Mother's Day in Melaka

Mothers Day celebration started early this year with us as we closed the chapter on another eventful past year. As my wife and I grow longer in tooth and the children become older and bolder in love and life,occasions such as these give pleasure and credence for us to benefit the largess of our children's love and care.

Becoming a middle aged parent and grand parent does have it's upsides for us as time,energy,and sacrifices made these past two decades bear fruit whilst we are still young and able to enjoy the fruits of our past sacrifices.


Bantering with my kids are some of the most precious moments in our lives now, as we see them grow and bear the mark of adult maturity. It does bring a proportionately high sigh of contentment to see the children show us signs of civility,humbleness and care in their daily banter and deeds. 


That is invariably, with pride I say, every parent's vision that their kids grow up personable, prim and proper. My wife and I give thankful grace to god that our children do.

My old man used to tell me often how proud he was of me and I intend to do the same with my kids with full pride and no small amount of prejudice ! My dad' s word of caution to me at those times when he found my actions wanting were: "Son, Don't do what I do. Do what I tell you to do !"  Lucky for me, my kids never needed me to caution them thus.

My eldest son invited Michelle, mummy, my mother in law and me for a mother's day celebration recently at a local Nyonya Restaurant.

 Nicole (my granddaughter) was in exceptional cheery mood that night as we tucked in on some delectable nyonya food which was followed with a cake blowing ceremony at the Beuford Hotel. 

The owner David Lee was very happy to hear I was coming to his hotel and he came to accompany my family and I that evening and even opened his Pussy Cat Lounge just for us to have a private karaoke session to wind down the evening.

What was supposed to be a few minutes turned out to be an evening of fun frolic and fiesta as my wife,daughter and I  croaked ourselves crazy singing all the oldies but still goodies.

David has such a wonderful singing voice,when we sang together he could actually make me sound good! Well, That's what my wife said, anyways.

The very next day, we found out was our daughter in law's birthday and we grouped all members of our immediate family together to celebrate with her over dinner at the Malacca Club Town House. Having these family dinners together is fun as we get to reminisce, trade stories and generally show good will to each other over a joyous occasion such as this. As the younger kids tell of their problems and school we also get to know more of their personal lives and share in their growing up pain and joys. It is also a good time for both families to get together and relax after the hard day's work and see the children grow up in comfort and security together.

I may not qualify as the Father of theYear candidate for saying this but I always felt young people should be given an example of how things can be rather than should be.

As a 45-year-old male born in Melaka, I can reasonably expect to live for about another 28 years given the exponential advances science has made and what the insurance companies assume I'm capable of achieving before forcing me to take back my paid premium due to  old age. 

In other words, I can no longer claim to be young. I am, without doubt, middle-aged.

To some people that is a depressing realization.

I never understood why.

Being a father and now a grandfather to boot,to my best contention, our modern city living (past the age of 7), whereby you should by law be admitted into the Common Educational Syllabus System Promoting Ordinariness in an Ordinated Location (CESS POOL); is a drab existence that every child must suffer & endure under the common fallacy of gaining an education but more commonly known amongst the more cherubic ones as Killing Individualistic Dreams Systematically.(KIDS)

The amount of out dated information drivel and fallacies these kids are preached under the current system is unbelievable plus given the complete morons some kids have as teachers, you must wonder out loud how they even manage to remain sane when they leave school at age 17.

Me,all my life I've longed to be an emancipated ADULT. 

Not having to worry about schedules and time tables and homework, not to mention dealing with teen angst. 

Yuucks!

Take it from me kids,adult hood is the Bomb!

You get to earn money,drink alcohol,drive a car, plane or train,screw, travel alone and still have energy to work occasionally. If you are really good at what you do, much later in life you will be given the opportunity to tell others how to work,drink,drive and screw others up ! Middle age people also have the pain of experience to back up their right to earn more, do more fun stuff and basically still run the world.

So, listen up kids...start growing up fast.

It's a wonderful world up here.

