Gary Teh

It was late at night when I sat on the bench in the newly constructed Clementi central staring at the 40 level resident building looming right in front of me. The night breeze was warm and gentle. I was enjoying my peace and quiet. A man in his late forties commented to me “Great place isn’t it? Nice breeze.”

“Yes” I replied with a chuckle.

Another man came within the view of my peripheral vision. It was the same strange man I saw just now, who was walking around Clementi central carrying two bags with him.

I saw this same man less than 10 minutes ago at a coffee shop on the other side of Clementi Central. I happened then to be feasting on my late night sushi which I bought at a huge discount and sipping my drink of barley, both of which were bought from the National Trade Union Center.

I noticed him looking my way when he first caught sight of me sitting at the coffee shop. It was a strange look he had on his face. He took a seat and sat down one table away just within my blind spot. I left after wolfing down the last of my sushi heading for the spot on the bench.

Now, here at the sitting area around the bench this same man started choosing a place to sit. He first opted for a bench 4 slots away in front of me. Good, I thought to myself, as a habit I never allowed things I am wary of to get into my blind spot for long. After fiddling around with his bench for a moment, he decided otherwise and opted instead for the bench right behind me. Once again, he got into my blind spot. Sneaking a peak around my back, I started having the strangest thoughts. That bench he opted for was facing in the direction away from me, why is it then he choose instead to be sitting in such an awkward position so as to be able to keep me in his line of sight? As you have rightly guess, this time with the same strange look on his face…

“Another member of the stalker club” I cursed under my breathe. I sat there enjoying the breeze some more before making my way home via a detour around Clementi central.

Lately, I observed this inexplicable phenomena. There must be something about or around me which I till now have problems pointing a finger to that somehow has this effect of drawing people, strangers included, to me. The effect seems not to be negated despite my absolute passivity. Also, it seems I have absolutely no control on who is drawn.

If this man was a true blue stalker case, then he would not have been the first.

On another occasion while crossing a road junction in China town area, I noticed another man this one in his late twenties, giving me the same look from the other side of the road junction just when the traffic man turned green. I chose to ignore him and walked across the road in the opposite direction as he did. Logically it should have been the last time, our paths should ever see again for that day at least. Strangely, it was not 5 minutes before I caught sight of him walking in the opposite direction towards me at level 5 of the building I entered after crossing the road. He had this strange expectant look on his face. Once again, I choose instead to ignore his presence and left level 5 for level 4. Unbelievably, the same person appeared once again right in front of me.

Out of all these encounters that happened, the worst instance was with this 60+ years old grand mama. That day, I was on my way home on a bus after having enjoyed an afternoon of solitude along east coast beach. The grand mama boarded the bus along Aljunied area, caught sight of me and immediately sat right in front of me to start a conversation. She was asking all sorts of questions and sprouting all sorts of nonsense.

Out of politeness, I patronized her with conversation and that was the start of all troubles that was to brew over the horizons. She was a fanatic, a cultist from some strange branch of Christianity who called themselves Messianic Christians. It was not two weeks before an uproar happened at home. My mum came home with an ultimatum never to talk with strangers again. My dad came home chuckling at the strange adventures his son inevitably gets into. My brother came home absolutely pissed off by the strange conversation he was subjected to at the stairway with some strange 60+ year old lady he had never in his life encountered before. My brother took 3 bibles (one of them the Messianic version) and threw them down the rubbish chute… Ouch!

Well how I got the 3 bibles are in themselves a very strange side adventure to this main adventure I just described. It so happened I was in SMU with Pasha attending some geek seminar, when she bombarded my phone stating there was something important she needed to pass me. The seminar ended at 7pm the bunch of us, techies were thinking of heading over to Chjimes for a drink. Unsurprisingly there she was waiting right at the door with her 3 bibles. Somehow I sense her intentions were something other than just holy. I shifted her attention to Pasha, who got somewhat annoyed really fast. Coming up with a better solution, I shifted her attention to another strange chap who somehow or inexplicable reasons got drawn into my company during the seminar. Aha… like meets like. I beat a hasty retreat to Chjimes immediately.

