Snake Bite

 The year is going to end in the next 24-hours and given that I have been strangely busy, I thought I would try and bash out my usual piece to summarise the year. It’s the Chinese Year of the snake, and based on the last snake year (2013), it was similar in substance. In 2013, I had my last great working highlight, which was the IIM Alumni job (IIMPact 2013), where I had the distinct privilege of arranging interviews for Dr. Raghuram Rajan before he became governor of RBI. I would then, end that year with a crisis of dealing with one of my ex-wife’s ventures.

This snake year was slightly different. If 2013 was dealing with a cobra that blessed and bit, this year was more like a subtle grass snake reminding me that I was a very blessed person but also reminding me life has downs as well as ups.

On the surface, it was a pretty darn good year. For the first time since 2006, I actually end the year with assets. Somehow in previous moments of blessings, I never seemed able to hold a dollar. This year, I actually end the year with money in funds that are the seeds to “passive” income. Still need to work for a living but it looks like I might actually be able to afford a bowl of noodles from time to time.

I had the good fortune of regular payouts on top of my weekly pay. Since I am no longer a “property owner,” I actually qualified for a decent amount of government generosity.

It wasn’t just about money. I managed to get seen in the right place with the right people. At the inaugural TMA-Asia Pacific Conference, I actually got to post with the Minister who was giving a speech (In Singapore speak, Ministers are like celebrities):

 

 

Life wasn’t just about being in the right place at the right time or dare I say money. This was a year of travel. The Loveable Pillow got to moving to Johor with her and then decided that we needed to spend a long weekend in Batam, a place that I hadn’t been to for a while. Most interestingly, she got to me to Bangkok, where I managed to catch up with Dad in his home town for a change. Hadn’t been to Bangkok to see him since 2009, when Max flew out to meet us.

 

 You could say I am finding a groove. Life is pretty much about maintaining physical discipline to train. Diabetes ensures that physical fitness is something that is no longer negotiable. Structuring intense exercise into the week, planning meals around training and minimising alcohol are part and parcel of life. As I try to work physical discipline, I also try to work financial discipline. I’m probably past the age of thinking of a great high earning career, but I have an idea of how to put money aside and where to put it. Staying “boring” for the time being. At 51, you realise that frailty is a real part of your life and you shouldn’t allow it to happen to you as far as you can.

So, whilst it looks like I may be finally settling into something resembling normalcy, it looks like I will be missing some important people. My ex-colleague from Citibank, Ms. Dawn Pereira died of a heart attack. She was, 47 at the time of her death. Although I hadn’t spoken to her in years, I’ll always remember her as a wonder bubbly person who could always light up the place with her presence.

The other, was perhaps harder hitting. Bryan Ng Lee Heng or “Bear,” died a week before my birthday. Along with Joe Phua, we formed a trio of “The Short, the Fat and the Bald.” Our army bond made us brothers from different parents. Life made it such that our meetings post army were few and far between. Yet each meeting was special, even if all it was, was meeting for a kopi or kway teow. Like two old men, we’d talk about our partners and kids. Family struggles were a good topic. We often joked about being old grumpy men sitting in a park.

The last time I saw him was in October. He had lost allot of weight and looked weak. Doctors couldn’t tell him why but he did strike an optimistic note, talking about eating wings and drinking beer at Hooters like we did back in the army (something I will have to do in the new year since Hooters is shutting down after three decades). He last visited me in Marine Parade in October. We had kopi and when it was time to go, I got him to take a selfie.

 

 If I had known that this was the last time, I hang with him, I’d have snapped a few more. Whilst he was ill, I’m still missing him. I won’t have a “grumble-buddy” in the old age park. He was a guy who gave him heart and soul to the people he cared for and life is simply emptier without him around. So, whilst I did enjoy a successful year and if you believe in horoscopes, I should have a good one next year, I’ll be doing without the friend who stood by me for so long.

Reality Hits Hard

 

Whatever you think of Jake Paul, you have to give him credit for making boxing interesting again. The YouTube influencer turned boxing professional who uses the moniker “Problem Child” has made himself the guy that everyone wants to see get punched, which in turn gets them to tune in.

You could say that Mr. Paul is a “disruptor,” the type of person that revives his or her chosen field by doing things differently. In the field of sports, the disruptor is inevitably not the greatest player but the greatest showman. The showman stirs emotions and watching him or her in action brings out something within us. The showman is inevitably bigger than the sport. Think of the apparent bitch exchange between Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova, when Ms Hingis said “I beat you so easily,” and Ms. Kournikova replied “But I’m so much more marketable.” Ms. Hingis could win grand slams. Most of us preferred to watch Ms. Kournikova.

Mr. Paul is a showman and for all that has been said about him, he has made boxing very interesting. He’s the living example of the saying that the it’s never the best person who gets the job but the person who sells him or herself best.

However, whilst being able to sell yourself is a vastly overlooked skill, it should never erase from the fact that there needs to be a foundation of competence somewhere beneath the hype. I think of advertising legend Bill Burnbach (the B is DDB) who said “"A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad".

His point was simple; you cannot make people believe a bad product is good – you can only enhance the virtues of a good product. Back when I worked in marketing, I always believed that marketing didn’t begin in marketing but in product development. When they talk about the person who sells him or herself best rather than being the best person, they’re not saying that he or she is “crap” at the job. Yes, Pete Sampras was on record the better player than Andre Agassi, even Agassi was the showman who drew us in to watch tennis. That doesn’t mean that Andre Agassi was a bad tennis player. His record shows that he was up there with the greats.

