Interesting Journey

The last four months has been interesting towards my new journey to my next life after 50's. I am learning an old trade with many new perspectives and ideas. As an property advisor in Singapore dealing with transaction of real estate between owner wish to sell his/her house and buyer need to purchase the house for his/her own need or investors to take profits or cut losess. I see many occassions the sellers & buyers come with high desire emotionally involved the sale transaction especially during "this red hot property season" in Singapore.

Few people aware that the fundament of the real estate business is to provide shutter to home your love one. That's it. Nevertheless, I came across many of them own more houses than what they needed. I guess that it is the fact of life in Singapore, as well as in the other part of the world in this region and globally. Thanks for all the intelligent gaps in human advancement. I wish the intelligent flow will leveling for all human beings as we move forward for happiness. Let me end this by saying that all of us shall participate and with full commitment to share the knowlegde and experience freely. Good day.

Good Start

I like the beginning of any new initiatives, just like the begining of the year of OX in Chinese New Year around many of us this time. This is to signify the new born of everyone of us in the world. It give us the opportunity to revisit many activities that we involved previously during our work life, our family life, our circle of friends and around the community.

The new life initiative in this year has to be a very creative movement, it allows us to unleash the past baggage and move on to different horizon. I noticed that many people has emerged the new habits in the areas of daily consumer activities such as buying habit for eating out and clothing. These people are more realistic in adjusting their life stlye. As in business, the re-assessment of business risk & opportunity is alive and very dynamic. We are hearing & seeing more unemployment in different industries in many nations around the global everyday. It is good for the world to re-calibrate the resource and put it in good use.

Just like a new born baby, we shall take this good time to reflect our needs and mission in life for a better world in the year of Ox. .... ,...... bull run in high fighting spirit.

The last day of bad year

It is my pleasure to write this article at this moment. This is the special day of year 2008. It is the last day of the very bad year in the last century. Whatever bad news in the real world has released and gone, let it pass us and re-frame our new initiatives in our life forward. If you think that it is not the worst day of the year. Decide all aspects of the fact in our life, and move forward to the new year in the very moment to come.

This coming new year will be forward looking once you decide to forgo losses in materials terms and / or percieve value. I hope all of you agree with the way forward. This will allow us to share more joy & fun in year 2009. We shall realise that one's happiness is within one's control. Back to the basic to develop your happiness life continuum, you shall see it in the next moment.
With that, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Happy New Year.

Recharging your battery

It was the worst time for many people during the last three months, tons of bad news releasing from the stock market and the real economy globally. Thanks for the globalization and rapidly technology advancement. Top official from G 20 & Apac summit has committed to stabilize the volatile market by injecting many more billions of dollars to support the real economy.

As for the ordinary people, it is a time for us to reflect ourself in terms of varies aspects of our life. for example, why we have landed in this situation against our dream???

A lots of reflecting, re-thinking, re-adjusting in our work, our family, our relationship with friends, colleagues and communities and etc, our lifestyle. This is a good time for us to reframe our mind set regarding about our value system of one's life continuum. Lets take this good opportunity to do it with your soul and recharging your body with strength.

Opportunities ahead

Recently I had a meeting with a group of senior ex-corporate people in their early fifties and sixties, they displayed clam and happiness in their faces when I met them and reflected in their lifestyle. I wonder how they can stay so cool in this global financial crisis time. I asked them, how did you behave so relax and joyful amid this current global financial and economic crisis ? They provided me a simple response.

They live a simple life but enjoying every activities they involved everyday, for example, one of the senior people say he make frequent holiday travel with his wife while he manages his investment since more than ten years. He said to me that he just returned from a holiday trip in Japan a few days ago.

Many of them are managing their investment as a prime source of incomes. They shared similiar investment philosophy, One of the key aspects for the investment philosophy is to create a balanced portfolio. While selecting stocks, do your home work, research on stocks that you want to buy and invest in fundamental strong companies. In fact, it is an great opportunity in every crisis like this, for these people to pick good value stocks and the expected return is often a few times more than they invested on those stocks. These people are VALUE investors and prepare to invest over a periond of 5 to 10 years. They started with small investment portfolio in the earlier years.

Opportunities are plentiful in this world, especially during every crisis, for this current financial and economic challenges is a golden opportunity, because just like many people say this is once in the century crisis. On reflection, I have learned in the "Lau Zi" philosophy, one of the oldest philosopher in China history since 5000 years ago, that an opportunity is only sieze by someone prepare for it. Are you ready for this opportumity ? I think maybe a small portion of these people are alway ready for it but not all. If not, there is no big deal for it. Let's start to prepare ourself for the next greater opportunity again.

Float with your feeling

Learning how to float with your head's up in the sea is the most critical point in life-saving for beginner on how to swim. This is the first lesson I learned when I was young on learning how to swim a long time ago. Prior to the proper swimming techniques to move oneself in the water, one needs a capability to hold one's head up above the surface of water as long as you want to live.

Today, the financial crisis spreads exteme rapidly from US, Europe and down to Asia pacific as the US congress is not supporting the bailout plan designed by the treasury & federal reserve bureau. The market is in the chaotic moment. This crisis began with sub-prime mortgage from US about one year ago, now the problem is wider and deeper that affect million of people globally, thanks to the technology advancement and a globalisation world. Many people life has been affected with or without their own action. For instance, many minibond holders in Singapore and Hong Kong realised that their investment is down to the drain. Their years of savings or retirement fund is no longer recoverable. Another example, many jobs lost due to closure of investment companies; or oversea and local consumers demand dropped, lead to factories cutting down production. Question ask is, where is the life-saving boat?

Let us go back to basic principle on how to float and hold up your head above water in this crisis situation. Be it an individual, a family, a company or a nation, or an international community, assuming that all of us begin to rationalise, it does not matter whether is by design or by deflaut, if we were using the "need-base" approach for this rationalisation exercise. I guess the world will be heading to a deep depression. But if we were adopting the "value-base" approcah, "Value-base" means that what is important to you. we may have a better chance for riding through this crisis with a better feeling. Go and float your feeling with value is important to you, your family and your friends.

Next Chapter

Next chapter after the summer Olympics in Beijing, what else? business as usual ? Life going on ? We learned a lot of things by watching sports and games competition last few weeks. Especially table tennis medal competition for many Singaporean. It was the first time Singapore received Olympics medal after 48 years.

One of the lesson I learned from this is that to arrive at one's set goal, one thing is certain if all desired inputs are given and right. Such inputs as like resources, players, coach, organisation support and etc. All ingredients must be right.

Back to business and daily routine, there seems many things are less right nowaday, consumers worldwide are tighting their belts due to the value of money worth less compared with previous time. The choices of buying any items are becoming a critical point for people to ponder how to make a right decision everyday. Ironically, this is the best time that we learn how to make the best choice for our life. Most of the people went through this situation many times in their lifetime, but few of us learned and remembered after perhaps the right choice is made.

In each decision making process, we percevied that the right decision is alway based on personal preference but not needs base. Thus, a lot of times we wasted our valuable resources in both good times and bad times because of our own habit. I hope that the next chapter in our life to be more peace and joy, and sharing of all these with many more people.