Monthly Archives: July 2010

Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it, watch out for the beast

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During this same period last year, I was sitting in the park on the grass. I was figuring out how to proceed forward from where I was to where I wanted to be. It felt very similar to backpacking. As usual the destination was but a vision in the mind; a general direction, an inspiration, altogether vague and abstract.

Just for fun, I mentally projected my vision into the future seeking the path that I will need to take to get from where I was to where I want to be. It was almost like an out of the body experience.  Sian call this astral projection. There was a prior occasion when she brought me on one back in London. It turned out somewhat weird since this totally unfamiliar monk intruded into both our visions. Out of curiosity, she left me alone with this monk. The monk revealed nothing but just sat there on this imaginary grass patch smiling merrily while looking far into the horizon. It was as if he knew something that I didn’t and was altogether quite entertained by this notion. He soon got up on his feet and left that patch of grass. Sian came back shortly and guided me back from the astral planes.

Nevertheless that prior occasion was not as psychically charged as this one.  After sitting in meditation for an hour or two, I must have unknowingly stirred up this beast that had previously gone to slumber. In its awoken and agitated state, it bellowed and torn the fog asunder. The path forward suddenly revealed itself and its familiar voice  started this totally new incantation in my head. At first it felt foreign and unnatural but with the passing of each iteration in the head, this incantation became louder and more fanatic, gaining a life of its own. Finally it over powered the reality priorly in existence and became reality itself. Once again I was unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the beast.

“I want more sales leads! I demand for more sales leads! Give me what I want! Give it to me now! …. ” this voice in my head bellowed  and the flesh could only but obey the demands of this voice in the head. Ironically back in 2008, this same voice demanded that I journey westwards. It got content and went quiet when I finally reached and saw the Atlantic ocean with my very own eyes.

Roughly 12 months has past since that day in the park. Magically, out of the ether what that beast demanded for it got. The flesh however was pushed to the limits heeding the beckoning of its voice. Once again after months of raging in the head, it suddenly went silent. Good riddance for the time being at least. However intuition tells me this beast is laying low somewhere in the midst of cooking up god knows what. The signs are there, I just have to decipher what it is.

I thank my lucky star

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Just a few evenings ago after devouring this most valuable book by Robert Kiyosaki (Rich dad’s prophesy) which I happened to pick up free of charge from this stack of soon to be discarded books, I decided to sit down and sort out all the financial statements for all my current on going projects. All these projects were in the healthy range in terms of cash flow, however none of them were profitable.

“How so?” one upon hearing this might ask me, being  seriously puzzled ” didn’t you made money and now have more cash in your pocket? ”

“Yes I did have cash in my pocket after being engaged in the these projects. However my profit from these projects is still zero. ”

“Huh. I still don’t get you? ”

“The cash receipts for these projects are called wages, not profit. Profit is the premium derived after deducting all expenses incurred in the process of finishing the project, in which cash includes wage expenses as well. ”

Wages is an exchange of per unit time of effort for per unit quantity of money, one only has 24 hours per day. Thus one can make so much of one’s time for money. If one is satisfied sticking with this business model of exchanging per unit time of effort for per unit time of money, one can simply forget the idea of his bank account hitting the range of millions in this life time.

Like Johnson said last year “bro don’t waste your time with being a self employed, build a proper business model. You techies are talented people when it come to machines. However when it comes to money, you have no idea what the hell is happening!”

I thought I understood him then. However that understanding was still too superficial.

After receiving an advice by Peter, an in depth study of a classical doctrine and the chance encounter of a serious bottleneck, I finally saw the lights.

Peter’s advice “don’t try to do everything yourself, free up your own time, get an expert who is more capable than you to handle what needs to be handled, then you can handle more.”

The truth in the classical doctrine called the book of changes (I Ching) states, do not compete in terms of wisdom with the wise, do not compete in terms of capability with the capable, but rather acknowledge their strengths and humbly seek their assistance in your cause.

The bottleneck when a prolonged through put of more than 24 hours worth of effort per day was required was really the catalyst.

Thinking back to my days in the army, in the university as well as till just a few months ago, this character of mine was the perfect individual belonging to the S category defined as the self-employed in Robert Kiyosaki’s cash flow quadrant.

