Zombie Republic

Have you stopped and looked at people around you sometimes?

I've come to a scary realization that there are a lot of zombies in Singapore. I am quite worried that I might end up becoming one. I am close, I tell you.

Have you noticed a scenario like this?

Someone trips on the bus, you see many hands stretched out near that person. But all the owners of these helping hands have expressionless faces. Once the near-victim is standing, and safe. The hands retract. No smile, no 'Thank you', no 'You're welcome'.

How about this?

A cleaning lady clearing tables at a food court. You say 'Thank you'. And she snaps out of her zombie curse, and looks at you in a funny way.

Sometimes she might actually break from her curse and start conversing with you. But most of the time, she goes back to her state. Looking down, at the piece of cloth she is wiping the table with, with a scowl on her face.

What is happening? I think all the debate about raising our service standards would come to naught if we can't stop the zombie curse. We would just have trained zombies, reading lines, saying thank yous and have a nice days.

It's the frenzied pace we Singaporeans live at la... I think. Anyway this reframing makes me realise that sometimes it's not that Singaporeans don't care, but that they are not aware. Which is actually worse, but makes me feel better about people...

"The Pursuit of Happyness"

Watched a great movie on our proposal anniversary, and the timing for that movie couldn't be more amazingly coincidental. The title is 'The Pursuit of Happyness', by Will Smith.



It is based upon the life of Chris Gardner. He was a struggling salesman in the 80s who went through hell to get to where he is.

Talk about a wake up call for me. What is the price for success? Will I be willing to pay it?

Right at this juncture of my life when I am deciding when to quit my safe, comfortable job, the timing for this show couldn't have come at a better time.

Chris had a child. He went through countless fights with his wife over making ends meet. Debts were piling. At one point, he was literally homeless, and he had his son with him all along.

His break came in the form of a job opportunity to be a stock broker at Dean Whitters. But he had to undergo training without income, and for a job that wasn't even a certainty. There was only one vacancy, and he had to the best out of 20 interns.

I have quite a 'safe' cushion in terms of finances, I should be able to function without disaster for Hwei Min and I without any income for at least 2 months, and I have a considerably much better network than Chris had. It is still a little intimidating to imagine going without a pay check for training... Which I planned on doing.

Going to 'S' in the cashflow quadrant had been my plan all along, on my path to 'B'. But now I am making the first 'bridge burning' decision.

The movie was nice, but as Tony said, if I had to model after someone, I have to get inside his head, and understand how he ticks. So I am looking for the book now. If I can find the book in Singapore, that will be great, meantime, I found the book at amazon.com.



Here's a video of the actual guy...

Happy Birthday and Proposal Day!

Happy birthday Peppermint!

One full year ago, today was the day I proposed to Hwei Min. Today is our proposal anniversary.

We went back to the place where I proposed, the roof terrace of Esplanade mall. It was a wonderful day.

I am beginning to believe in my special powers. Hwei Min and I... We can control the weather!! Just last night, we mentioned how nice it would be if on the next day, the weather would be just right for us. There will be rain clouds, there will be a strong breeze... But no rain.

We got EXACTLY that!

Look at the pictures we took. Throw in birds singing, and you can imagine how great it was.

A lazy Saturday at the museum

Been to the National Museum lately?

You should go. The building had been restored and updated with a modern look and feel, while maintaining the old colonial charm.

Too bad the rest of the museum are camera-unfriendly. The tickets to enter the display areas cost $10 per adult. We didn't even go in. The "no-cameras" signs are a real turn off.

But no loss to us. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously just walking around. Along a huge hallway, I thought I captured a cherubim, a small angel. A cheerful and energetic little boy running around. His dad was very friendly! Can see where the little boy got his cheerfulness from. When I asked for permission to take a picture of this cute boy, he posed for the photos. I have left my email address with him. I hope that he can give me his permission to share the other pictures I have of his cute son here. And I would like to hold to my promise of emailing him the pictures. Please email me! I want to share the photos with you!

Click to take a look at the rest of the pictures I have taken.

Saturday at the Museum

tweak-me-site.com finally up!

After many days of tinkering around with WordPress... www.tweak-me-site.com is active! Took so long to understand how the hierarchy of pages work. As you can see... it's 3 a.m. already, so I am really really SLOW at learning...

Just a quick check.. with Super Green and Tony Robbins... I have had 20 hyper days and counting.

Enjoying life man... enjoying life.

Read about what I did over the weekend tomorrow! It's time for bed!

27 Year Old Midas

Have you read this about this 27 year old engineering who gambled on the stock market and lost 700K?? You can read the original article here.

He is no kid, he is about the same age as me. What could have caused him to have so much confidence in himself as to gamble on nothing?

Yes, gamble. There is absolutely no way we can call what he did investment. He gambled on high-risk contra trading. (Contra trading just means selling stock that you ordered but have not paid for within the 3 day period before you have to buy. So despite the bad name caused by irresponsible traders, it is a neutral feature of trading.)

