My Personal Blog

Have you watched the food series A Bite of China (season 1, 2012 and 2, 2014)? It is one of the most beautiful food porn series ever. You can marvel at the rich history of Chinese food and the stories behind it. The HD videos are amazing and they capture all the lovely landscapes with a zooming/panning effect that is never seen before, all thanks to the drone camera technology. Unlike the rest of the world (read USA), China had no qualms about trying out cutting edge technology. While others are now still trying to figure out how drones should be controlled, China had already forged ahead in using them to produce this TV series a few years ago. No prizes for guessing that currently, some of the top drone companies are from China…

Go catch it on youtube. For food lovers like me, I guarantee that you will be hooked and feeling hungry after every episode 🙂

Being naturally curious due to my unemployed state, I have been looking at all sorts of alternative career paths on the internet.

Recently, I have come across many Internet Marketing and MLM schemes. My Inbox is now flooded with multiple videos of founders having vacations in exotic locations, sipping Piña Coladas and encouraging you to live the wonderful life of theirs by signing up for “premium” packages. Simply put : pay me a fee every month (or buy my $10,000 package) and I will show you useless encouraging videos of the type of lifestyle you see only in your dreams. Scam? Go figure.

MLM is another sophisticated ride – it sucks in willing volunteers with the promise of huge monetary rewards. You start to use words like trust and loyalty to pull in friends and love ones for this “sure thing”. Once entered, the victim is like a mouse on a treadmill and it becomes a full time obsession.

“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ”                                Eagles – Hotel California

As a wise man once said, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t…

Social media has now invaded our lives in ways we cannot imagine. How many times do you check your FB a day? Is this the first and last thing you do every day? Our inner most voyeurism needs are satisfied as one can keep up to date with people that they have not met in years or even with total strangers. The reverse is also true, where a person can and wants to inform the world of his every activity – the meal just eaten, the holiday photos in real time.

While people from my generation are finally climbing onto the FB wagon, I still have a number of friends who refuse to have anything to do with it. They fear the invasion of their privacy. Guess what guys, it has already happened. Try to Google your own name and see what comes out. Like it or not, every one’s digital foot prints are slowly being accumulated on the World Wide Web. You are already missing out on all the fun stuff and also the ability to connect with your kids online. So why hesitate?

FB has already been around for a dozen years and I have been a member for 10 so far. My story timeline had been carefully built up over time and I cannot imagine living without it. I have also managed to successfully organized a number of class reunions using the events function – efficiently seeking out and connect with old classmates which was quite difficult to do prior to FB (try doing it on email, you will be spamming everyone).

But as with ever changing technology, my son would tell me : “Dad, FB is so old school, no one uses it any more… we are now into Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.” Well… better late than never.

Whatsapp,WeChat and Line are also bring another social dimension. We are simultaneously have multiple real time conversations with numerous groups and individuals. This was not possible a few years ago and it was crazy trying to communicate with a group using SMS in the old days.

I had an interesting afternoon yesterday. Managed to catch up with 5 old classmates for a 2+ hours walk in the park, discussing about life in general and what we had done in the last 30+ odd years since we left our alma mater.

I had met some of them periodically over the years but the majority were casual acquaintances when we were 13-16 year old kids in secondary school. How time flies… The innocence of youth long gone, replaced by the wisdom of life experiences.

It is interesting how we all turned out, as we reflect on the next stage of our life journey, given that each of us have had a very different paths so far. A very refreshing boost to make me want to maximize my remaining time on earth – that we should approach each new day as if it is the last day we will have on planet earth.

This article hit so close to home. Been there, done that : www.linkedin.com/pulse/lost-your-job-recent-layoff-kim-williams

The memory is still so vivid, although it happened more than 4 years ago. After 19 years at the company, I had less than an hour to clear the desk…  I remembered that it occurred at noon that day and I was totally lost that whole afternoon, my mind was a blank. Strangely, I could only focus on trying to cancel the year-end dinner I had planned for my team in the immediate few hours. I guess the restaurant manager readily agreed to refund me the deposit because she saw the state I was in, after I explained to her my reason.

This para from the article stood out for me : “Take a breath.  She asked ” What do you want to do”  Do you want to go back to work so bad that you are willing to accept another job that you would be miserable in or do you want to take your time, think about your skills and how they could apply to the job that you really want.  This is your chance to reinvent yourself.  Everyone that loses their job goes through this exact feeling of “disconnected”.  Take this time to reflect, don’t think so hard about getting a job. Think hard about what you want to do.”

Back then, I took the first and only job I could find after months of trying. That miserable job lasted me 3.5 years. I will take the above advise NOW.

Time to reinvent myself.

Being in the financial industry for the last 26 years, I have seen quite a few crisis before. Had experienced the EMU/GBP, Asia, Russia, Dot.com and GFC/Sub-prime financial meltdowns. The 2008 GFC taught us the dangers of excessive over-leverage and too big to fail, but have we learnt the lesson? Nope. The central banks have taken over the role of the bad banks instead. They have crazily ballooned their balance sheet and push for negative rates to drive growth. But we hardly have any in the last 8 years.

Global banks, starved for revenues, are now doing a periodic chopping of headcount to bring expenses down as profits decline. In 2008, an economist predicted that the world would see 10 years of slow growth and we laughed at his ridiculous prediction. Since then, the debt balloon has grown multiple times larger than the last crisis. I thought I have seen it all in my career, but then this comes along. A strange new financial world indeed…

Happy labour day all, except USA which celebrates it in Sep.

Just watched Captain America: Civil War. How are they able to squeeze a simplistic plot into a 2.5 hours movie?!? The number of superhero movies is amazing nowadays, almost 1 per month. Seems like the movie line up for Marvel and DC comics is now up to 2020 at least. Have to give it to Stan Lee and team – they had the imaginative power to dream up of so many characters and then mixed them up in multiple combinations to extend the shelve life.

Permutations are limitless. Donald/Daffy Duck and Elmer  versus the Simpsons and Avengers next?

Who watches regular programming TV these days? Nowadays, it is on-demand,  when you want it, at any time from your mobile device. TV set prices are still crashing – after all, they are just a piece of glass. Each family member basically watches what he/she wants, at whatever time it suits them. Death of family movie nights…

An article just highlighted that America now produces 500+ TV shows a year. How can one humanly watch even a fraction of them? Personally, I only watch the ones with some historical background (Vikings, Vinyl, Halt & Catch Fire) or have an interesting but realistic angle (Silicon Valley, Survivor). Supernatural and science fiction stuff are out for me. The only exception is the Game of Thrones, of course…

Shows are so complex now. There are so many sub plots and characters that you probably have to watch it again or read a recap/review to digest all the points that you might have missed. A book I read a long time ago suggest that this actually makes us smarter in the long run – the brain gets to exercise more by trying to keep track to figure out the plot. Compare that to “I love Lucy” from the sixties with only one theme in the whole episode!!!   I remember my childhood days in the seventies where the whole world stops every Wednesday at 6 pm. Kids will scream “Ultraman!!!” and we will drop everything to rush to the nearest TV to watch the latest monster our hero will destroy.  Ah, life was so much less complicated then…