Chinese New Year 2009

Reunion Dinners. Visits to relatives and friends. Spring cleaning. Giving ang pows. 守岁 (This year, I stayed up till 5 am). These are the traditional things that happen during Chinese New Year, may not necessarily be in that order. Maybe because I've grown older, unlike my teenage years, I've actually come to like Chinese New Year, especially the visiting part. Every year, we are so busy in our daily lives that we seldom have a chance to meet our relatives and some of our friends. If without Chinese New Year, we may neglect some of our relatives and dear friends, drifting apart without realising and until it is too late. But at least during Chinese New Year, it gives us an opportunity to catch up with some of them, at least once a year. As I aged grown, I've come to appreciate Chinese New Year more than the typical New Year Day (1 Jan) that just marks the beginning of a new year.

I was busy doing spring cleaning in our SOHO (small office home office) with my wife just days before the year of the Ox. We finally had the time to pack my company files and records of the past 9 years into various boxes. While she was packing, she noticed that I was actually quite a meticulous and organised person. I had every documents in their proper folders and labeled them accordingly. She also noted that for the contracts of year 2000 to 2005, they were all able to fit into a typical broad file but a similar file was only be able to hold contracts of year 2006 and 2007. How the business had grown and progress.

Before I started using accounting software to track my manually generated invoices and payments received, I had a printed spreadsheet which I used. The same spreadsheet would also reveal that in the mid of year 2006 was the period when I was so overwhelmed by my business that I lost control and was no longer able to track diligently the invoices billed and payments received. For the second half of year 2006, the record was just blanked. It was a dark period from then onwards when the accounts spiraled into the chasm of chaos. It took us two years (2007/08) before we finally wrestled the accounts and brought it under organised control.

This year, we also began the year with a very bleak economic outlook. In the past few days, it was just news after news of global retrenchments by MNCs where the numbers are in the thousands and one was even in the range of twenty-six thousand. It was also said that the global retrenchment may reach a staggering 51 million. * shudders *

About 9 years ago, I was retrenched. That was the time when I started walking the long and arduous road of an entrepreneur. Sometimes I wonder, if I had not been retrenched, would I have taken the plunge to start my own (ad)venture? It is a question I ponder once in a while but it is a question I'll never know the real answer. The retrenchment may have helped made my decision to become an entrepreneur for me. 俗语说：赛翁失马，焉知非福。(Translation: It may not be a bad thing when you lost your horse.)

I can now say I'm glad to have taken this path. I have more time for my family. I'm doing something I enjoy. Yes, I love my job. Because I am the boss of my own business, I don't have more time but I have the flexibility of time and am able to fetch my firstborn who started his primary education to-and-fro from his school daily. I am also the captain of my own ship and I can make my own decisions in how to steer it out of the current economic storm.

Looking back, it had been a tumultuous 9 years. I've learnt many lessons and still many lessons are being learnt every day. Life would have been very different if I had not taken the red pill, it would have been a life now I can't imagine. I am glad to continue to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

If the future looks dark, don't despair. If you've looked back in history, you will notice that peaks and trough are part and parcel of a any normal business cycle. Many generations before us have survived The Great Depression, so surely, we the current generation would also be able to withstand the full frontal assault of the current economic crisis. Always look for the silver lining, for the lady of fortune will bestow her smile on those who does not give up hope and who dares to dream. There will be light at the end of the tunnel.

I trust in the tenacity and strength of the human spirit.

Happy Chinese New Year 2009!

Square Room

When Today announced the formation of Association of Bloggers (Singapore) aka ABS, it was really the first time I heard of its official status. Prior to that, even though there are many members in the Protem committee whom I view as friends, I don't have any inkling of its official status or even the committee members. Honestly, I was surprised by its veil of secrecy that shrouded its formation. If it is a company launching a product for profit, I can understand the requirement of secrecy but ABS is a non-profit organisation formed to unite local bloggers. Then what's up with all the hush-hush? Wouldn't it have been better to have been more open and upfront regarding its formation which may foster more discussion among the bloggers and make everyone has a better understanding in its formation and purpose? Isn't social media about conversations? This is afterall a public and registered association. It is not suppose to be a secret society.

From the recent chatter in plurk, apparently there was a gag order disallowing its committee members to disclose any information to anyone - not friends, not family members, not boyfriends, not girlfriends. Again, why the gag order? Why the secrecy? If this is a non-profit association setup by bloggers for bloggers, then why is it behaving like gahmen-linked establishments with its non-transparency? But the irony is, the gag order seems to have been restricted to the blogosphere because according to the Today report, even before its formal launch, the association has received emailed media invites to cover events. Apparently, some are more equal than others.