Enough with strange ones, now back to the normal crowd… The other day while having a drink with Terence a friend of Wayne, we happened to discuss on the topic of drinking and this strange symptom of rashes I have been experiencing recently on the mornings after my heavy drinking escapades. The conversation lead to the frequency of my drinking and this third party observation by him. The conversation went like this..

“so how often do you head out?” Terrence asked.

“There is usually a maximum interval of 2 to 3 days before my phone rings and I get some invites.” I replied

“You mean you don’t ever call?”

“Nope. Only if there is someone whom I am feeling really interested in having a conversation with.”

“wow… you are quite popular then.” He stated.

“Really? I never thought of myself that way. It is strange that it is even happening in the first place.” I commented.

Yeah it was strange indeed, I recalled back 3 to 4 years ago, my phone would ring of its own accord with social invites every 6 to 7 days intervals. This cycle has of late shortened by 50 to 70%.

When I posed this question to my mom one evening, her response went like this.

“Well, you appear to be one of the more carefree ones around who didn’t seem too busy with a family. So if people do ask you out, the success rate would be higher than average and they don’t have to worry about causing quarrels within families which usually happens when people get married. ”

This did provide a valid explanation for the normal crowd. It however could provide no explanation at all for the strange ones… In my opinion, to find out the source of this inexplicable drawing effect, it is important to go through a process of deductive experimentation and reasoning. This means to identify all possible factors that might contribute to this effect and one by one removing them from the equation and thereafter observe if such a deduction creates a drastically different outcome. In the event, whereby such a factor is identified (if it does even exist at all), I would have effectively harnessed the ability to control this strange effect I am causing in the social fabric around me and employ it to good use, perhaps just for personal entertainment… 😛

Strange… Much as I have tried to avert this bottleneck that I have perceived since last month, it seems inevitable that the bottleneck occurs.

Why is that out of all the 52 weeks available in a year, 4 clients commission their project and another 2 clients seek for technical support all within this second week of July. One friend is coming to visit Singapore another is already in Singapore.

I hypothesis that the world we live in is not static but ruled instead by a cosmic tidal. This should explain the Murphy law phenomena I observed, aka 80% of all significant events happen within 20% of the time span around us.

Sales leads volume has increased lately.  As such I am considering on possible modifications to the current operating process within the company to cater for a bottle neck that exist within this current business model of mine. Currently, I am doing all the architectural work as well as some parts of the programming work. The programming work I engage in mainly revolves around the creation of programmatic structure so as to impose a boundary on the areas of the codes an incoming programmer could modify.

My effort engaged in the establishing of such boundaries is hogging up resources that could be better spent else where.

Our recent adoption of workflow modeling coupled with hand drawn illustrations has proven extremely successful in providing the required level of clarity between us and potential clients prior to the commissioning of any project to ensure against any complications during the software development cycle.

Turn around time for projects handled via such a process and methodology is even shorter compared to the turn around time for projects handled via the original methodology employed by the company at the start of the year. Development cycle has thus been shortened from a one month period to a two week period.

Recently while further digging into the methodology employed by Bosh, my brother’s company, I realized Bosh has been employing the use of UML extensively.

Just a moment ago while sitting in front of my computer and watching the first episode of Karei-naru Ichizoku (a drama about Japanese Conglomerates in the post WWII era) I had a sudden stroke of inspiration. For my next project, I will attempt to do an experiment. Around half of the UML document set has to do with the business modelling, while the other half of the UML document set has to do with technical modelling. I will attempt to tap on the analytical abilities on my counterparts overseas by just sending them the business modelling part of the UML document and ask instead they send me the technical document part of the UML document. I will be able to check and correct any problems in their programming architecture before they proceed to implement those documented changes in the systems to be worked on. Should this newly conceived methodology work as hoped, I will have thus relieved myself of one major bottleneck in our company’s operating process.

