A Glimpse in the 2010 for 2011

The age of 40 has a significant meaning or change for a lot of people. Some observed that their body energy and brain productivity start to degrade (a better word then “deteriorate”) from this age. It also mean to some as have half of the life is gone (assuming the life expectancy is of age 80) and everything start to countdown from the age of 40. I remember quite well that the moment into the age of 40 in Sept 2010, I have to stop telling people I am still thirty something and feel a little bit awkward to tell the age. This is the year I observed myself would fall into asleep at the sofa after watching TV for more than an hour.

Regardless, I would still like to summarize the passed events in 2010 in the first day of 2011. As contrary to the slow economic recovery in many of the developed nations, the recovery in the emerging markets in 2009 is robust and outstanding. The equity & real-estate markets were red-hot and the returns generated are lucrative for a lot of investors in these markets. My personal net-worth target for 2010 was met in the final month of the year thanks to the good returns of some of investments made. While exciting with the gains, it remain cautious for me as these are just paper gains for now until they are liquidated and realized.

The travel plans made in the beginning of the year were only half met. The trip to the Sichuan Province and Xi’an China realized in the month of Apr 2010. The entire trip took us 3 weeks with our footsteps left in many lovely places. The most interesting one is the picturesque JiuZhaiGou valley, a nature reserve in the north of Sichuan is well-known for its many multi-level waterfalls and colorful lakes, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.

JiuZhaiGou Valley - Panda Lake (熊猫海)

The trip to Xi'an city and the Shaan’xi province was just as brilliant as well. The museum of Terracotta Army is a must-go destination in Xi'an as it was coined as "Eighth Wonder of the World". The city tour in the historic Xi’an city was just as amazing with the wonderful collection in the Shaan'xi History Museum and the well preserved Ming City Wall in the middle of the city.

Xi'an-The Museum of Terracotta Army

The ChengDu stopover was also interesting with the fascinating trip to Mount Emei, one of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains in China. The Mt Emei scenic area, including Leshan Giant Buddha have been listed as World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996. The weekend trip to the Shunan Bamboo Sea was also worth mentioning with the huge bamboo forest covering an area of 120sqkm.

Regrettably the trip to Shanghai for the Shanghai Expo was not materialized as I was too occupied with the project work in the office. In 2011, I hope to continue my excursion in China for the 3rd conservative year with at least 2 weeks of stay at the Yunnan Province.

The company layoff exercise in the beginning of the year has caused a lot of us in the office feeling a little bit insecure and uncomfortable. This was also of the reason that has triggered many of the colleagues worked extremely hard in 2010 to acquire different professional certifications to prepare for the uncertainty in the working environment. As for me personally, I have opted for PMP certification to support myself for the project management profession. The 3 months of effort worked out quite well and I have acquired the professional certification in July 2010. As for the 2011, I have aimed for another non-IT professional certification, in addition to the CFP obtained couple of years ago.

Some of the new year resolutions made for 2010 did not turn out that well such as reading in average 2 books per month. I failed to achieve this in 2010 with the results of less than a book a month. Well, I did not blame this to the extremely high workload in the second half of the year and I personally think it was due to the lack of discipline at home. Let’s hope in 2011, I would be able to achieve this.

The Layoff Syndrome

We have read about many layoffs in different industries worldwide especially in the west countries in the recent financial meltdown. Despite the economy recovery supported by various economy indicators and statistics, the layoff exercise is still the favorite approach used by many employers in the name of cost cutting.

Layoff is probably the worst nightmare for many employees as the termination of employment would mean a loss of main or probably the only source of income for a lot of people. There are many interesting symptoms among the employees resulting from the so-called “layoff syndrome” witnessed in one of the layoff.

The impacted staffs are in denial stage initially with lot of doubts in their mind when they first received the letter. Criteria for candidates selection not disclosed to the impacted staff further aggravated the situation. It is unbelievable that the layoff happened when some other departments within the company are still recruiting employees and contractors.

The managers involved in the exercise in determining or providing the feedback for the candidate to be laid-off are equally in denial stage, worrying to be blamed by their staff for causing the loss of their employment. Human real characters are also uncovered in this period. Back-stabbing is not unheard of for survival sake. We witnessed personally a selfish manager who refused to fight and justify the existence for the impacted staff for the own benefits. A real disgusting and embarrassing case!