In all honesty, I was pretty neutral when I learnt of its official formation. I was neither for nor against them. I would be in the area where some would call it grey. I've always believed the virtual world is really big enough for groups with diverse interests to co-exist. If a group of bloggers have a sense of duty and calling to unite the bloggers and wanting to form an official registered association, it is their perogative. It is a noble goal to unite fellow bloggers and to promote professionalism among the association's members. Until I read the entry by the association's president:

Singaporean bloggers were like loose sand, they were not united. They were easily manipulated and even banned for standing up against the foreign tyrant from self-proclaimed 'community meta weblog for Singapore bloggers'. Small bloggers are just too isolated to be able to fight for their rights.

I was surprised of the mentioned of an incident that happened almost 18 months ago and calling the owner of the meta blog a 'tyrant'? In my personal opinion, I thought this was ironical that it came from the president of an association supposedly created to 'promote professionalism among the association 's members'. How is this professional blogging? Why take potshots at an incident that happened so long ago and distract the blogosphere from the official news of its formation? With this, the leader has single-handedly cast suspicion on the purpose behind the forming of the association.

When Lucian of tribolum.com expressed his view on this in his personal capacity, the president's response is to write an entry in a blog titled "To PM Lee Hsien Loong" attacking Lucian on his job and capacity as a civil servant. This is almost akin to the scenario whereby 2 kids involving in a brawl, afterwhich, one of the kid resort to reporting the fight to the authority unit, "Teacher, he bully me!"

Sorry, how is this professional blogging again?

In a short 3 days, instead of uniting the local bloggers, I observed more strife. The association has instead brought out unsightly behaviours. There seems to me also an uneasy feeling, even among friends, if you are not with them, you are against them.

I feel like I'm now standing in a square room, seeing different groups of people occupying different corners of the room. Some at extreme opposite corners; some bigger group and more boisterous than others. Ironically, this is remeniscient of the "in", "out" debacle.

Me? I find myself ostracized and not belonging to any corner.

The room has just gotten colder.

Should Be Sleeping

Been busy and still am.

Since my son started his primary school, I'm still trying to adjust to the new schedule. Been getting only 5 or 6 hours of sleep and this is wearing me down. Actually, it is not because I've been fetching him to-and-fro from school that is wearing me down. It is the fact that I've not adjusted to the new hours and coupled with unbridled amount of work that is wearing me down.

Coupled with the fact that Chinese New Year is arriving in approximately a week's time and I have not done my part in spring cleaning yet. If you see my towers and towers of books and unread magazines stacked and strewn all over the floor, it would make any grown men weak and cry in despair. This is adding stress to my already furrowed forehead.

It is also exhausting to call clients to chase for payments. It is not something I enjoy. I feel bad that I've to call them to chase for payments. I feel worse when the client feel nonchalant about paying late or not paying at all. It is emotional draining. It makes you wonder if there is hope in the human race.

I still have many (too many) outstanding long term projects waiting for me to wrap my head and arms around it.

Well, the good news for the week is that I've managed to clinched about $20k work of deals in a few days of work. It is good to be able to get these amount of deals now because the coming months are predicted to be bleak. The next worry is whether the payment for these new contracts will come in a timely manner.

I really should be sleeping. If not, I won't have enough sleep and I'll go through the day like a waking zombie. This would affect my efficiency and productivity. Worse, I'll constantly feel tired.

Yes, I'm tired. I really should be sleeping.

P.S. My router just died. This means I need to find time to get myself a new wireless router. Argh!

Body Wash

While DK was having an orgasmic experience with the newly-launched-but-not-available Palm Pre, I was digging around for the other video feeds of the Palm Pre presentation at CES because for some reason, the official video feed in Palm's website just can't load for me.

And during my search, I chanced upon Dove's website. Don't ask me how my search for Palm Pre got me there as I am equally befuddled. Then I clicked around as I never realised that Dove has so many different types of body wash. I always thought that Dove only has the white coloured liquid soap when I chanced upon this body wash Refresh.

The promotional text:

New Dove fresh Refresh Body Wash contains an ultra-light hydrating formula and the clean scent of waterlily and fresh mint. Leaves your skin with a gentle tingly, refreshing feel.

The soap has mint? Leaves your skin with tingly feel? And when I clicked on the ingredients, menthol was part of it!