This would also imply that the company would be able to further expand its through put volume. This would also mean a clear cut separation of system architectural work from software development work. This should make possible the kind configuration I have in mind for the eventual full time employees in the company, a team that does not involve its resources with programming – commodity.

It was afternoon, I was sitting at the beach waiting for my only set of clothes to dry off after my impromptu swimming session along the East Coast.

It felt great to be feeling stinging pain for once from the parts of my skin afflicted recently with this strange bout of rashes instead of the unbearable itch that occurs at night and during some parts of the day. I am still attempting to find out the cause for this rash which started more than 2 weeks ago on my way home from West Coast beach. There are two possible causes I could think of.

1. Skin allergy resulting from the recent hot and humid weather condition
2. Skin allergy resulting from a high level of accumulated toxin in the system due to past three months of excessive alcohol consumption and late night supper

Nevertheless, the cause should become more apparent as I reduce my social drinking.

While enjoying the pain, my mind happened in the direction of work, or rather the quality of work. It occurred to me there might be a contradiction somewhere in the equation.

Profitability in the short run has a negative correlation to the quality of work produced, while continued survival in the long run has a positive correlation to the quality of work produced.

Examined in terms of the IT field, a solution is proposed to fix a short term problem without much regard to its long term implications on future business growth. Evolution of the solution to cater to the needs of future business growth would thus be more expensive than otherwise.

Such a situation could actually be the effects of an inevitable cost transfer across time. The client has limited budget but attempts to accomplish a lot during the initial phase. The vendor attempts to fulfill the current requirements but bounded by the law of scarcity cannot build a solution that caters well to both current requirements and possible future expansion. The difference between the cost charged and the actual cost of the required system is thereby transfered down the pipeline. The client is charged for the structural modification required to the existing solution to cater to the new requirements the client has in mind.

There is a contrast between profitability and survival. Being profitable is a subset of surviving, but surviving does not equate by default to being profitable. A company that makes enough profit to break even and continue operation within an industry is a survivor, however such a company cannot be said to be a profitable company.

So a professional company might not be in fact a profitable company, while a profitable company might not be a professional company. A company that has been surviving for ample number of years might have been providing professional services during those years. A newly started company that focuses on profitability might not have been providing the most professional of service. However a company that consistently focuses on profitability instead of providing professional service, might have problems surviving in the long run due to the negative sentiments accrued to it.

Ironically, my attempts to save cost for clients by consulting with them and thereafter mapping their requirements to existing open source components seems to have the opposite effect occasionally.

The notion of cost savings they acquire during the consultant sessions inevitably leads to stimulation of their imagination. This is often followed by increase in proposed project scope which ultimately causes project costing to blow out of their budget range.

What needs follow thereafter is a process of reining their over stimulated imagination tying their infinite wants back to the resources they have available.

The morale of the story: Humans tend to have infinite wants however the law of scarcity inevitably rules.

If scaling up of operations results in a corresponding drop in the quality of work, then it will be unwise to scale up. The key thus to a successful scaling up of operations level is in creating an operating process within the company that fulfills three requirements:

If scaling up of operations results in a corresponding drop in the quality of work, then it will be unwise to scale up. The key thus to a successful scaling up of operations level is in creating an operating process within the company that fulfills three requirements:

1. Maintain, if not increase, quality of output

2. Increase volume of output

3. Maintain, if not increase, profit margin levels without corresponding increase in sales unit price of service.

The upper bound in terms of operating volume is  function of the barrier to entry against new competitors. This factor in the equation has a negative coefficient.

Efficiency and effectiveness of the operating process that will need to come into existence has a positive coefficient.

The chief executive’s ability in terms of leadership, salesmanship and analytical abilities has a positive coefficient.

Explained in layman terms, for factors with a positive coefficient, the greater is the value of the factor, the greater is the output of the function. Vice versa, the greater the value of the factor with a negative coefficient, the lesser is the output of the function.

Examined using this abstract framework brings to light one of the major weakness in this current situation. The chief executive has had no corporate experience.

Major effort needs to be put into the following if better results are to be visible.