The most disturbing fact is the reorganization took unusually long time of more than 3 months before the organization chart was announced. In this period, the staffs were left with unofficial rumors as their main source of information. Small group discussions or tea break gatherings are popular for the gossip catch-up. The staff productivity was in record low due to the uncertainty and the mind-boggling situation.

Employees including the non-impacted one are busy updating their resumes or updating their online profiles in the professional networking site, or contacting friends or ex-colleagues or even the head-hunters for job search. This is the symptom reflecting the fact employees are anticipating rounds of layoffs in the future even if they are spared in this round.

Farewell lunches for the leaving employees are becoming increasingly common. We had one for a colleague last week and many more are expected in the coming weeks and months. In this period, colleagues are usually more than happy to participate the lunch as a token of appreciation for the leaving colleagues or most importantly for exchange of information. A recent Chinese New Year lunch has an unusual high turn-up rate this year. It is always right to say human tends to be closer in their relationship in the difficult moments.

CCTV 's Spring Festival Gala

There are not many differences for Malaysian Chinese in celebrating their eve before the lunar new year. Other than the usual get to together for the family reunion dinner at home or the increasingly popular dining out, many especially the young would also choose to go out for the so-called new year movies or catch up with friends for a drink. My personal preference has been on watching the TV program at home. The CCTV's Spring Festival Gala or Chunwan (春晚) show was my choice ever since our local satellite TV service provider, ASTRO started airing the program a couple of years ago. This is also the most widely watched program in the mainland China ever since it was inaugurated in 1982.

This year's Chunwan show is definitely a must watch because of appearance of the long missed artists such as Faye Wong (王菲) and Xiao Hu Dui (The Little Tigers - 小虎队) after a long break. The Mando-pop diva,Faye Wong performed the song "The Legend" (传奇), an old song composed by Li Jian (李健), a talented singer cum composer in the mainland. With the new song arrangement and the amazing Avatar like 3D background effect, and her usual crystal clear vocal, the performance was extraordinary good and attracted big applause from the crowd after the song performance. The video posting for her performance in Youtube has attracted more than 100,000 views in one day with many comments welcoming her back to the music career she left behind 5 years ago.

Faye Wong in her performance

For many of us born in the 70s and 80s, the Little Tiger is defintely in the memory for many fans of the Chinese music industry. The boys band reunite in the year of tiger, unfortunately in the Chunwan show only, after a long break up for more than a decade. The medley of 3 old songs performed reminded the audience of their teenage days and you can see everyone in the scene clapping their hands singing together with their idols. This was definitely the most popular performance in the whole show. It doesn't really matter that the little tigers are no really young boys.

The Little Tigers reunion in the year of Tiger

Another innovation worth mentioning is the stunning background 3D effect on the stage with multiple LED screens, the first of its kind at the stage performance. This reminds me of the opening of the Beijing Olympic games in 2008.

Stunning background 3D effect

A Charity Sale

The charity committee in the company is organizing a charity sale within the office to collect some fund for donations to the victims from Haiti who suffered from the catastrophic Mw 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the 12th Jan 2010. The organizing committee seeks the donation of household items, clothing, toys or books from the colleagues for the charity sales. I was looking around at home to see what I can contribute for this charity sale. My aim is not to clear something I do not want but rather to share esomething which is beneficial to others. Finally I have chosen a book entitled “Foods that harm, Foods that heal – An A-Z Guide to Safe and Healthy Eating” published by Reader’s Digest couple of years ago.



I bought this book two years and have benefited much from this book since then. The book is about 400 pages with more than 150 food entries, organized from A to Z, provides the readers the lowdown on the nutritional value every food which you can name it. The benefits and the drawbacks are listed for each food in plain English for ease of understanding. Other than that, readers can also look for foods that that are beneficial for the patient and foods to be avoided for different type of diseases and medical conditions. Inside the book, there are also short paragraphs of case studies and myths which are really interesting for reading.

The food bible is invaluable and should be a collection at home for anyone who claims to be health-conscious. Rather than sitting idle in my book-shelf, I share this out so that hopefully someone else can also benefit from this book. I recommended to the organizing committee for the price tag of a minimum RM100 for this book. Let's see how it turn out to be in the charity sale.

