Ian On The Red Dot

This post I wrote somehow made its way to Today Online. Boy oh boy..did I learn something from this experience.

The reproduced post below.

The current issue with DBS High Notes is an interesting one for me because I did consider buying similar products. A few things stopped me from buying though.

One of the first things I learned as a teenager is that if you cannot convince someone, then confuse them. Reading the prospectus for the products definitely confused me. When I get confused, the other party loses my trust.

During a dinner with a group of friends, a Government official asked a banker his opinion about structured products sold by his bank. The banker then advised the official not to buy the product if he had the know-how, as he could get better returns from his own investment. He also explained that the products only worked if the markets behaved within a certain range — it was only safe within that range.

Think about this for a moment: A banker advised someone not to buy his own company’s product. The banker assumed his friend could do better, thinking that his bank would just mess things up. Most of all, the banker didn’t think it was worth paying the bank anything.

Some thoughts.

I learned the ‘if you cannot convince, confuse them’ idea in NS. Sure, I was a teenager then, but removing the context of NS somehow, at least to me, dilutes the message I was trying to convey.

The other thing was the way this line was paraphrased –

The banker assumed the friend could do better as opposed to the banker thinking his bank will just mess things up.

What I meant was the banker didn’t think his bank would screw up but his advice was based on the notion that if you knew what you were doing, you could do better investing yourself than giving the bank any money especially considering the fees you had to pay them.

Now… it is interesting that mainstream newspapers are using the posts written by bloggers. I think in the long run it is a good thing.

However, there is a problem when the words get changed because then what gets printed is based on the journalist’s understanding of the post and not what the blogger said. This however doesn’t mean the journalist who edited and printed my post is at fault for the ‘lost in translation’. What it does mean is that if bloggers want to have increased credibility, and mainstream newspapers printing our posts most certainly adds to that credibility, we have to take more responsibility for our words and our ideas and write better when trying to communicate our thoughts.

The beauty about blogs and online publishing is that we are able to easily update and clarify what was previously said. In the past, if I had been interviewed for the article and I was misquoted, I would have no recourse to clarify the statements attributed to me – with blogs and other forms of social media, I do.

Oh… finally, I would like to thank the journalist who found the post worth sharing and also thanks to Back2Nature for sharing with me about my post appearing on Today.

The current issue with the DBS High Notes is an interesting one for me because I did consider buying similar products. A few things stopped me from buying though.

1. One of the first things I learned during my NS days is that if you cannot convince someone, confuse them. And reading the prospectus for the products definitely confused me. And when I’m being confused, I don’t trust the other party.

2. Over a dinner with a bunch of acquaintances, a banker was talking to another acquaintance in government service. The government official asked the banker his opinion on structured products. The basic gist of the conversation was that the banker advised the government official not to buy the product and if he really knew what he was doing, he (the government official) could get better returns from his own investing efforts without having to give the bank a cut. He also explained that the products only worked if the markets behaved within a certain range – it was only safe within a range.

Think about this for a moment. A banker advising someone not to buy his own company’s product. Of course, the situation here is slightly differently. The banker assumed the friend could do better as opposed to the banker thinking his bank will just mess things up. Last takeaway – the banker didn’t think it was worth paying the bank anything for the product.

Screw Tommy. I’m going ahead with my dinner plans this Sunday. The location hasn’t been decided although I’m looking at hosting it at an old walk-up apartment. Time hasn’t also been finalized but since it is going to be a dinner it will probably be around 7.30pm.

The only problem now is the guest list. I’m not sure who to invite. Damn it. I’m not even sure who wants to come since Tommy isn’t a confirmed guest.

If you got me on Plurk, let me know if you can attend. I’ll be sending out a formal invite later.

Somebody wants to kill Tommy. I’m not sure who. Hell, even Tommy doesn’t know who. He says he just knows. A gut feeling. I shouldn’t really care. But Tommy, damn it, is such a coward that he says until he is sure that someone isn’t actually trying to kill him, he won’t be leaving his house for any parties. And I need him at my party. If he isn’t there, then why will all the other producers and stars come. Damn you Tommy. Be a man.