1. More research into operating processes being used by the market leaders in this industry
2. More effort into building up the leadership qualities of the chief executive
3. More effort into building up the salesmanship qualities of the chief executive

If one subscribes to the Darwinian theory of evolution, further efforts towards building up the analytical abilities of the chief executive will be futile. Analytical abilities is a function of the Intellectual Quotient (IQ). IQ is an external manifestation of genes that has been predetermined from birth.

Salesmanship and leadership are thus important qualities that a leader will need to cultivate in order to attract the cooperation of talents to the company mission. Talents is defined as people with specific innate abilities or skill sets that the chief executive has not, or should not expend further resources cultivating within himself.

An extensive research into all public companies listed on the SGX and Dow Jones and Nasdaq might shed some light unto the market leaders in different industrial sectors providing more clues as to future directions.

I was in the bus today on my way home after lunch. I was reflecting upon myself again, this time on the social and private side of this person I regard as me. While the private person knows the path he attempts to pursue, the social person inevitably brings the private person on detours, much to the frustration of the former.

The social person is by default willing to share his space with anyone who wishes to hang around. He has an accommodating disposition towards propositions by others, often to an err. Harmony is prized by the social person. He refrains from judgement until all facets of a proposal are revealed to him, then and even then a negative judgement might not be passed even if such is the only option available. In the event whereby sufficient facts are gathered and a negative judgement is passed to end a particular pursuit, due to the flaky nature of this social person, the judgement will not be sticky. It thus means given time another might be once again be able to persuade that social person to that same pursuit.

To the private person, this is a horrid waste of time. The pursuit of the path is of utmost importance. Progress in any direction other than in the direction of the path is considered a detour.The private person is by default unwilling to get distracted by any other forms of pursuit other than those that falls inline with his path. Any attempts to detract the private person from his path instills annoyance.

The social and private side of this person is thus at constant conflict with one another. In my opinion, to make significant progress, it is important to resolve this internal conflict of mine. In fact, I had unknowingly encountered the answer already during my extensive readings and discussions with people around me. Ironically though, the answer only became apparent after I defined the problem as it is.

The answer came in many forms:

I encountered the answer when reading this book on team building by one of Robert Kiyosaki’s advisors two months ago.

“A team is a group with a mission, to keep the group together under times of stress, the group must first have a set core values deeply ingrained in them. Only then will the group be able to function as a team in times of good as well as in times of stress. The function of a team is to complete a mission, the function of the team is not to please everyone within or without the group.

Not everyone can fit into the team you are trying to build. Only those who understood and are willing to accept the core values of the organization can be allowed entry into the team.”

Last Sunday, I discussed with my brother on these detours I constantly faced during my operations. I further shared the difficulties I had dishing out the rejections while not messing up the relationships I have already built up. His response

“Does your organization have a set of core principles?

The founder of my company established a clear set of guidelines when he first setup his operations in Germany. When functioning as a member in the organization, a person might on occasions encounter dilemmas which he will have a hard time coming to a decision. That is when this guideline becomes useful.

Take what happened last month when our company went over to Beijing to meet up with the prospects. Sticking to the guidelines, we had to disqualify the prospect. This is due to the fact that she is not the end user. She was attempting to setup an agency to reap commission. Our guideline is was to never engage with agencies. We came to this conclusion in spite of the impressive level of entertainment we received from her and the customers she was trying to introduce during our time there.

Suppose your organization do not have a set of core principles? What then will your decision making process be based upon? Gut feeling? How then could you ensure your gut feeling produce the same decision outcome each and every time you encounter a problem of a similar nature? How then can you ensure the quality of your decisions as well as the subsequent output based upon your decisions?

Back to the question of dishing out rejections. When a rejection is based on something that is personal a.k.a a gut feeling, the other party can and will always attempt to find something to counter that rejection. To stubbornly persist on this rejection would to cause harm to the relationship.

When a rejection is based on an impersonal principle, the other party can have no way to counter that rejection. A rejection based on a principle will not offend. “

From Warren Buffet’s biography which I read last month.