Echocardiogram Check-Up

The insurer for my medical insurance has increased the premium with a heavy loading, an additional 30% on top of the annual premium due to the voluntary disclosure 2 years ago when I took up the medical insurance as an added protection. I have disclosed in the insurance proposal form for having a small VSD (ventricular septal defect), or generally known as the hole in the heart. The defect is a small hole (0.7cm in diameter) below aorta valve, diagnosed in one of the medical check-up during the school days. The defect does not cause any issue, nor any operation required as I guess it is a tiny hole.

It was rather annoying as the insurance company started charging insurance loading 2 years after the insurance were in force and before the annual premium is renewed for the 3rd year. (Frankly speaking I would say the insurance company is seeking additional protection for themselves rather than for the customer like me, who has been the loyal customers for more than 15 years).

I attended an Echocardiogram check-up yesterday in our the Sunway Medical Centre to obtain the latest medical report to support for the request for reduction of insurance loading. This is my third visit for the similar purpose in the last 10 years. I was overwhelmed with the courteous customer service at the counters as well as the medical practitioners met. A comfortable gown was arranged for the patient for wearing during the Echocardiogram check-up is one of the improvement seen, as compared with my previous visits. Another point to mention is the fees charged for the check-up have not increased much when compared to the similar check-up 10 years ago.

The services in private medical centres generally have improved thanks to the booming medical tourism industry in Malaysia. Malaysia is among the world’s top five medical tourism destinations for medical tourists and foreign investors. Malaysia came in third behind Panama and Brazil, and was followed by Costa Rica and India. The industry brought in large volume of patients in the last couple of years. In 2006, the revenue earned is approximately USD59 million or RM203.66 million.

Interesting Behaviors

My foreign colleagues and friends like to share with me the interesting behaviors they observed for some of Malaysians they met here. Most of these are quite funny but it can be quite embarrassing sometimes. Here are some of the common observations:-

(1) Does not like to walk

An observation which I must agree with. Look at how we park our cars at the shopping mall. We will first park at the parking lots nearest to the entrance (even though it may be a parking lot for the disabled) so that it saves a few walking steps. See the cars illegally parked at the commercial streets especially around the banks during the weekdays. We can ask ourselves and look around how often we walk to the shops for meals from our apartments or houses even though the locations are near and the weather is not hot.

(2) Lack of patience

A lot of Malaysians will never queue up and wait patiently for the turn without the attempt to jump queue. A colleague of mine shared his recent experience when waiting for his turn at one of the hospital. Many visitors (generally they are not really sicks) walked to the counter every 15 - 30 minutes for checking their turns or negotiating for faster turn for them with all sort of excuses. They even asked their kids to check for the turn hopefully to obtain the service faster. I observed the similar experiences usually in the customers service counters at the bank. The walk-in customers would often interrupt the customer service staff that is serving the customer to hijack the attention for information. You will get so annoyed that the customer service staff often stop serving you and begin to respond to a couple of these adhoc customers who interrupted your conversation. This behaviors are really rude for me as they are wasting people's time.

(3) Keep "intimate distance" with others

Do you stand behind the yellow line or leaving some spaces in between when there is someone in front of you performing transactions at the ATM machine or at the counter? A lot of people does not realize this and keep very "intimate" physical distance when others are performing financial transactions which should be private and confidential. Frankly speaking I think this is because we are not sensible to the privacy for the others.

(4) Litter anywhere, anytime

My foreign friends are usually stunned when they see kids or even adults throwing out rubbish from the moving cars. I had worse experience in my apartment when the lift floor is often filled with kids' urine. Due to the open design, the balcony at my apartment had always been a rubbish bin for the residents at the upper floors. Once there is even a dead rabbits thrown at my balcony. A few years ago, the Indonesia house maid used to curse when she had to clean up the balcony littered with dirty woman sanity bags. What an embarrassing and disgusting behaviors by some of the people around.

(5) "Last Minute" Behavior

It is not uncommon to see our renown "last-minute" behavior especially before the deadline such as 30th Apr every year for tax form submission or the year-end rush for claims. I had a bad experience in the last year-end for the dentist visit when many people rushed for dental visit at the year end to utilize the dental benefits from their companies. I had to queue for more than 5 hours for the service. A visitor, who brought his entire family for dental visit, told me that this is the 7th dentist he visited for the day as all the other dentists were filled with year-end appointments. Well, I am one of those with this "last-minute" syndrome.