To prove my point, the other day I was in the market accompanying my wife grocery shopping and who should I bump into but my old discipline teacher Mr. Gan Poh Seng. We used to call him Betuk. Don't ask me why.


Anyways, old betuk was very happy to see me and we were soon chatting up about our current lives and what not when his wife turned up and he introduced me to her as ' one of his best students!' This was the same chap who once upon a time used to cane me in public during school assembly for mooning the next door school girls and teachers from my classroom. 
I was a School Prefect too at that time if memory serves me right. So you see, not only does life get better as you age but memories also turn rosier !

Cheers!

Preview of the Coming Collapse

The 2 Billion Dollar Loss reported by JP Morgan

Is Just a Preview of the Coming Collapse Of the Derivatives Market

Today, stock markets are the biggest casino's in the entire world. 

When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned.  But the truth is that this is just the beginning.  This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. I've been cautioning  for a while now,to all who would listen of the eventual decline of Fiat Currencies globally.
Naturally, I bristle at people ignoring me except to say hurtful things, like, “Wai! So Gross! Eat with your mouth closed lah!” and who then turn right around and say, “Guna,Shut up already about buying gold and silver!”
But how do I not eat and talk? 


(Man, it has been said, cannot live on bread alone! Unless, of course, it is made into a nice, big sandwich with all the accompaniments, maybe with a tall, cool beverage and a fresh bag of potato chips, you’re bent over the plate like some kind of starving Neanderthal, noisily shoveling it in your mouth with both hands, perhaps while you are watching TV, necessitating changing channels by hitting the remote control with your elbow).In polite deference to the easily offended, I swallow the last of a sandwich, whereupon I take up my one-sided conversation to say that buying gold and silver is the smartest thing you can do when the Federal Reserve is creating So Freaking Much Money, as it creates horrific inflation in prices, with the historical evidence strongly indicating that the long-term percentage increase in prices matches the percentage increase in the money supply, which, if true, means that We’re Freaking Doomed :(

What i see most people forget is that when the "too big to fail" banks make good bets in these stock markets, they can make a lot of money.  When they make bad bets, they can lose a lot of money, and that is exactly what just happened to JP Morgan. 

Their Chief Investment Officer made a series of trades which turned out horribly, and it resulted in a loss of over 2 billion dollars over the past 40 days.  But 2 billion dollars is small potatoes compared to the vast size of the global derivatives market. 

It has been estimated that the notional value of all the derivatives in the world is somewhere between 600 trillion dollars and 1.5 quadrillion dollars. 

You can keep kicking the debt further down the road, as the west has been doing since 2008, but interest still accumulates. Then you devalue your currency by debasing it (printing more money), but interest and bond charges still accumulates. Somewhere down the road you must pay. 

 

Problem is, interest payments itself in running into the billions per month now days on the loans circulating out there backed by worthless assets.

Deflated value due to inflated currency, remember?

Nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.  Sadly, a lot of mainstream news reports are not even using the word "derivatives" when they discuss what just happened at JP Morgan.

Again sadly, the average Malaysian does not even know what derivatives are.

Most Malaysians have no idea that we are rapidly approaching a horrific derivatives crisis that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.

Any damage to the dollar or euro would deliver a significant blow to the world economy, leading to less trade, higher unemployment and a possible recession, financial experts say.

The situation in Europe & America would create a tsunami that would reach our shores very, very quickly.

We would be collateral damage and this collateral damage would be very, very significant.

With some European countries seemingly unable to control their spiraling debt crises, because they cannot pay back the promised interest on the money owed to them, and with uncertainty over the type of financial relief the European Central Bank may contribute, there are fears the end of the dollar’s dominance in international trade is near.

In Europe, if the euro dissolved as a currency, a number of countries with their debt denominated in euros would immediately have to default since they would adapt their own domestic currencies and those would be devalued from anywhere between 50 to 70 per cent.

As the marketplace establishes the exchange rates, you would see a "fire sale" on the countries exchange rates (hence affecting monetary value) because investors would have very little confidence in these new currencies.