In his book, Robert states people belonging to the S category, in contrast to people belonging to the E (employees) category who are just concerned about job security, are the perfect individual’s to be assigned a task and given full autonomy. Being self driven and highly motivated by nature, you can rest assured they will accomplish their mission. However such are not people you can hope to keep in your company for long, since what they seek in contrast to Es, is independence instead of job security. They will more likely leave an organization in seeking a path of their own interest instead of stay due to high levels of wages.

One of their major flaws which prevents them from advancing into the B quadrant (business owners) is their inherent urge to do everything themselves, their need to be perfectionist. It is a flaw, I deeply understand and has been a weakness that I had been constantly trying to keep in check.

Now that I finally see th light, it is time to finish the last part of my business model I have been building over the last 2 years. To accomplish this, I will need to take all the task this position of mine is handling and write them down in strict standard operating procedures. Once done, I will need to source for a few talents that belongs nicely to the E quadrant in terms of mentality to fulfill the roles I crafted.

In a nut shell, I will need to craft carefully the algorithm that dictates the roles of the business analyst, the project manager and the sales manager to handle the all aspects of the operations. Thereafter, I shall step out of this system that I have so nicely crafted and monitor its functioning from outside.

Meanwhile since my time will be freed up by then, I will direct my resources and funds into the crafting of the next business model and go through the process of building my next money making machine.

Haha. I am a most fortunate person indeed. It seems like everytime when I am in need of something, whatever I seek will always land right in my lap.

Tactics that salesman uses all the time that totally annoys me

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Normal salesman always attempt to appeal to the emotive side of my decision making process (which I leave at home while at work) when I specifically instruct them to come present and just stick with the technical details.

The most recent one just took place this evening. Dad had bought some policy on my behalf years ago and since he is now planning his retirement he was hoping that I took over the financing of this policy. I asked him for the details however he had no idea what it was, thus it happened that we arranged for the insurance agent to come present herself.

Question number one what is my ROI?

Huh? ROI?

Yes. The interest rate per year for this account?

Oh. Sorry but due to regulations by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, we are not allowed to guarantee any interest yearly rates. However, this funds has been performing quite well and will definitely continue to perform well till your age of 55.

Ok then. What kind of portfolio is this fund used for maintaining?

Loans and financing of business operations, stocks and bonds.

Ok then.

I smiled at the back of my mind thinking “so basically the shit that is happening back room is masked from us and we are presented instead with a number that is written on paper.”

One experience like which got me into some really serious shit last year was more than enough. I have no inclinations to repeat that shit again.

I continued pounding the figures away on my excel sheet while she tried to distract me from my excel sheet.

Viola, I got the figures I wanted and it didn’t seem all that good to me. I finally focused my entire attention on her.

But your dad bought this for you, it is a gift from him. You should treat this as a gift and accept it, continue financing it.

Oh yeah, I replied once again smiling merrily,  my dad is a good person. I respect him for that.

She smiled back too, thinking she finally managed to re-secure the deal once again.

So how do I close this account?

She got shocked. Why?

It is just 3% per year barely even enough to cover our inflation rate, I can get more somewhere else.

Ok then, maybe you should return this gift to your dad.

Yes I must.

Suddenly she focused her entire attention on my dad and brought out this new stack of paper about some new scheme which my dad so happened to qualify for.

“Mr Teh….”

“Thanks for your advice. I will consider it. My son should keep this funds for it.”

“Nope, dad buy your long dream about boat. You are retired now. ”

End of scenario…..

Start of next scenario…..

More capable salesman will come forth with a more logical looking proposal.

And here we have with us a product that will guarantee you lose your fats in no time. Here on this banner is one of our success stories. This person lost 19kg in 6 months out of which 70% are fat.

Wow. I am so impressed. He does look better after that. But wait what happened to that other 30%?

The salesman was momentarily caught off guard.

Uh…

Oh man. 19kg * 30% =  5.7kg of something else that is not constituted by fats. Muscle mass? That is a lot of muscles too lose in just 6 months. Are you sure this drug of yours is safe.

End of next scenario…..

More capable salesman are like the 3 accursed witches in William Shakespear’s McBeth. They always tell the truth. Their truths are always so logical too. However it is just half truths.