“If I am to condone your request to lend you money to tide you through your debts, then I will need to do the same for each and every subsequent person that comes after you. I will also need to do the same for each and every person that came before you. So the answer to your request is no.”

From Mr Lee Kwan Yew’s memoirs which I read the past few days.

“I am a pragmatic and practical person… I am not out to impress anybody, what matters is that Singapore prospers… I am consistent, persistent and determined.”

Drawn from the lessons taught by four people each of whom have built something significant – the “rich dad” company, Bosch, Berkshire Hathaway, Singapore, it is evident that core values are what they really are – “core“ values. A principle is an axiom. An organization expressed in metaphysical terms is an equation. All equations are built upon fundamental axioms. In the event whereby an axiom is in contradiction, the equation which is built upon it cannot be consistent.

In layman terms…

In a numerical field of 10, 1+1 will always be 2. The numerical field of 10 is the axiom.

So in essence, so long as I remain part of the team within my organization, all decisions henceforth will be based on this organization’s values and guiding philosophy

After having dealt with so many software projects over the years, I have came somewhat to the conclusion that not every deal is made the same. Some deals are more profitable than others, some deals need to be avoided altogether.

While the idea of expanding my business operation is a good one, I concluded it was even more important that I be able to expand this operation of mine while maintaining the same level of profitability, the same quality in terms of work and my good reputation (aka a technological version of the McDonald’s business model). This further lead me to ponder upon the feasibility of what I am trying to achieve. I have been deliberating over this notion in one form or another with my dad, my mum, Jim, Peter and Steven during the course of the past two months.

My recent intensive dwelling into Warren Buffett’s 800+ paged biography as well as the 600+ paged literature by his mentor Benjamin Graham titled “Security Analysis” did provide very important insights as to why banks and insurance companies of strong reputation collapsed during each and every bust period after a boom. Peter and the CMO of huelabs had in fact enlightened me on the same lesson last year. One will not die immediately from starvation but one will definitely die immediately from indigestion.

During the boom period in any economy; demand will be strong; competitors will all be seeking expansion; shareholders will be expecting increasing rates of returns on capital. Businesses overcame by optimism focus on maximizing the upside potential while neglecting to curtail the downside risk of their business operations – a human behaviour pattern Johnson commonly term as “greed”. Validating of job that passes through their system become laxed, while abnormal profit level is reported in the short run, the business sustains losses in the long run.

Keeping all these in mind, I now surmised my contemplations in the following points with regards to IT industry. These points need to be taken into consideration when judging the profitability of any deal:

Face value of the deal

In layman terms, it means how much is the total likely amount of money that will change hand via the delivery of the project from customer to vendor. It is wrong to assume that the larger the face value of a project, the more lucrative it is.

The profit margin

In layman terms, it is the difference between the face value of a contract and the cost of delivery expressed as a percentage of the contract’s face value.

Payment terms

A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. How is the payment term crafted in the contract? It is 50% up front, 50% upon delivery or is the face value amount split into intermediate portions for released during the life span of a project.

Customer credibility

A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. How prompt is the payment by the customer.

Customer liquidity strength

What is the cash level the customer has in his coffers? What is the monthly net cash flow into the customer’s coffers? A customer who has no established infrastructure that brings him a positive cash flow on a monthly basis that is attempting to commission a concept that is somewhat close to rocket science and might potentially cost multiple times his monthly cash inflow amount, should raise some alarm in your customer qualification meter.

Grounded-ness  of underlying business concept

Each project is backed by a certain business concept. A concept that deviates significantly from the usual day to day business operations of an established business might expose a vendor to a higher level of risk as compared to one that is a obvious next step in the advancement of that business.

In the event whereby no established business backs the idea, both the amount of available funding and the deviation of proposed concept from the market norm are to be considered as coefficient in the vendor risk level assessment. Lower levels of available funding and higher levels of deviation from market norm adds to the risk of the vendor in terms of default for the former and long turn around time for the latter.

Ambiguity of concept

The further away from the market norm is a concept, the higher level of ambiguity is it. The higher the level of ambiguity, the higher the level of potential  risk for the vendor. The longer the potential turn around time for a project.