That’s where Mr. Paul fell short. He is annoying. He compels us to watch boxing but here’s the truth – he’s more of a YouTuber than a boxer. Yes, he did win fights but they were never against people in his age range. Many were retired MMA fighters. Yes, he did beat Mike Tyson in an eight-round split decision but let’s be clear, Mr. Tyson had long retired and close to 60 and not the force that he was in his 20s. Even then, Mr. Paul could only win by split decision (as much as he claims he decided to “go easy.”)

The problem for Mr. Paul was he never really invested in making sure he was ready to be challenged and when he faced Anthony Joshua, things took a painful turn. Yes, there are those who said he finally faced a “real” boxer and a “real” champion and should be respected for that. You can say that he’s made a criminal amount of money. Yet, one has to ask, was he delusional.

Let’s face it, Mr. Joshua is everything his previous opponents was not. He is physically larger (weight classes exists for a reason) and more importantly, he is in the top leagues. He’s a former Olympic Gold Medalist and two times heavy weight champion. You could say that the result was inevitable. Then, when you talk about show Mr. Paul should be credited for lasting six-rounds, one should note that Mr. Paul was constantly on his knees – not exactly the place one expects of a person bravely taking a pounding:

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/20/sport/boxing-jake-paul-anthony-joshua

 

 One would say that Mr. Paul had started to believe his own hype. One has to look at his training videos, where he made his beer belly rather obvious. Ironically, he was like another of his opponents – Mike Tyson, who made the point that he lost to Buster Douglas because he was partying but Douglas was training. The difference is, Tyson had earned his championship and beaten credible opponents like Michael Spinx and Frank Bruno. His “hubris” was based on something. Mr. Douglas was at the time a 42-1 underdog fighting to prove people wrong. As the underdog, Mr. Paul wasn’t even trying to prove a point. By contrast, Mr. Joshua took the fight seriously enough to train.

Let’s look at Mr. Paul’s broken jaw as a reminder that although salesmanship gets you the job, you need to be prepared. You actually need to do the job and have some level of competence. Hype, without the foundation of competence has a way of knocking you down even if it takes a while to hit back and hit hard.

Staple People.

 

It’s been a while since I blogged or sent anyone anything. I’ve been, as they say, tied up and joined the cult of busy. I’ve reached the stage where I stopped taking back my laptop because life is about standing in the office and doing scanning (part of providence job we’re involved in) daily and then doing home.

However, since its Christmas in two days, I thought I’d bash out something to tie my recent activity with Christmas. So, amidst the Christmas festivities, I usually focus on the birth of the man we’re celebrating. The man we call Jesus of Nazareth is attributed with being the source and reason for Christianity. In Islam, he is regarded as one of God’s great prophets. The Dalai Lama calls him a “Boddhisatva.” Leaving aside the subtleties of Christian theology, I believe that we need to keep reminding ourselves of what Jesus wanted.

Which brings me to the point of my current activity – scanning documents for examination. It sounds simple, but turning paper into digital is probably one of the great acts of bridging generations. In theory it sounds simple, you just run a document through a machine and hey presto, you have it in digital.

Sounds simple enough. Sounds like a “no-brainer” task, until you discover the art of wrestling with staples. I’m dealing with accounting records of a construction company, so there’s lots of paper held together by a staple and if you don’t remove a stapler, the entire process of running things into the scanner gets jammed.

 

 On the scale of things, staples are small and insignificant. They do the job of holding things together and nobody really cares about them. They’re annoying bits of metal at times but let’s face it, nobody cares – that is until you miss a hidden one and your efforts to run something through a copier and the entire process gets jammed. The staple suddenly becomes like the joke about the body parts arguing who should be boss until the “a***hole” shuts down and everyone begs the “a***hole” to open up and allow it to be the boss.

Jesus, contrary to what “prosperity theology” teaches you, spoke for the staples of society. He told us that the “least” amongst us would be the “first” in the Kingdom of heaven. Yet, despite all of that, we refuse to listen. We focus on being “important,” and climbing up in the world. We look at sucking up and spending money to impress people we deem as important whilst ignoring those we deem beneath us.

I’ve argued and still that COVID was one of the biggest missed opportunities. We’re rushing back to “normal” without understanding that “normal” was actually screwed up. Big corporate wants us back in the office and we’re so desperate to be part of big corporate that we’re rushing back to comply and be “normal.”

We want to be paper living and doing “important” sounding things and looking like we’re “up there,” which happens to be a place nobody has actually defined. We forget the lesson of COVID, which was this – when the “paper people,” (people like me sitting in an office) were less essential to our well being than the staples (people living in dormitories and clearing our crap.)

We ignore small people because, well, they’re small and we deem them as such. Yet, when they’re gone, we suddenly get jammed. Just look at the average corporation. Everyone loves the sales guys because they “bring in the money.”  Nobody cares about corporate secretarial or compliance – if anything, we find them annoying because they’re asking about this or that piece of paper. Yet, when they go, we get fines and slaps by regulators.

I’m reminded of one of my military instructors, who talked about how fighter gets avoided getting too close to infantry men because “a 30-cent bullet can damage a two-billion-dollar jet).

I get the attraction to glamour. Yet, at Christmas, I would urge all of us to remember the “little people,” or the people doing the “s*** jobs,” because the truth is, these are the guys who hold everything together for us, making our good life possible.