I hate it when people start doing managing. Like managing enter and exit timings. Here is the thing – in Singapore, we don’t get OT pay. So when we work OT, we do it on the basis that you (i.e. the management) can be trusted to take care of us. Why not extend the same trust when we (ok, when I) come in late. It is not like I don’t finish my work. Plus if you want to measure time in office, I win, because everyone else leaves once the clock hits six or thereabouts.

But no…management / bosses always want to bleed first then compensate later. FFS.

The way I see it, next year pay review is going to take a hit. I should care but it isn’t the money that is pissing me off. It is the fact that I’m living in a situation where I have to tolerate such bullshit policies. The people I work with are great when it comes to writing code and working on software. But when it comes to these sort of management stuff, damn FFS.

I don’t get this.

You got the finance people who lent money to those who cannot possibly have a reasonable recourse to repay in the future. Fine.

What I don’t get is how people can default on loans and then weasel out of playing the full sum of money they owe while trying to make it look like it is all the finance people’s fault.

I mean, for these people to have the money in the first place, someone had to contribute it. It could be from investors in financial products or people who were saving.

They took the money and lived the good life. Some of the people who invested and saved are wiped out or lost enough to make the next few years of their lives unbearable.

You say we are all in the same boat.

I say, Fuck you.

When I was saving and ‘investing’, you were taking out money and living the good life without any reasonable recourse to pay. Now you weasel out and clam to be my brother/sister in suffering.

I haven’t lived the good life. You have.

It is not that I don’t have sympathy for those who might be suffering from the current crisis. I do. I’ve been there and I know it ain’t pretty. But the sympathy is gained based on how you got to this point. For those who saved and saved but got wiped out because they were using the wrong bank, my heart bleeds together with you.

For those who overextended to live the good life and now want to claim sympathy, Fuck you.

Update: I’m pissed because at the end of the day, a lot of decent and frugal people are getting fucked by a whole bunch of other people who won’t be suffering with us or who lived the good life and now want to be just like us without any consequences to their earlier actions. You do the crime, you got to do the time. In a world where this doesn’t happen, think carefully about whether you want to bring children into this world – a world where values are whacked.

The new ads from Microsoft:

They are good. Take that you Apple snobs.

From the movie The Foot Fist Way:

Watching the movie, “Riding the Truck” now has a whole new meaning for me.

Sometimes, during parts of the movie, I think the way my friends and I talk about DOTA, we probably look as idiotic as the main character. BUT DAMN IT…our hearts are in the right place.

Yesterday, from 2pm – 3pm, a distinguished elderly gentleman spent an hour sticking weird shit into my mouth. I’ve known this gentleman for about 12 years and I felt that he was so good at what he does that I introduced him to my gf.

My dentist is one classy piece of work.

Over the years, nothing has changed with my dentist. Every time I see him, he is wearing a tie. A dentist wearing a tie? Classy.

He still doesn’t accept NETS or credit cards. Payment is strictly by cash. His assistant issues handwritten paper receipts. No cash register. Just a cash box. The furniture is still the same after 12 years (or at least it looks the same). He still has the same comics after all these years and I still enjoy reading them despite having read some of them a few times.

My dentist makes old school look cool.

The thing about him, each time that I go, is that I’m reminded of the basic principle in running a business – do 1 thing and do it well.

Fancy websites, new forms of marketing, buzzwords and all that jazz matters little if you don’t do what you are supposed to do well.

And if you do it well, especially in an industry where people already have problems with most of the businesses in it, you don’t really need to market yourself, people will market you.

I HATE DENTISTS. Or at least I used to. The fear of dentists came about due to my Primary school days. Each time a fellow student knocked on the class door with a card in hand, all of us would be dreading that our name would be called because it means we had to visit the school dentist.

My Primary school dentist was this Malay lady which scared the shit out of me. Every time I sat in her chair, I felt so much pain that I prayed to God.

When I met my current dentist, I was apprehensive but he has since managed to convince me that going to the dentist does not have to be a painful and frightening experience.

To end, I want to share with you something he taught me. Whenever you want to do anything, assess your DATA.

D: Do you have the DESIRE to do what you plan to do.
A: Do you have the ABILITY to do what you plan to do.
T: Do you have the TALENT to do what you plan to do.
A: Do you have the ASSETS to do what you plan to do.

From the creators of awesome Coke and Mentos videos:

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Awesome way to publicize the show Samurai Girl.