Technological maturity of client

The higher the level of technological maturity in a client, the less the after sales technical support is required, the more profitable the project is in terms of effort saved versus effort spent. Such negated calculation is often overlooked by vendors when evaluating potential clients.

The worst case scenario is a client with technological maturity at an infantile stage. More than average effort will be required to support client not only on system delivered by vendor, but on other technical questions that are totally out of scope of this project.

A vendor cannot hope to avoid ill feelings by client if vendor attempts to excuse himself from answering technical questions out of the project scope he delivered.

Brain pattern of client

A client with a convergent brain pattern is more profitable than a client with a divergent brain pattern. A client with a convergent brain pattern will eventually converge towards very specific tasks he would like accomplished. A client with a divergent brain pattern will inevitably expand his list indefinitely. Vendor serving this latter group of client will face potentially face issues of scope creeping and subsequent conflict.

Relationship level with client

While level of relationship between client  and vendor affects the chances of sales turnover rate of a project proportionately, situation gets potentially sticky when a vendor attempts to extradite his service from a project that might potentially be costly for his operation.

Level of bureaucracy within the client organization

A client organization with a higher level of bureaucracy puts in place more red tapes that a vendor will have to maneuverer through as well as imposes more downward pressure on the profit margin of the vendor. The level of bureaucracy in a client organization has a positive relationship to the face value of a project and a negative relationship to the profit margin.

Successful handling of bureaucracy in client organization results in the retaining of profit margin while unsuccessful handling of bureaucracy in client organization results in net losses in the course of project delivery.

Throughput rate

Each project has a deadline, the definiteness of the deadline determines the throughput rate required. A more definite and tighter deadline will likely demand for a higher throughput rate. A vendor faced with a higher required throughput rate will have to expand his operations capacity and thus overhead cost. Increase in overhead cost might in the long run wipe out whatever margin, if any, he managed to gain from this project in a break even scenario. In the worst case scenario, the vendor has too much capacity that could be absorbed by the market, thus faces net losses.

Area of expertise

This factor takes into account the core capabilities of the vendor. A vendor incurs more resources per output when attempting to function outside his area of core capabilities then he would if he attempts to generate output within his area of core capabilities.

A vendor that is constantly subjected to work outside his area of expertise will thus experience a lower profit margin as compared to one that is tightly working within his area of expertise.

Underwriting Arrangements

In the event whereby the vendor is not the main party delivering the scope of work, the reliability of the supplier the vendor is underwriting on behalf of, the level of control a vendor has over the supplier as well as the margin the vendor can retain in the event of contingency are all coefficients for considerations. A supplier with a well established reputation will lower the risk faced by the vendor. A high margin level retained by the vendor will lower the potential of making losses in the event a supplier defaults.

A vendor who is able to manipulate himself out of the position of being the underwriter and exchanges instead a commission for his service thus limits his risk.

Conclusion

Applying this matrix towards the qualification of clients, a vendor should thus be able to filter off projects that are potentially loss making and instead focus his effort on projects that have a high level of profitability.

Leading back to the original question I have in mind. Can the market provide such levels of qualified customers on a consistent basis as would justify the operating capacity I have in mind?

Whilst sales leads volume has been extremely high lately, already based on the above matrix quite a few have already fallen into the risky non-lucrative category. Instead of thinking how to close the deals, I am now considering ways and means of extraditing myself from these risk. Only three of the remaining sales leads qualify as ones with high profit margin and a fast turn around time. These are the ones, I should instead focus my effort on closing.

In hindsight, I did sustain losses engaging in two projects of similar nature to the former group in 2010.

First of which had to do with a hardware procurement deal, factors contributed to the losses are as listed below:

• high level of bureaucracy within the client organization

The factors that contributed to losses in the second dealing as a sub-contractor are as listed below:

• payment terms
• customer credibility
• area of expertise

In year 2009, I sustained major losses engaging as a sub contractor in one project. The magnitude of the losses was nearly of sufficient magnitude to threaten the continued existence of my enterprise. Factors that contributed to my losses:

• customer credibility
• customer liquidity strenght
• grounded-ness of underlying business concept
• throughput rate

As of now, I am engaged in the midst of another project that belongs to this risky group too. Underwriting agreement, ambiguity of concept are two factors that contributed to these losses.