What you know, won’t kill you
What you know you don’t know, might kill you
What you don’t know you don’t know, that will definitely kill you!  (the black swan)

Thankfully most cases presented by capable salesman fall into the 2nd group (What you know you don’t know, might kill you) if you bother to spend time to sort through the whole logic of things.

I thank my stars for the instructions I have received thus far as well as for the instructions I have yet received through all the people I met and yet to meet. Each of them bring to me in their own ways some really valuable teachings whether they are consciously aware of it or not. It is always there right in front of your eyes if you just bother to spend time to put the pieces together.

Life is great and always an adventure!

Puzzling discrepancy between current stock price of shares and actual value reflected in the financial statements

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Dad has been rather laid back of late and it seems it will only get worst with him in the midst of his self declared retirement. Most afternoons would see him sitting in front of the television with the Teletext switched on and him monitoring the stock prices of a few stocks he has in his portfolio.

It seems whenever any of these companies send their quarterly financial report to him, he would just take them and throw them away without even once glancing at them. Always he would state proudly that he is only interested if they send him dividends and not trash like this.

It sounded extremely worrying to me. So apparently he is buying shares of companies without actually understanding the happenings within these companies ( as per reflected in their quarterly financial statements). That is not really investing isn’t it, it sounds more  like playing the Russian roulette in this case with his retirement money. Utter non-sense!

Thus today I went and took a look at the stocks he had been monitoring. Thankfully these companies being public listed have their financial statements (balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements) made easily available over the internet. Also even more thankfully being a graduate from the last batch of the commerce from Saint Andrew’s Junior college, having been thorough grilled in the matters of accounting and book keeping, I could at least understand somewhat the statements made available to me.

Reading through the statements, I have on a few occasions found something really puzzling. Why are current share prices higher than their net asset values as per indicated in the respective companies balance sheet? Perhaps the difference could be explained by the fact that these financial statements are outdated by 3 months or so. However such an explanation can be considered as the main cause of this difference, especially in cases whereby the share price is up to two times higher than net asset value (obviously these company can’t be performing that exceptionally well in this bearish market). Another plausible cause might be wanton speculation by investors. Well then, what goes up must come down. We will just have to wait till the next crisis comes along before share prices begin to return to earth from mars.

The Mulberry Plant from London

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It was late at night. My brother is now in Germany and Pasha is sitting in his room chatting happily with Masha over skype. I have offered to put him up at my place since he is having some problems with accomodation ever since coming back from his trip around Southeast Asia.

He seems happy now. I am glad he finally recovered from this really bad situation he was in last year. Some times the only paths represented in front of you are shitty ones, so regardless of which path you take you will still need to thread through shit. Yes, threading through shit is always inevitable at some point in your life, however much you attempt to avoid. This is Karma, predestined to happen and written in the stars.

I took my cup of water and looked out of my window at the mulberry plant growing from the pot. This was one of the very few things I brought back from my pilgrimage to the west in 2008. How I came to possess this plant was a really intriguing. It is the result of a whole series of coincidences that occurred that spanned across the entire length of the silk road.

Also I could have just happily sipped my tea, puffed on my cigarette while sitting in the garden behind of Sian’s house and simply ignored it when Sian was working at uprooting the entire root network of this mulberry plant. However, there was something about Sian’s complaint about this particular that told me, this was something I need to bring back to Singapore.

I still remember how she said it “oh, this is a mulberry plant. It grows all over the place like a weed, once it gets into your garden you will have a seriously tough time clearing it out. Try as you might to clear it out, if you didn’t do a proper job and happened to leave even just one inch of root lying somewhere it will all grow back suddenly. Plus the thorns are really sharp and hard.”

Since its migration from London to Singapore, this plant had died and resurrected multiple times over. Each time it would grow and take up the entire expanse of space made available to it. Each time towards the end of each phase some shit will happen in the environment and kill off its entire network of leaves. Each time we define the end of each phase by bringing out the scissors and trimming all the dead ends away. Each time without fail it will grow back still.Each time it grew back, its roots and hold on the soil became stronger and more deeply entrenched than the previous time, with more thorns to protect its main stem system.

Now looking out the window still, I thought to myself, this was indeed a very fitting item to have brought back from my pilgrimage westwards.

