almost all of our stuff is stored in the cloud. Social media has been the main push to keep a piece of us on the virtual servers.

As a means to understand this further, I decided to see how much of my data is stored in the cloud by Facebook and Google. Both have a feature where they can archive your files and provide you with a link to download a copy for your reference. I have been on Facebook for almost 12 years and my life history and memorable moments are all there now for the world to see. The archived file was 500 MB in size which I had downloaded to my PC.

Google lets you select the archive files based on their product range. I selected all and was surprised that it spans 32 of their products. The archive files were so big that they took more than half a day to create and it has to be delivered in 4 separate files. And the total size? A freaking whooping 170 GB !!!!   Holy shit! It took me a few days to download.

With so much of my data online and the rapid advancement of AI, it shouldn’t be too long before a machine can imitate me or learn to control my reactions via impulse simulations…

 

Been a pretty quiet week for me. Had a catch up with an ex-colleague I have not met for a while – how time flies and it’s been more than 2 years since the last lunch date. Spoke to another to touch base and finalize with him on the consultancy job in Myanmar he is likely to take up and we can work together again.

The term Ah Boys to Men has been popularized in our country to signify the rite of passage for all males in our country who have to enter into military service at 18 to serve “National Service” (NS). It was 2.5 years during my time but now, it is shortened to 22 or 24 months. Teenage boys become men when they complete NS, so the saying goes. Each of us will be exposed to a bigger real world out there, having been cocooned in our small protected environment and then suddenly thrown into a military lifestyle with others from all walks of life in a 24 x 7 situation.

As much as I can prepare and share my experiences with my 2 sons, the main take away will be the attitude they go into NS with. As it is unavoidable, one must look at it positively and aim to enrich oneself with new life experiences and to make the best of the situations one is presented with.

My older son entered his army phase in Jan this year. It started with 9 weeks of Basic Military Training (BMT) on a remote island. He seemed to enjoy himself during the first part of his training, having a positive go-getter attitude and getting close to his 16 bunkmates. He was a rah-rah man of his team, trying to push them on while struggling to improve his physical stamina. We were proud parents at the passing out parade in Mar, seeing all 1000+ recruits marching with their weapons and throwing their caps in the air.

They had a short 1-week break after the graduation parade and he was glad to spend time at home and catching up with close friends again. His next posting was to Officer Cadet School which caught him by surprise. Secretly, wife and I were proud of him, but yet we were apprehensive that this 9 months course will be highly challenging for him, both mentally and physically.

The first 2 weeks of confinement went quickly and he is on another 1-week break now. Over supper, he shared with me that he is feeling more independent now. He is wary of the many stages of training that is to come before him in the coming weeks. The army did produce a series of snippets on NS life and its various stages (“Every Singaporean Son”) on youtube and it even won a National Geographic award. It is a good reference point for him and I had encouraged him to watch the series on OCS to prepare himself for what lies ahead.

I do sense a change in him. Being more considerate to his parents and also his brother. Hopefully, he is more appreciative of what he has and the bright future ahead for him, to count his blessings and treasure them.

 

 

 

 

2 conversations about marriage stuck in my head this week. While I don’t profess to be an expert on this topic, I guess I can write about it since I have been in my first and only marriage for 24 years with 2 wonderful kids.

I had a very nice home cooked dinner (uni and pasta with a nice bottle of white) with a good friend and colleague on Wed evening at his place. He was preparing for his marriage to a nice lady after 6 years of getting to know her. It will be an elaborate wedding on a small island off the coast of Sicily. My wife and I are invited and we are excited to explore that part of Italy which we have never been to before.

He is currently in his late thirties and he started to express some reservations about the marriage, their differences and having a family. The complicated wedding is probably weighing heavily on his mind now, with the large financial undertaking. He is also currently into his most important job in his career, being a CEO of a company.

In my blog about the various stages of life a few weeks ago, I mentioned about the worries the 2 men in their late thirties who are wondering where life will take them next. Marriage is the next big step for one of them.

I shared with him some of my marriage life experiences, how we faced them and provided some tips on the wedding preparation. So many things are now happening in his life concurrently now that I think he is only human to be stressed out and getting worried about too many unknowns. Hopefully, my listening ear during that dinner would be of some help. Thinking back, I was also fully into my career at that time too, being in my late thirties and the kids were also quite young and a handful then. Maybe during that time, there was not too much time to think and reflect on the situation but I guess one just has to carry on and plow through it.

The other incident was an update from my wife on a catch up she had with friends on a couple we know who had recently divorced. It was not an easy marriage in the first place as she was more than 10 years older than the groom. Their differences grew bigger over time and it resulted in a lot of unhappiness. One was always insisting on spending more time with the bigger immediate family while the other preferred more couple time. The needs of the younger man were also apparently very different from an older woman. Perhaps it was in both their interest for their future to split up because staying together had become untenable.

Marriage is about compromises with a lot of give and take involved. The result is that 2 persons can grow old together. It takes an effort to sustain and to keep fresh, to be rewarded with the rich memories we share together and the little pieces of life we created together, our kids. What one puts into it, one will hopefully receive multiple times of abundant happiness in return. It takes two to tango.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are the new darlings of 2018 after the cryptocurrency fever subsided in Jan/Feb. Two incidents that happened this week prompted me to pen down my thoughts today.

I have been trying to learn about this new turbo-charged way to IPO a company. Governments currently still do not have any ideas on how to monitor/regulate this new way of bypassing the current legal framework for companies to access hot money, even directly from the retail level. It is like the new casino betting scheme of the internet. Get in fast (pre-ICO preferably and at a huge discount), pump and dump for a large profit a month after ICO date.