Aside from the percieving from an enterprise point of view, I learned another lesson the hard way. Business must never get mixed up with friendship. What Satheesh said is correct. As a matter of policy henceforth, “nothing personal, just business”

From a personal point of view, I conclude that while it is a nice to have, it will not be possible for me to maintain my continued good reputation in the industry if I leave my outstanding clients in the lurch while flying over to Russia to attend my Pasha’s wedding. In my opinion, I believe as a friend he understand my decision.

Looking forward

As I have discussed with my Dad over lunch a few days ago, there is a bubble forming in the IT industry at the moment that might be somewhat similar to the 2000 Dot.com bubble. Rental prices of commercial property in Singapore is rising, more and more companies have been set up in the country to cater for customer demands for mobile applications. Valuation of Dot.com companies in the Silicon valley has of late achieved significantly high levels without generating a corresponding level of profits. Venture capitalist are chasing after these “highly valued” Dot.coms with their investors’ money.

Taking this trend for granted what I will need to do, over the course of the next few months, ponder upon the effects of the forthcoming Dot.com bust. Thereafter, I will need to position myself properly in the most lucrative position possible when that happens.

It was night, Joe sat with me at the deserted cafe, each of us nursing a mug of beer. I was recounting to him my memories from the past 3 years. Joe listened, distracted for the time being from his own woes. I was somewhat confused by my own memories or rather the different versions of my own memories. I was using him as a external reference point while I jogged through all these different versions.

After a whole 30 minutes, Joe reflected that each and every version was a coherent whole and each and every version sounded true. He concluded that there might in fact just be one version of the truth, if I honestly looked within my heart I will know which one it is. Well, here is the joke. It is common for men to loss the key to the heart of women’s, while I avoided this common problem, I lost the key to my own. Or maybe I never really ever did have this key in the first place.

Hmmm… sitting in front of the computer right now with just this conscious thought itself, has activated my subconscious mind to immediately retrieve bits and pieces of my personal memories just to support this thought to make it a “fact”. How helpful the subconscious mind always is.

Sharon from years ago saying “are you sure you lost your phone, you don’t even seem to look sad?”

My response to Sharon “Yeah, I think maybe I am… Hmmm… but actually I am not very sure.”

Alena during dinner “I seriously cannot tell from you expression, what you are feeling at the moment about what you just said.”

My response to Alena “I think you are right, I am undecided on what I should be feeling about this at the moment. Or rather, I don’t know what I should be feeling about this.”

Nica saying to me “Oh my god, if I were you in that situation, I would have already broke down and started crying.” when she heard about the time I spent 2 days in a jail cell in Azerbaijan for arriving without a letter of invitation.

My response to Nica “Really. It can’t be that bad right? My mind tells me that there is no possibility of them passing a death sentence on me, neither is there a high possibility of them retaining me in the jail cell, for something that did not even amount to an minor offence, for a prolonged period of time.”

Or when my mom admonished me at the funeral of my grandmother “why are you not crying, don’t you feel a thing after all that she had done for you while you were young?”

My response to mum “I don’t know what to feel. If there is anything at all, it is definitely not something that will cause me tears.”

Enough with the side tracking, back to the main issue at hand, my conscious mind knows not what my heart really feels. Just a speculative thought, it might actually be a “psychological deformity” from my childhood. Then again, who am I to judge, the only things I remembered from my childhood are the long hours spent behind bars at the world outside, wishing to soon grow independent and no longer suffer from being caged in.