Isn't it weird to apply menthol to your nether regions while bathing? Who would do that? Would you really want to apply menthol there? No wonder the soap would Wake Your Senses,


What a way to start your day! Maybe the new soap was to recreate the experience by the previous orgasmic organic Herbal Essences shampoo. :p

Busy!

This week marks the full week where my son is in primary one i.e. me waking up every day at 6 am to drive him to school and back. For the past 5 nights, I've been sleeping at 2.30 am, 1.30 am, 12 midnight, 11 pm and 12.30 am. Woke up at 6 am every single morning, an average of 5 hours of sleep. Then it begins the mad rush of waking the son, urging him to brush his teeth, eat his breakfast, change into his school uniform, urging him to wear his shoes and ushering him into the car.

Then it is time for me to transform into F1 driver (if they drive at 90 km/h), overtaking (I try) everyone in front of me as I have only 8 minutes to reach the junction outside his school. After that, it is a 10 minutes jam outside the school just to make the turn into the school compound. The school requires the son to reach school by 7.15 am! What happened to 7.30 am school time? Every morning, we reached school with only seconds (yes, seconds) to spare and leaving me with my nerves frayed.

Then it begins my turn to rush home and passing the ERP gantry by 7.59 am before the toll increases by 50 cents.

Then it is another hour spent coaxing my young son to his childcare centre. If I'm lucky, I'll start work by 9 am.

Then it begins the mad rush of work as I'll need to reach school again by 1.35 pm to pick up my son.

In between the hours, I'll be busy chasing payments from some of my clients. As they are my contacts, when my accounts fail to collect payment, I'll need to call them personally to chase for payment already. Often times, the usual excuse reasons for not paying are "I was busy" and "It slipped my mind". Then, they'll promise you the cheque will be mailed out by end of the week and usually, it dose not happen. Repeat cycle next week.

Under the current economic outlook, it seems like no one is paying unless they are being chased. Doesn't anyone make payment voluntarily anymore?

As this is the start of the new year, there will be reminders sent to clients and checking if they would be renewing our services. In the past, the response would come back pretty quickly with a simple yes and our contract and invoice will be emailed over. Now, the responses are coming back slowly. Some are even ignoring the emails. We've some clients who have agreed to the renewal but they never returned a signed copy of the contract, unlike in the past. I even have a client which replied with a "Let's meet for lunch next week" suggestion without indication of a renewal. Sigh, if more of my clients need to meet me for lunch to talk business, I wonder how I'm gonna find time to do my other work.

Gahmen Agencies

On the evening of 31 December 2008, I tried to renew my HDB season parking through their online portal www.hdb.gov.sg. It is not easy to navigate through the maze which is the HDB portal. For example, for a first time person like me, if I wanted to renew my season parking, which of the myraid choices should I click? For a first-timer, you would think "Home Owners > Parking Facilities > Season Parking" would bring you to the page you want, as shown in the screen catpure below:


No...... because it brings you to this page instead:


Which was an overview page about season parking! * face palm *

The second time I clicked, I clicked on "e-Services" which is located on the top main navigation bar. This time it brought me to an expanded long list of services:

Yes, the list is that long! How do they expect anyone to find any services in that long and very wordy list? The default setting for the page should have been "collapse" and not "expand" and it'll look like below, which will be neater and easier to navigate further:


When I finally managed to select the service I need, which is to renew season parking, after keying a few screens of requested information, the system told me that my account is "tagged and no renewal is allowed. Please visit the HDB office for more information." (or something like that, as far as I can recall).

Crap! Because it was evening and the HDB offices were already closed, I can only visit the neighbouring HDB office on 2^nd January 2009. I better get the season parking renewed first thing in the morning of 2^nd January as I do not wish to risk getting a parking fine.

When I visited HDB office, I found out that I was not able to renew my season parking as I have outstanding unpaid service and conservancy charges with the Town Council. It happened simply because my-wife-thought-I-had-paid-and-I-thought-she-had-paid kind of situation.

If the system can block me from renewing my season parking due to my outstanding bill with another organisation, I was wondering then why didn't the system just prompt me that I need to settle my unpaid charges with the Town Council. I would gladly settle the bill online (which we usually do) and I wouldn't need to make an unnecessary trip down to the HDB office.

However, what I found most tok kong realisation of this experience, even if cross-agencies, they can help to demand payment. If you don't pay, you won't be allowed to use the service of the other agencies.

Wow! If only our business and companies are cooperating like that, e.g. if Company XYZ owes my company money, Company ABC can help to deny Company XYZ from doing business with them and help my company to demand payment! Then my December 2008 would not be the lowest amount of payments received for the whole of last year and no company in Singapore would be worried about the current economic situation and not being able to collect payments.