Back to the derivatives crisis in the states, according to their Comptroller of the Currency, the "too big to fail" banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely mind blowing. 

Just check out this official U.S. government report....

JPMorgan Chase - $70.1 Trillion

Citibank - $52.1 Trillion

Bank of America - $50.1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs - $44.2 Trillion

So a 2 billion dollar loss for JP Morgan is nothing compared to their total exposure of over 70 trillion dollars.

Overall, the 9 largest U.S. banks have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.  


That is approximately 3 times the size of the entire global economy.

It is hard for the average person on the street to begin to comprehend how immense this derivatives bubble is.  So let's not make too much out of this 2 billion dollar loss by JP Morgan.

This is just chicken feed. This is just a preview of coming attractions. Soon enough the real problems with derivatives will begin, and when that happens it will shake the entire global financial system to the core.

Any possible Euro collapse would mean developing countries would become more protectionists, which would have a major effect on a country like Malaysia that relies on exports.

While Malaysia’s direct share of global trade with America & Europe (23.5%) is relatively small, it would be indirectly affected by those countries, in particular the United States, which are heavily exposed to the European market and which Malaysia trades with.

But the crisis would take a little while for it to work its way through to us here in Malaysia.

People won't get fired immediately tomorrow, but it will work its way through.

The doomsday scenario everyone should be aware of is that, credit flows stop, meaning economic activity and trade stop or get severely curtailed.


The next thing is if trade stops, who are you going to sell to?

People who make things, they eventually have nothing to do, and they'll be out of a job. It may not happen next week, but could happen next year.

While Malaysian banks don't have much direct exposure to Europe, they would be affected by the calamity raging in the credit marketplace, meaning they would have to stop lending to manufacturers due to low buying demand.

But currently Malaysia, with its relatively healthier banks and deficit containment, is in a better position than most other countries to deal with the crisis.


Information is King.   To those ready to capitalize on the probable Fire Sales that would eventually be realized worldwide, this would be the buying opportunity of a life time.

Karma shitting on Dharma

Modern man's life is rather clumsy, though we pretend to control our destinies, by and large it be an act of ultimate self deception that we control the myriad trials and tribulations of what we sow, although it is true our actions and/or inaction precludes certain options to our current state. 

For the most part, we are careless things that blunder along the path of history until we eventually get to to our appointed destinations.

All of this, of course, points to the quaint parochialism of the modern man's- "Id state"
 (state of subconscious mind) which is, for most, a rather crude and blunt instrument at best. 

The root of today's problems is the question of identity (yours and mine) and the perpetuation of that identity over time. (as popeye famously said; I am what I am, and that is all that I am!)

This, incidentally, is a question that is both personal as it is philosophical; and the individual, has to be made to look into the mirror of self-doubt to see the glimmer of reason tucked behind the cloud of untruths (in the Nietzschean sense).

It has, in short, to be made to ask the same existentialist questions that we are all bound to ask ourselves sooner or later: “What am I; why am I here; is this all I am; is this all I can be?”

Instructive in this respect, i believe, is the dialogue between the semi-divine hero Arjuna and the God Krishna that takes place on the eve of the great battle of Kurukshetra, (5000 yrs ago in India) which makes up the theme of the Bhagavad Gita,(equivalent to a Holy Book for Hindus) and which, incidentally, happens to also be one of the most important works of localised Hindu literature in Southeast Asia, locally rendered as the Hikayat Pandawa Lima.

Unable to lay his soul to rest the warrior-prince Arjuna contemplates the folly of life and the madness of power on the night before the great battle between the two warring clans of the Pandawas and Kurawas, cognisant of the fact that regardless of the outcome the battle will spell the doom of both.

Gnawing at his conscience is the perennial conundrum that he is unable to resolve: How can he, the warrior-prince, obey and comply with two apparently contradictory moral orders, the dharma of the just man who must respect life, and the dharma of the warrior who must destroy life itself? 

It is Lord Krishna himself, (In one of his 10 reincarnations) who comes to Arjuna’s aid by offering him sage counsel that is equally relevant to the modern technocrat of today.

