Episode 3: Reflecting

 

Malaysia! I'm coming back! It has been 2 years plus since I left my hometown and came to Singapore. Everything has changed, I changed my job, changed my life, and changed from place to place.  

2 years = 750 days =18,000+ hours!

I once asked myself a question;   Is it the right decision to work in Singapore? Well, I would say Yes! It wasn't an easy path, I've gone through ups and downs all alone, no one gave me direction on what to do or how to do. I worked in F&B when I first came to Singapore. Back then, I had no experience in any industry so the only option was F&B. I knew it wasn't my wishlist career and I felt ashamed to tell friends and family that I work in F&B. I hated myself every single day, my self-confidence was low, afraid of making eye contact with stranger, and I tried to escape from the things I do every day. End up I lost my direction.

Finally, I wanted to change no matter what it takes. It took me 3 months to get an interview, I took every minute and even practiced while walking, it's hard because English is not my mother tongue and I barely use English for 2 years. Fortunately, I got a job even though the pay was lower than the previous but it won't stop me. I desperately wanted to jump out of the F&B industry.

I appreciate what I have now but I will keep striving to achieve my goal. This is my story, it's not an end, it's just started.

Episode 2: Are you a hero?

My definition of a great movie is that it can ignite your soul, your heart, and your compassion. At my young age, I love watching action movies, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Scwarzeneg. The amazing about these action movies is that it makes people think that, we could be a hero in real life too, the winner always the hero, that's why people want to be a hero, not a villain.

When I grew up, I barely watched action movies, not because I don't like them anymore. I realized that most of us have a shallow definition of a hero. My definition of a hero is an independent, a problem-solver, full of sympathy, have a warrior spirit, a leader, a good listener, a good communicator, hard-working, courage to fight for something, and the most important is to have self-improvement spirit. 

As you can see, it's very simple to be your own hero. A hero doesn't mean just fighting. Everyone is a hero of themselves, do not underestimate your capability what you can do, always have a faith to believe yourself you can do anything with a hero spirit. 

Life is getting harder and harder, what holds our faith is that we must believe in ourselves, in many times we will feel down, feel desperate, feel helpless, feel hopeless, and feel give up. But remember, there are not only the choices to feel negativity, you can have the choice to be positive to face adversities, as a matter of fact, turning out negativity into positivity will make you stronger to conquer every difficulty in life. So remember, the behind of every success story is adversity, struggle, and fear.   

To be successful in life, try to be your own hero.

Episode 1: Documentary

The idea of documenting my life came into my mind because I want to write down the things that wander in my mind, the things that I learned, my feelings, opinions, self-consciousness, etc. To transform into self-improvement, to be able to find out my goals, my targets, and most importantly is I want to know more about myself. 

It is a process of knowing myself, searching for my strengths and weaknesses, and improving to be the best version of myself.

I think documenting it down every week or twice a week would be a great way. At my young age, I had a sense of self-improvement always made sure that I could learn something in everyday life. I had that desire in my heart to learn something, I wanted to master one thing and be able to make my parents proud of it, but I failed. 

Then, I found out that I failed every time because I naively thought that the outcome should come overnight. Everything I did, I lacked perseverance, persistence, and confidence. I was afraid of how people would think about me doing the things I loved, I cared about their feelings, I wanted to impress people I don't really care about. All these negativities led me to failure, led me to nothing, those people I cared too much about were just my fear, doubt, and insecurity which led me to low confidence. 

For any reason, I want to change badly, improve, and correct my mind so that I can conquer the fears, doubts, and insecurities inside my mind. I believe documenting could help me, in other words, it's like self-talk, to think deeply and search for my 'Kaizen' and 'Ikigai'.

In fact, I believe finding what's the purpose in life is in everyone's mind. With self-improvement, I truly hope that we all can find out our lifelong target and goal.

Self-Improvement

 

Jasper was our General Manager, it's a waste that our management wasn't able to keep the best employee in the company. I remembered the first day Jasper joined the company, my first impression was that he looked young and naively thought that was this the right person to be our general manager? At the end of the day, Jasper's performances and vast experiences conquered me. 

He is an articulate person, clear-sighted, confident man, and humble. 

Although our connection is not close, I admired his ability and capability deeply in my heart. In his last week of service, he taught and explained the importance of presentation skills in order to further our career development. He sincerely reminds us that we should keep improving and learning to become the best version of ourselves.  

I greatly appreciated his lessons.

At last, I wish the good person all the best in everything in life and future endeavors. 

Bloody Hell 30%!