Positive liberty, negative liberty and the age of the stupid!

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It was Saturday afternoon and we were sitting in the holding area of Orchard Central, when Ethan suddenly mentioned that human society has progressed a long way. We first started in stone age, moved on to the bronze age, innovated into the industrial age, leaped right after into the age of Information and we finally landed ourselves in the age of stupid.

“What the hell is that?” I was totally puzzled at first and asked him to explain himself.

“We humans are now in the process of  slowly killing ourselves by destroying our environment and depleting natural resources, we all know it but we all choose to do nothing about it.” He explained concisely the summation of this age.

After giving it some thought, I concurred totally with what he said and replied “yeah that is totally true bro. The way I see it now there are only two options available for us. Option one, we achieve a quantum leap to drastically improve energy efficiency in our technology. Option two, we cull off a major part of our world’s human population changing it from its current standing figure of 6,697,254,041 to something drastically lesser. ”

In terms of ecology, our species is relatively high up in the food chain of our environment. Traditionally, the further up the food chain a species, the lesser its population as compared to those lower in the food chain (pictorially represented like a pyramid structure). However perhaps due to unpredicted but high impact occurrence like the discovery of agriculture and fire as a tool,  the essence of the human as a species started to evolve somewhere in history. Humans thereafter managed to break free on the environmental constrains that had till then been successful at keep their numbers in check.

If we did an X-ray of our environment today and assuming that humans are finally at the top of the food chain, what we should observe is that while the traditional pyramid structure is still in place (though somewhat leaner now) there is now a exceedingly large flat chunk at the top (represented none other than the human population). Ecologically, this is highly unstable structure. We are in fact exerting a lot of pressure on our environment by imposing such a ecological structure on it.

Contemplating on these two options available and the inability to execute them, I could only sigh helplessly.

Option one while being pursued and evangelized by some minorities is not being progressing as fast as it should as the major bulk of us are spending our time with our eyes glued to our work, slogging really hard to pay bills, meet deadlines or acquire our first POT OF GOLD?!? (in the context of Singapore: that idiot that proposed the 5 Cs as a mark of success and went around spreading this message to the other idiots who bought that bullshit lock stock and barrel should be shot and killed!)

I had the opportunity last year to visit the Shan Dong province of China. Alena and her friends were in the hotel room I was residing in then. While they were busy playing some games using the stack of poker cards, I went and looked out the window. Alena noticing that I was studying the scenery outside could not help but bragged “Wei Fang is one of the most beautiful cities in Shan dong and Shan Dong is economically the strongest province in the whole of China.”

I wonder if she would have made the same statement had she saw the expression on my face instead of just my back view.

“Really?” I finally responded. “Look at the soot being emitted from all the surrounding factories as well as the piles of trash lying around beside streets. Why are the factory owners not taking steps to reduce the levels of soot emitted into the air. Don’t the mainland Chinese government have some regulations to control this.”

“Look you are the only person that is naive and innocent enough to ponder and waste your time thinking about all these useless issues. These people are big bosses. They have lots of money, they drive big car, live in big houses, who gives a shit about what they do to the environment as a result. So long as money keep coming in its good enough. Even if we are not the big bosses yet, here in China we just want to concern ourselves with making money so that we will become big bosses one day ourselves too.”

“Wow. Alena this idiot you brought from Singapore really has his heads in the clouds.” one of her girls comment and everyone broke out laughing.

“Ok then I rest my case. But just remember that all of you are women, you will bear kids one day and your kids will have their own kids. Somewhere along the way this environment of yours will become so screwed up, these kids might in fact come forth to this world deformed, with three limbs or four eyes. They will look like you still but they will be deformed.”

“shh..! don’t interrupt me from winning money. ”

Well, there goes option one.

The notion of choosing option two is totally out of the question unless of course you consider yourself a member in the same league as Osama Bin Laden, Hitler, Mussolini. However upon closer inspection, the existence of such a character might not even be necessary afterall. Just simply observe the trends lately, it seems most areas in the northern hemisphere has been experiencing natural disasters of late, with tons of destruction done to the existing infrastructure in those places. Seems like while mother nature has been very kind and accommodating to our non-sense till now, she is slowly but surely taking steps to cull off our population.