Krishna reminds Arjuna that life is full of contradictions and that as a human being one of the first conditions to be met while living in the here-and-now is to accept, understand and live with these seemingly contrasting contradictions.

Arjuna (as a man) has to protect life, but he also has to kill (to protect a life).

He must be prince and warrior, protector and killer. Having to bear the burden of both obligations is his destiny and he cannot escape this. ( As is the case with all of us, we have to be hunters and warriors and also husbands and protectors of virtue in our family life)

Arjuna was then faced with the last temptation before the great slaughter at Kurukshetra.

To simply give up.

He longs to relinquish all sense of responsibility, to escape, to deny his own agency and responsibility, to refuse to act, to do nothing.

But it is then that Krishna reveals himself in all his magnificent universal plenitude and shows Arjuna in no uncertain terms that Life is far greater than the individual.

While the warrior-prince is forced to do battle with his conscience, (in this life) Krishna reminds him that Life and one's soul is far greater, more complex, much richer than the finite conscience of the individual ;( To understand today, one has to understand our yesterdays-or past lives and visualise what that impact will be on our tomorrows-or next life) and that even if the greatest of heroes cannot reconcile such contradictions in him, Life is far more abundant and expansive and great enough to reconcile all contradictions within itself. That is the promise of the Lord.

The moral of the Bhagavad Gita – of which there are many – is that inaction is no escape from the complexities of life and that submission to Life means accepting the complexities, contradictions and paradoxes that make up mottled landscape of living itself. 


No, we cannot run from our fears and anxieties and we cannot gloss them over with counterfeit simple solutions either.

To truly live to the full, one has to reflect the complexities of life in our personalities as well, to mirror the myriad of life’s contradictions in the myriad of personalities that inhabit ourselves.

We have, in other words, to accept and live as a community of selves, with all the sad,happy, calming,frustrating & contentious feelings that that may elicit for us.

For ours is not to question why; but simply to enjoy while we can the privilege and joy of living and all its' travails.

Karma has a funny way of shitting on Dharma, doesn't it?

The Economic Rantings of a non PlutoCrat.

On the financial pages nowadays, the latest hard hitting investigative financial news all seem to paint a picture that our current crisis ridden world needs a solution and that politics would be able to solve this mess either through Quantitative Easings (QE’s 1-3) or more administrative austerity measure and imposement.

I say the problems are not politically solvable but privately attainable….if the masses can come together.

You ask what I mean?

Dr.Mahathir (for all his patriarchal & right wing politic views) was fundamentally /technically right when he took the country’s ringgit out of the international monetary currency exchange system in 1997.

He understood that at that point CONTROL of our monetary value was not in our own hands but

manipulated by currency traders sitting in front of computer screens thousands of miles away.

Euro leaders today need that understanding of money that Mahathir had 15 years ago. You may outsource social and even business to another but you must never hand over control of your own hard earned cash (or its security) to another.

This is the core of the Financial Crisis in this world today. Markets are too easily manipulated and people suffer loss of monetary value.

It is unfortunate that there is still widespread misunderstanding about both money and our real problem with it

Money’s power goals are obvious. Take for example the US which seems strong with a nominal $30,000 per capita GDP, but like Malaysia in the late 90’s; when the dollar devalues against the Brazilian Real and the Chinese Yuan, either through continuous QE’s (and thus creating deflationary actions which could lead to hyper inflationary currency moves)…things will quickly look different very fast. You can already see this happening in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland…..even in Britain.

It causes problems because it ends access to higher priced raw materials and oil which will eventually affect manufacturing ability and downstream it affects the life styles of millions of workers through lower pay check.

As I’ve pointed out many times in my musings, the problem relating to currency manipulations (control) either by governments or Central Banks is related to the enormous Derivative Markets and the interest that bond markets have to pay on these Derivatives ( Derivatives are re insurance of sorts for everything from mortgage loans to hard assets and personal credit loans) scam and the reason this derivative crisis was allowed to exist is because the banks, politicians, the media and economists are all earning from it and colluding in fooling the many into believing we need banks for our money supply.

