My Personal Blog

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

Met up with an old friend for lunch yesterday and we had a great time catching up and talking about the times we had since we got to know each other as 13 year olds, then to the army, Uni and work/family life.

I am slowly discovering and getting amazed over the last 3 months that there are more and more like minded people like myself now. We have reached our mid-point in life and starting to reflect on what we want to do next.

A few years ago, a good friend had recommended that I read Bob Buford’s Halftime book. It talks about the fact that everyone will experience this reflection phase. One will start to think about how we want to transition from the stages of success in career to creating significance in life. He believes that the second half of our lives can be better than the first and provides a simple template to use as a guide to plot one’s second half. He emphasized that this is a time of revitalization and for catching a new vision for living the second half, the half where life can be lived at its most rewarding and in the process, to give back too. It is refreshing to know that I am not the only one feeling that way.

 

Anyway, the old friend I had lunch with yesterday had just left his old IT job to become a full time running coach. This is his passion and he wants to share his experiences with others. He had also completed his coaching certification. I wish him all the best in persuing his new passion in life!

 

 

Time does seem to fly by. We were once wet behind the ears as students and before you know it, it has been more than 30+ years since we left school.

As we reach our half time at 50, I guess we all become more nostalgic with age and like to reminisce about the good old times where we were once young and innocent, not jaded with life worries yet.

With that in mind, I am working with a school buddy to organize a school reunion in 3 weeks time. This is after almost more than 3 months of preparation. Some will be flying in from as far as USA, HK and Malaysia to attend – we target to break the previous reunion’s participation record of 108 persons. Facebook’s event page function has been our preferred choice to effectively reach out to as wide a circle as possible to help everyone reconnect and to kick-start a marketing campaign. This will be the 4th one I am involved in over the last 7 years. I kind of enjoy doing this, to see happy faces reconnecting with childhood friends again, although all of us have grown sideways or have less hair now 😉

Thanks to the Alumni office, we now will have an amazing door gift to share with each attendee – a copy of their high school student record with a photo. How awesome is that!

 

Back from an amazing trip to Italy, as we fully absorbed the rich history of the country.

Started in Milan, the financial and fashion capital. My most memorable takeaways : The San Bernardino alle Ossa chapel made of skulls and bones and the L.O.V.E sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan, a middle finger to the establishment/bankers.

Then to Venice, the city of love and beauty where we last visited during our honeymoon 22 years ago. Had a wonderful sunset drink at the Piazza San Marco.

Florence to me was the most intense, as we immersed into the beginnings of the golden Renaissance period led by the masters of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, visiting the Duomo and Uffizi. We had dinner at the Mercato Centrale and caught the first Euro 2016 football match that Italy played with Belgium, winning it by a 2-0 score.

Finally, it was back to Rome to experience its 2,700 years of history. Starting from the Pantheon, we headed to the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre) and Palatine Hills to relive the 1,000+ years of Roman glory. The Vatican City was as amazing as I remember it – still astonished by the Sistine Chapel and the St Peter’s Basilica.

Got my son to throw a coin into the Trevi fountain and promise to bring us back again 😉

  

 

Hello Italy, here we come!

Finally, after months of preparation, we are on our way to Italy. Sad that my older son cannot join us due to his school commitments. This will be the first time in his life that he is not able to participate in a family vacation.

Ah Italy… Been there during my undergrad days in 1989 (I was on a really tight budget) and then during my honeymoon in 1994. Both trips were more of an intro to Europe and Italy was one of the destinations. It has been 20+ years and the country must have changed a lot since then. The Euro football season is starting too, so maybe we can participate in the patriotic fever when Italy plays 🙂  Can’t wait to show my younger son the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel and the rich history surrounding Italy. History books do come alive here…

A good friend recently joined LinkedIn and he invited me to have lunch at their office today. I believe that LinkedIn is trying to emulate Google and the canteen was quite impressive. They had roast beef on the menu today 🙂 There was a stage in front and a bone marrow initiative was been promoted, followed by the introduction of new employees who had to do a short presentation (one guy did a rap while others danced).

LinkedIn has been around for a while and headhunters in the US had been paying for premium accounts to data mine for suitable candidates for years. Due to its expansion in Asia recently, the power of its search tools has only now started to be discovered by companies. Human Resource departments of various industries now actively advertise job openings directly in LinkedIn. I can now look for job openings by using key-word search to narrow down my options effectively. There is even a daily email to inform me of the openings I want. A month back, I even applied for an FB position. It was so easy to submit my application – there was a built-in app that analyzed the CV I uploaded and then filled up the application for me! In order for me to optimize my LinkedIn use, I should be signing up for their free online course too.

This is what fintech disruptors will do to all industries. The headhunting profession has already been marginalized by LinkedIn as companies try to reduce costs and leverage on technology to do the job more efficiently. When driverless cars become a reality in a few years time, truckers/taxi drivers will become redundant very fast. I cannot fathom what new jobs will be created as old ones disappear in the very near future. We have to reinvent ourselves constantly to keep up with the times. The urgency is very real….

I discovered pop music in my secondary school days during the 1980s when I was 14.

British pop was what all my classmates were listening to. We patiently waited for Thursday night to tune into BBC’s Top of the Pops to update ourselves on the latest top 10 hits. One friend even resorted to writing the list down every week. The Smash Hits magazine was the favourite authority on new groups and lyrics, while we wait diligently for months before the latest VHS videos of the Top of the Pops show arrive at our local video rentals. This was way before the internet arrived. We were still living in the dark ages of snail mail and without instant gratification possibilities like youtube…

Now that I listen to the “hip” 80s (new age, punk rock, avantgarde, technopop) music again, memories of large shoulder pads and ridiculously gelled hairstyles come to mind. It was the era where music was constantly evolving and imaginations were running wild. Gonna play this 80’s music loud at our upcoming class reunion party!!!