He made some money, 80K to be exact, picking some counters that managed to perform within the 3 days. A few friends called him "Prince Midas". He suddenly felt like he was an expert, and he had the Midas' touch.

Probably enboldened by the 300K from his father's savings, he bought shares with 700K that he didn't have. Crash... boom... bang... hundreds of thousands gone.

Overnight, this guy made his father and himself bankrupt. This guy had been gambling on nothing. Less than nothing is what he has now.

Is this how investments work? Trading? NO. Please do not believe it is!

True investments are logical, emotionless decisions based on clearly defined entry and exit points. True investments are managed carefully, weighing risk appetite and gains.

Zeag has some comments on money management that would be worth reading. He's 27 too. Read to find out how his brain ticks. He doesn't have astronomical gains like the guy in the article did once upon a time. But I'll entrust my money with him, anytime.

Who wants Midas as a friend anyway???

On Google ... PR 0

Haha...

I've just installed the Google Toolbar for Firefox, and checked my very own PageRank. Zero. Kosong.

Hee hee... What do I expect right? I hardly update this site, and hardly anyone visits anyway.

At the very list, it seems google has at least cached my page, but nothing to be proud of, the cached snapshot was from February, the "Who is Rich Schefren?" post.

So what have I been so busy with these few days? Trying to get my site www.tweak-me-site.com up. You can take a look now... quite empty, but I will be working full steam ahead. The seminar will not be too many days away now. MUST COMPLETE ONE MORE VIDEO!!!

I've decided to redefine myself as a video blogger. Most of it will be posted on tweak-me-site.com. This blog shall remain my personal blog. Hwei Min could be coming on very soon as a guest. She will have a cool 'super hero' name, Pepper Mint.

So this page might be called TWeaK Me and Pepper Mint! Cool?? COol??

Shameless Promotion

Yeah! I've got my name cards!

Let me tell you, nothing can describe how thrilled I was to get hold of these as they were printed and cut.

I overhead the staff joking as she passed one of my cards to her colleague, "Wanna play poker?" When I hear that... I know I have something good.

I can't wait to give these out. I can't do so until www.tweak-me-site.com is up, though... So full steam ahead!

It's all about hype

It's been confirmed. I will be going for Stephen Pierce's seminar from the 23rd March to 26th March. So I have a few tasks to complete by that time.

The idea now is to bank on aggressive offline marketing first, to get the first influx of traffic. I am targetting Singaporeans who are interested in Internet Marketing first, since I am going for a couple of seminars this year.

So, I'll be creating hype using a cool name card, and at least 1 fun video which I hope will be viral. I say hope because there is no way you can predict such things...

These are the tasks at hand:-

1. Print cool name card.
2. Complete 1 viral video.
3. Complete 3 training videos.
4. Complete www.tweak-me-site.com
1. Sign up for autoresponder.
2. Set up autoresponder form on site
3. Write the thank-you email. With free ebook.
4. Design site.
5. Put up videos and articles.
6. Pray hard. :)
   

So far.. I am behind time.

1. Cool name card. Done. Not printed.
2. Completed viral video. Very fun.
3. Completed 1 training video.
4. Not started on site.
   

Raffles Institution

Just popped by my alma mata Raffles Institution today.

We were viewing a unit at a condominium nearby, and I thought I just walk in to take a look. Wow... a lot has changed. The school is well maintained, (Rich school lah...), looks ten times better than I remembered it. New additions were made, the canteen had the most changes made to it. Now there is a foyer area just above the canteen. I can't really remember what used to be there.

Of course, now that RJC is sharing facilities with RI, the running track had been removed, and the field looks VERY well maintained. So did the tennis court.

But on the whole, everything I remembered was still more or less there. All the old photos (which I did not appear in), all the pictures of former headmasters (Mr. Wijeysingha will always be my favorite), all the classrooms. (some of them seemed air-conditioned, those lucky kids!)

I am thankful that I had a chance to study at RI. I am not sure I will enrol my kid to study there, however, but I do not regret studying at RI at all. I have learned confidence, and leadership at an early age. I was inspired by Mr. Wijeysingha. He managed to exude regality and calm, and yet remain fatherly and kind.

I don't regret not going to RJC, however. I have learnt that RI and RJC attracted a certain group of kids that I nearly became. Thank goodness I came from Ai Tong before that, and YJC after that, so that I ended up pretty balanced. And of course, because I met Hwei Min in YJC, hee hee...

The condominium we visited on the other hand, gave us a very bad impression. Maintenance was poor, that whole place needed a repaint. There was one disgusting bald patch of grass next to the swimming pool. On the newspaper ad, it was stated that the showroom was open from 10 a.m., and when we were there at 12p.m, the guards told us no one came.