Sometimes, I think most of these colluders probably even believe this is true themselves.

They say we need the banks, because otherwise the real economy would have no money to trade with.

All this is complete and utter rubbish, of course. If banks can create credit, then anybody can. That’s just common sense. IT's just that we are not allowed to do so with out  coming under the central bank's control  or without paying tax to government.

Just imagine: we are led to believe that we need to cough up trillions just to have a means of exchange. One that is completely paper/computer based. i.e. almost free of cost.

The bankers have successfully intimidated every government and the people on earth to believe their system of creating money is supreme as is their western ideology.

Banking is part of the Babylon Mystery of Old and bankers believe we are still enthralled with their ‘fractional reserve banking’ sleight of hand. And they are right.

Although people are waking up, many still don’t get it.

A good example of this is the ‘take your money out of Banks’ drive  in America that was all over You Tube and the underground revolt medias of  October 2011. Bank of America(BOA) decides to rake in an extra 60 dollars per year, per customer with a silly service fee charge. This upset many people and they incited others to revolt against that particular organization.

Though the drive itself may have caused some PR damage to BOA, it will not hurt it where it matters because what I am saying is that these are the same “customers” generously handing over their hard earned money to these same banks for loans on mortgage that basically do the same thing. They are charged a FEE for loans and calling it- interest.

Accumulated Interest is the root of all our evils…not money.

The Islamic mudrabahah system does empirically the same but is more justified in its division of earned largesse. They are more socially beneficial to the participating players.

The Fractional Reserve Bank’s Customers on the other hand are paying $300k interest over 30 years on their $200k mortgage. Which the bank created the moment they borrowed it to you.  

If at this point the reader is asking “so where else can I go when I need money, smart ass”?

That’s why Bank Negara allows savings co operatives. You get the overriding interest and profit on the amount you saved and loaned out on top of the interest on savings in the Co operatives fixed Deposit. 

You enrich your selves by participating in the system and not the autocrats running the Banks.

Remember that banks do not necessarily have that money also when they decide to ‘approve’ your loan.  They create it out of thin air.

They are allowed by law to use your savings and CD’s or long term Deposits to lend out 85-90 percent of your collective money to others under Fractional Savings. (They lend out your money to other to earn interest whilst only maintaining 10-15 percent of that total sum of loans given out in Bank Negara as their collateral)

What then happens is that due to the creation of more money, which is caused by banks giving more credit, the M2 supply in the country increases (M2 is total amount of money in circulation which affects the valuation i.e. inflation))  which means we fork out more ringgit for the same value of goods and in effect today, most of us lose almost 45 % of our disposable income to cost for living capital (loans) included in the prices we pay for our daily needs.

And that is after government subsidies and GST!

In other words: Penny wise, pound foolish.

People still don’t understand how badly they are being raped monthly. 

They still don’t understand how they are fleeced through interest on fictional debt.

I call it fictional because unlike a country’s elected legislative (Parliament) ; no one in the country elected these fat cats who get to decide how much interest is fair interest.

They called it a free market decision. That’s another oxymoron.

There is no such thing as a free market when currencies are manipulated and stock markets can be induced to soar or crash by some nameless financially strong investment fund behemoths behind a trading account as what Soros did to the British pound back in 97 and what Lehman Bros did to the Dow in 2005 through their manipulative shorts on the commodities market.

Don’t let me start on the justification of Quantitative Easing ! 

People do not yet understand how pervasive the enslavement through interest really is.

So what should you do, you say? Boycotting the fractional banking system is the blindingly obvious approach. If somebody is enslaving you with interest and fractional reserve banking while destroying your country's economy, why would you patronize his business?

How is it possible that this is not known to so many well informed educated individuals out there?

Or are we so entrenched in the magic of the financial system created by these Banks that we no longer question them?

Is there really anybody out there who still believes the banks will mend their ways?

By right,we should not have one ringgit in that kind of system. Every ringgit we put in the banking system gives them 9 ringgit of income per customer, per year.