An Abandoned Tin Mine in Puchong

It used to be an abandoned tin mine with the mounting sand hill as high as a 3-storey building, at the back of IOI Mall, Puchong, when I first moved in Puchong in 2000. In the last 1-2 year, the eyesore has turned to a big lake unnoticeably by the developer. Row of buildings were built facing the lake or facing the LDP highway. Eatery & shops newly opened are frequently packed with Puchong folks for meals in the evening.

Lake view - no longer an eyesore

Eatery and shops facing the lake

2010 - Embracing A New Decade

It was not a good start for 2010 with the occurrences of few instances of churches and schools been perpetrated with attacks in the last couple of days, leaving many to us to wondering what had really happened to this country, which used to be and hopefully continue to be a harmonious country. You have never had before a new year wish to live in a safe and peaceful country (Malaysian have always take this for granted). Nevertheless for 2010, you have just included this as the main one in your list. You know you are not the only one.

In the last decade, we witnessed the worst financial crisis in 2008 Q4 - 2009, probably one of the worst in our life time for some with many tightened the purse strings in the economic recession. For Malaysian, 1997-1998 financial crisis was the probably a worse one with many of our friends, colleagues or family members & relatives lost their jobs or forced to change their careers unwillingly. We also had the memory of the worst scares during the SARS epidemic in 2003 and over 70+ death cases in the H1N1 outbreak, which caught a lot of us in surprise in 2009.

Other than the above, As the saying "The only constant in life is change" goes, you know you must embrace 2010 as a new decade of changes with the following wishes laid out in this year.

Moving into the next decade and worked for than 15 years in the same field, a strong feeling and urge arisen for diversification into another career, not in the IT field. This feeling existed in the last couple of years and became much stronger now at this juncture. All this while you often think IT is a industry which really discriminates the players by age. Staff moving into the middle age like you (35 and above) are often hit with bottlenecks and we are not as competitive as the new entries in their young age in acquiring the new technology & skills, which are essential for the survival in this field. In this aspects, you told yourself many times that you would spare more time this year to venture and diversify from the usual track.

This is also a year for your execution of planned travels with a minimum of 2 weeks for at least 2 trips. A trip is currently being planned for China ChengDu and Xi'an for 2-3 weeks in April this year, an extension from last year's trip of 6 cities in China. Another trip, hopefully in Europe, at the second half of the year have not been planned yet. You also hope that the trip to Shanghai for the visit to Shanghai Expo (held from 1st May - 31st Oct 2010) can be materialized, but this can be expensive due to the foreseeable huge crowd from the worldwide.

In addition, you would continue the reading habit for this year with at least 24 books per year (about 2 books per month). Books on Financials have been your focus in the previous years and you hope that this would change this year.

The final one would be to achieve the financial objective of the net worth target by end of the year, which you had initially stated from 2007. The journey is definitely bumpy considering the economic recovery does not seem to be as solid and sustainable as we first thought.

Attach here a photo snapped this morning, looking out to the window from the bed. The rising sun, hopefully would bring everyone a sea of good changes, and of course the required wisdom to enbrace the challenges.

Shopping Bag

Malaysia has always lagging far behind other countries in minimizing the plastic bag usage. We have long seen many western countries restricting the plastic bag usage by making the shoppers paid for plastic bags. The citizen in these countries are also well educated to carry their own bags during shopping.

With the increase of the public awareness in preserving the environment, we begin to see slight progress in our country for this. Penang has successfully implemented the “no plastic bag on Monday” campaign in July 09 and the public response is overwhelming. Some hypermarkets such as Tesco and Jusco have also geared up their efforts in educating the public on this. Similar campaign is also planned in Selangor state for charging consumers for plastic bag on Saturday commencing from 2010. While this may be seen as a drop in the ocean, the efforts, nevertheless, mark a good start for the Malaysian to show their appreciations and cares for the mother nature.

While it is impossible to eliminate the plastic bag usage entirely, I have actually attempted to use reusable clothe bags for shopping in the last one year. It appears at the beginning to be a little “awkward” for a man like me to carry the bags for shopping. The uneasiness feeling eases overtime and it has now become awkward for me to use plastic bags for shopping.

My Shopping Bags

Another possible measure is to encourage the use of recycle container for the mineral water and beverages. In Germany for example, a deposit on the containers (cans, single-use glass and plastic bottles) is collected from the consumers when the beverage such as mineral water, etc is sold. It is therefore a common practice for the consumers to return the containers to an authorized redemption center, or the original seller to obtain the refund of deposit.