I have 2 main reservations about ICOs. These companies issue their new crypto in exchange for fiat currency or higher value cryptos (eg. Bitcoin or Etherum). While they may state the maximum amount of coins they will issue, they can theoretically control/add to the supply. Hence they can easily sell more if and when they need to in the future. Secondly, with the new subscribed funds they have collected, they can also use these proceeds to support their crypto coin if it weakens and prop prices to artificially maintain a “bullish” trend.

 

I attended a free crypto seminar the other day which was trying to sell a 3 days workshop at $2.5k. The 2 hours presentation basically suggesting a 3 prong crypto action plan : (1) mining, (2) trading and (3) ICOs. I was very skeptical of all 3 approaches.

Mining with a single rig at home is getting less practical with greater competition. This presenter had a big warehouse rigged with mining machines. How can you compete with this? It is becoming harder to mine the top currencies nowadays.

Being in the banking line for too long, I understand that the concept of trading always sounds easier than it looks. Crypto liquidity is bad and with no market makers, it is a death trap for novice retail “traders”.

And ICOs? The “real-life” examples of his less than 8-months-old fund are all about pump and dump schemes. Get in at pre-ICO with a big discount, see price jump 10 folds in a few weeks and then sell out, move on to the next ICO. That part about being in the know about ICOs and having insider knowledge to analyze the fundamentals of upcoming new ones is a load of BS.

I had a chance encounter with 2 ICOs this week. Both are on the extreme ends of the spectrum. On the web, I came across an article which proclaims that Sweden is going to be the first country to issue its own crypto. To learn more about it, I registered my email and phone number. A day later, a guy with a fake Swedish accent called me and tried to get me to subscribe. On further questioning, he became defensive. The only news I can see on the web is that Sweden is only considering it and that this might take a few years to conceive. I thanked the guy for his scam call and ended the conversation.

The other incident made me seriously consider investing in an ICO. Met my cousin for a long overdue lunch catch up on Monday. He initiated it because he heard from my dad that I was involved in microfinance. As an accountant by training, he has been involved in one of the prominent Singapore dotcom companies since 2000.

Over the last 2 years, he was a co-founder of a new P2P company looking to tap the growing affluence of middle-class travelers from China. There was also the social angle of his ecom firm, to help small high quality local Asian tour operators efficiently connect with this China market segment. They are currently preparing their pitch for an ICO and finalizing the overall marketing pitch. The other attraction for me was their Chairman. He was someone I knew from my school days who had done well in ecom and brick and mortar businesses and is now a full-time angel investor.

My cousin shared with me their white paper and I introduced an ex-colleague to him (a co-founder of a crypto microfinance related venture that had recently done an ICO). His proposed panel of board advisors looked promising too. I spent some time reviewing the paper and sent him a list of questions as he wanted to get a different perspective and feedback from an ex-banker. As he had mentioned about a pre-ICO sale, I had also expressed my interest in subscribing to a small amount. The other angle was for me to become an agent for them during the large funds raising phase to attract anchor investors.

My thoughts about ICOs now? Like cryptos, this is an exciting and evolving market phenomenon, a brave new world out there. Is it dotcom 3.0 ? Who knows if it is a bubble or that it will change the world?

I am a firm believer in Blockchain and how it will destroy a lot of norms once we get a breakthrough. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) dictates that I should get my fingers wet in a controlled manner, but also try not to bet the whole house or put all my eggs in one basket. It is a continuous learning process for me and fits into the life-long learning mantra I subscribe to.

What an overload of Trump news in the last 2 weeks!! Things are coming in furiously from the left, right, front and center.

All the comedy channels cannot keep up, having to retape/add new segments as new revelations appear in real time. Just when you think that we have hit a new low, we get surprised again.

First, we have more Stormy Daniels revelations, then more White House resignations, followed by the tariff bombshell. All the American TV channels were up to their eyeballs focusing on Trump-related news full time. Trump says that there is no chaos, that people are always lining up to join the White House and that he likes conflicts.

I have been writing about this subject previously, trying to understand the man behind the image. Some commentators even used Steve Job’s “reality distortion” effect to try to explain how Trump can convince himself that all the stuff he says is the absolute truth and then feeding the BS  to his faithful fans.

Things seem to come together earlier this week for me, after watching the final episode of the documentary series “Dirty Money : The CONfidence Man” in Netflix (see link below) which was about Trump the con man.

In the early nineties, Trump was desperately broke and his empire was collapsing under the weight of heavy debts from his gambling properties. He started to realize that the Trump name branding image had a value which people will pay for. Grabbing any job that he could get his hands on, he was doing everything. He even advertised for cereal commercials.

With the easy money, he became slopping with little due diligence on new opportunities and dubious underworld monies started to attract themselves to him. This was also the time where Russian funds began to channel themselves via the Trump organization. For US$5 million a pop, he did not care if they were from Hitler himself. He was in survival mode.

All this is coming back to haunt him now. He is the reluctant president that was astonished he had won, the pawn in the Russian big picture game that was cultivated over the last 20+ years that eventually hit the billion dollar jackpot for his puppet masters.

Mueller’s investigation is closing in on him and his past associates are flipping against him fast and furiously. All the past dirt from under the carpet will slowly be revealed. The noose is tightening around Trump’s neck.

He is not one to back down, nor does he have a choice but to just double down and fight back. Hence the urgency to “fulfill” campaign promises like the latest tariff push, damn the trade wars, screw the advisors and even GOP. He has to entrench himself with his core supporters ASAP so that he can reflect any heat from Mueller.

Like a cornered animal, he is likely to further lash out at any and everyone that stands in his way. We are probably going to see more crazy things happening in the coming weeks. Let’s hope he does not start WW3 in the process before the disaster is being shut down by sane people standing up and saying “enough is enough !”

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/arts/television/dirty-money-netflix-the-confidence-man-donald-j-trump-review.html