Remember that.

The system, through fractional reserve banking, multiplies your dollar by ten and takes interest over each of them. Real interest (including credit cards) is probably close to 18% and that means they make in the factor of quadruples per year over every ringgit you have in your account.

Remember that 50 years ago not everybody had a bank account.

Before then there were no computers and the banks couldn’t have handled the administration of such numbers. But life still went on smoothly for millions of people.

You don’t need a bank to keep your money. The whole idea is insane! Nowhere is your money more prone to abuse and risk than in a bank.

But for the sake of convenience, you can maintain an account for monthly payments; just keep its balance at almost zero. Pay your bills and take out the rest.

Pay cash only. Don’t support their cashless society. Liquidate all your paper assets, both to blow up the system and to minimize your own exposure to the coming implosion. Gold is still the way to go.

Please think about it, people.

On the subject of Associations

The  merry and joyous occasion pictured here was the annual Alumni Post Mortem Dinner which in all eventuality should have been done 3 months back given that the Annual Dinner event was conducted on January but due to severe clashes of schedules and time accorded to our secretary, it had to to be postponed to April.
Though not all of us managed to make it for the night of friendly banter and delicious morsels of dainty delights, the members who availed themselves for this shared night of fun and good food made it a truly happy, memorable yet entertaining event for all !
The camaraderie was evident on the smiling faces of all dining SFA committee members as we got to toasting the Grand Success of our combined efforts these past few years which culminated with the record breaking achievements of the 2012 Dinner.









On the subject of Associations and an individuals personal contribution of time and effort towards such noble charity, I've noticed collections of men and women who share their time, effort and opinions for the benefit of others are seemingly aplenty in this blessed fair city.

In that aspect, the most vital point most people look up to, in regards to social contributions for the betterment of any associated group of people is always Leadership. Most times this is available in double doses wherever groups of powerful individuals congregate here in this fair city.

Sometimes when that position of leadership is fancied by contending individuals for the wrong reasons,i.e personal power and glory, it makes other serving board members stress out with disdain and start questioning their involvement in such glorified ventures. Remember that the alpha male is only as good as the group he leads.

More often than not, having party A and party B pivoting for the position of power within an association often results in slander, misdirected anger and wasted energy pre and post election.Many a times this division of differing characters also start amassing cliques within said associations to further their own agendas.

Such is how the discord and disdain for one another begins.

This is where I see the work of a leader is not just to lead groups of men and women in unison but to do so altruistically. Individuals of differing egos and potential need to be primed for suitable roles that they can play within the various associated platforms which then can be made to showcase the individual strengths and strategically utilize this for the benefit of all.

When done correctly, much benefit can be realized by every due paying member of said associations for differing periods of time

Conversely, when Leaders fail to conceptualize the need to segregate, identify and demarcate  the demands and possible strengths of the existing membership and their accompanying egos, you will find a tussle for leadership happening .

When such occurrences are improperly handled, they often result in one party losing face and becoming a thorn in the flesh for the winning party. Democratically speaking, such is the failure of contested elections.

Time and again many spirited individuals rally to the calls of justice, service to fellow man & charity but more often than not they get cheesed off with the shenanigans put forward by these contesting egos.
Ultimately, this results in the possible becoming impossible yet again where that society is concerned.

The above holds true both in business settings as well as social settings.

Luckily for me, I am privileged enough to be able to discard those unenviable networks that bring no value to me and my life but still, I do feel for the loss of what might have been and the probable success of said associations had they not partake in their road to contested misery.

But, such is life.

The melancholy situation is assuaged once life is returned to normalcy as Family, Friends and Food yet again take center stage in my life. Going for Karaoke with the family for an hour or two during the weekends before sitting for a sumptuous meal with said Family does allow one to forget our troubles & enjoy the simple pleasures of life yet again in this wonderful city.

Having the grandchild around to entertain my afternoons with her cherub smile and doe eyed recognition happily provides many a cherished moments in my life and I thank the Good Lord for all his blessings to me and mine.

The beautiful princess Nicole U.K.