Singapore Inc. has indeed a very good business model. The gahmen always win! :p

FAIL!

A few nights ago, one of my good friend was celebrating her birthday and I wanted to give her a treat so I suggested that we go to a swanky (quite lah) restaurant. We ordered wine, expensive main dish and 2 plates of humongous chocolate based sinful desserts.

We chatted and we did some catch up. Finally, when it was time to pay, I flashed out my credit card to the waiter. Not long after, the waiter came back apologetically telling me that my card was rejected and asked if I had another card. I don't.

Sheepishly, I had to ask the birthday girl to pay for both our meals instead.

Upon exiting the restaurant, I suddenly realised why didn't I pay cash instead? Being so used to paying everything (almost) with the plastic card, I had forgotten the existence of paper currency.

FAIL!

And I had made the birthday girl paid for her treat!

SUPER FAIL!

*************************************

I had wanted to enjoy the 15% discount offered to OCBC credit card holders when making purchases from Topman. It was the time of the year when I should be buying new clothes in preparation of Chinese New Year. I find the cutting of Topman jeans more suitable for me. The promotion had been around for 2 weeks but I never was able to find time to visit any Topman boutique and as luck would have it, yesterday was the last day of the promotion. Regardless of how unenjoyable it would be to do battle with the weekend Orchard crowd, I just had to make my purchases.

After finally selecting a pair of jeans and 2 long-sleeve shirts, I made my payments and asked (to remind) the cashier if OCBC credit card holders would enjoy a 15% discount, she replied me that the offer was only valid for sale items. As my purchases were from non-sale and the current season, no discount will be applicable.

Not believing the cashier, after making my payment, I walked out to check the promotion poster placed at the door of the boutique.

The poster clearly printed "15% discount on sale items". I can't even blame it on fine print.

I just braved the Orchard weekend crowd and spent $209 without discount. I could have shopped on any week day without needing to squeeze with the crowd.

Why the heck did I rush down to town yesterday? Remind me again?

FAIL (again)!

Argh!

New Year 2009

It has been almost 9 years since I needed to wake up this early. This is one of the perks of being an entrepreneur and working from home. However, this morning, I woke up to a darkened sky and cold morning air. The birds were still asleep and the surrounding was quiet. If not for a few HDB lighted units across my block, I would think that I woke up to a deserted urban jungle.

This morning, I'll be joining the legion of parents who wake up early every morning for the next 6 years (my younger son in 3 years time) and to bring them to school. Like my father, who drove me to school during my early years of primary school, I'll be driving my son to school too. Ah... The circle of life.

Even though the school is still the same but the compound and location has changed. It is not exactly the same as the school I had spent 6 years of my life.

Time really flies. It was only 6 years ago that I just cradled my firstborn in my arms and welcome him to this beautiful world. It feels as though he has grown overnight, and he is now a primary one student already.

Clothed in my once familiar school uniform, he was excited and looking forward to meeting new friends in a new environment. I can't help but brimmed with fatherly pride.

This year will bring many exciting changes and new challenges. But most importantly, we must stay positive, brave the storm and bashed through the obstacles head-on!

My resolutions for 2009:

1. Find time to read more from the three ivory towers of knowledge (formed by never ending quest of buying books and rarely reading them)

2. Spend more time with my family and children (they grow up so fast! soon they will be pimply teenagers and no longer want to be seen with their old man)

3. Squeeze more time out of 24 hours (using techniques from GTD and various time management books I've devoured)

4. Complete the never ending cool and new projects that I've started but never bringing them to the finishing line (hey, I'm an ideas guy *DK say one, not I say*... too many inspirations!)

5. Do proper project planning and adhere to the timeline (now must set a time to plan my project planning *LOL*)

6. Steer my company through this economic thunderstorm (challenges are there all the time and recession is part of a business cycle. Like gravity, what goes up must come down. Managing a company through the recession is part and parcel of being an entrepreneur... it also builds character and me sexy! *roll eyes*)

7. Remain upbeat and perky through all the gloom and doom that is being reported in the main stream media every day (dig deep inside myself to find strength and hope)

8. Watch more anime (only the good ones, of course)!

9. Go through year 2009 with a galloping gait (run, Paladdin, run!)

10. Like Alley McBeal, plays songs in my head and dance when nobody is looking (my head is playing Get It On by Paps 'n' Skar now)

Don't let 2009 get you down. Wrestle challenges and conquer them! Have a great 2009! :)