This “psychological deformity” is made worst by my dabbling in the entertainment industry over the years. There is this thing about “getting into character” when doing such entertainment gigs. Through conscious effort, the person wills himself into a certain character and thoroughly convinces himself, he is in fact feeling what he has willed himself to feel. The original set of emotions he is feeling prior to this mental exercise is thus obliterated to be replaced by the new set of “desired” emotions. This mental exercise, has in fact become somewhat of a second nature to me, that even when not performing any gigs, I am doing it. And now when I jogging through my memories, I realized that I am doing it so often and so unconsciously that I don’t even notice myself doing it anymore. The subconscious mind just sizes up the situation, automatically presents a role that will be viable to the situation to the brain and the brain just plays out the role accordingly. The only hint, that it ever happened is the fact that I feel so tired after such situations and attempt to find for myself a quiet place to sleep till the weariness wears off.

So in essence, the emotions has been so seriously subordinated by the thinking brain that it has become a mere tool to be deployed in the form and manner where appropriate. So the person is becoming somewhat of a machine then. This statement thus begs for the next question- do I actually have a soul or am I lying to myself about the existence of one?

Learning from both Steven and my brother, I limited effort on my IT works to strictly office hours only.  I have came to find such a practise very productive. Each day starts with a clear set of well defined objectives. Choice of objectives are set to be manageable within my self imposed daily working hours. In fact, more often than not, I am able to accomplish all the daily objectives within the given time frame. Though I might be tempted to attempt at completing objectives for the next day if I did finish the current day’s objective much faster than anticipated, abiding by my self imposed rules, I refrained from doing so.

This is not the case in the past, when driven by desire to accomplish a project ASAP, I would unknowingly clock a 16 hour working day for weeks straight. In hindsight, such a frantic pace of work is simply not sustainable physcially and mentally in the long run. It often left me burnt out after a few months of work.

Following this new method of work, I could start each day feeling refreshed and alert. Not only that, it leaves me with plenty of free time not only to think and plan my actions ahead of time but also to pursue one of my favourite past times – to sit and read useful and insightful books by the beach. This is in fact consistant with Robert Kiyosaki’s advice “a person’s occupation should not be mistaken for his business”. Being an IT guy is my occupation, but finding ways and means of compounding my money upwards is my business. To find ways and means to compound my money means I will need to find time away from my profession to think.

Over the past few months, I have rejected around 50% of  the IT projects coming my way. While there is money to be made, careful calculation shows the money is not worth the time I will potentially have to spend on completing these projects. In layman terms, I will be selling my time too cheaply, time which I could devote towards thinking about ways and means of compounding money.

Johnson did mention last year there are lots of companies trading on the SGX that were trading below their net book value, however since he considered himself stupid when it came to stocks, he was neither interested in studying about or dabbling in them. This statement from him should not be taken literally, he just could not bother  himself with the task of trading with stocks. His preferences lies in real estate. It is a natural choice for him since he is already very skilled at accessing the value of real estates. To make matters even easier, he has also established relationships with a very wide network of real estate agents who are constantly working for him to sniff out all the good deals in town. The last time, he showed me his phone list, the list of real estate agents in his phone seemed to scroll on and on forever…

Just for the fun of it, I am taking on Johnson’s suggestion to me. With the newly acquired spare time, I am devoting myself towards the studying of the financial statements of all the publicly listed companies in the SGX at the pace of 10 companies per day. This is to first find out the netbook value of all the companies trading on the SGX and subsequently to determine the companies with share prices trading below their net worth. If maintained consistantly at this pace, I should have studied and gained somewhat of an understanding on most of the companies listed.

If my hypothesis on business cycles are correct, 2013 should be the next time when stock prices get hit adversely by some screw ups from Wall Street in New York. Derivatives are like dynamites that are one interlinked with the other. The fact that they are so widely traded around the world means that when shit happens in Wall Street, via the blowing up of interlinking derivatives, the shit would soon hit SGX as well.

When that time comes, I should have gathered enough data to gauge the stocks to acquire as well as the stocks to avoid.

Another chunk of my spare time will be spent of studying the newspapers, not on news but on the spending habits of my potential prospects, building up their profile over time. This latest book on Warren Buffett is most insightful. Yes, handicapping is really useful and could in fact be applied all over the place.