 

'Rental will be increased when the contract ends in March,' the owner told us.

I was shocked and thought, 'Bloody hell, 30%! Why is it rise so dramatically!' I would rather buy a house in Malaysia.

We tried to negotiate to go down by 20%, unfortunately, our offer was turned down. At that moment, we have to look for a new room immediately.

For me, it was a tormenting process and I hated this endless cycle to find a room and move new place every single year. 

In 3 weeks' time, we were afraid of missing out on every opportunity, we searched over and over again. There were several rooms that caught our eyeball but they rented out so quickly.

When you've desperately wanted something, you would think of worse scenarios. I would think of sharing a toilet with strangers, sharing a dining area, and might not have my own freedom anymore.

With pure luck, I saw a new post and clicked into it to find out more information about the common room. Lucky enough, the owner wanted to rent out the whole unit. I quickly dropped a message to make an appointment for viewing. Again with pure luck, it's the first time that owner is willing to rent out, and I will be the first tenant.

We had made a deal, I would say the rental is a bit higher than the market price but it's reasonable.

Eventually, we are quite satisfied with the unit, spacious rooms, clean, big fridge, king-size bed, sofas, etc. 

Equally important, the freedoms.

Nasdaq

 

Investment

26 Feb 2022

Nasdaq Closed - 13,398.41

52 weeks High - 16,200

52 weeks Low  - 12,651

Here is a record of the Nasdaq Composite index as of 26 Feb 2022.

Over the course of my life, I have had lots of failures, mistakes, and wrong decision-making. No doubt, investing in the U.S market is one of the few right decisions I have had so far, despite my returns is not convincing compared to others.

For me, it is my own fight.

The market is like a big cage, everyone can easily enter into the cage but not everyone can be the winner. I have been investing since 2019, little did I know, I naively thought that investment was the path to financial freedom. I read lots of investing books and wanted to find out the secret of how investor tycoons make tons of million and billion of money with just a snap of fingers.

Again, I was wrong. 

Whether you like it or not, we all must admit that investment is not an easy score test, it's sophisticated, twisted, logical and illogical, and psychological. Matter of fact, it's all about survival so that you won't be wiped out when the market crashes. 

Important lessons I learned in this investment journey. 

• Do not be overconfident. I was lucky enough to know that I'm a conservative person, that's because of this trait of character I take every investment seriously. Before getting into investing, I will analyze the industry, company's business, competitiveness, fundamentals, and price trend.
• Asset allocation. Keep in mind that every industry has ups and downs. In this technology era, a business trend is unpredictable. To avoid this situation, we must build a healthy and firm portfolio to overcome adversity.
• Critical thinking. Everyone has a different level of critical thinking. The real business world is brutal and intense, so do investment. To enjoy fruitful returns, we must learn not to become a follower, we must train our brain to make our own judgment. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

'The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.'

Integrity

 

Today, I learned the powerful word 'Integrity'. 

From Google, integrity simply means the practices of being honest, strong moral principles, and adherence to ethical principles. 

My question is when it comes to real life, are we truly know how to practice integrity? Is there any role model we can look up to and learn from his/her integrity?

The answer is YES! The person I look up to is the Founder and CEO of One Championship, Chatri Sityodong. 

He is inherently an entrepreneur and a true leader. Every time I hear about him is integrity, respect, discipline, courage, grit, compassion, confidence, work ethics, cultural treasure, and Asian heroes. All of these characteristics make him a resilence entrepreneur and leader. A wise man once said, 'Everyone can be a boss, not everyone can be a leader.' While for Chatri, he had the DNA of entrepreneurship and leadership ever since his young life.  

So, what does integrity related to him? From Chatri's perspective, the definition of integrity is to do the right thing. He added, he has had to make tough decisions in his entrepreneurship life. He has had to fire inherently good people but poor grade. He has had to cut jobs to downsize the company to keep the right people. He has had to punish and ask people to leave because of lying, poor behavior, and bad attitude. None of these decisions were easy for him. For this, he holds his baseline - integrity.

It's undeniable that integrity is one of the great moral principles, everyone should learn and practice this principle regardless of making a decision or being a good role model for someone or a good role model for your children. 

When you have the principle, you have the baseline.

Daybreak

Daybreak

Since I was a kid, I'd always wake up early even I could sleep in a few more hours.

Waking up early has become one of my habits, it's like my body inhabited an alarm. My body alarm will automatically wake me up at 6:30am every single day. It was hilarious when I shared this with my friends.

I would share with my friends how amazing it was to wake up before daybreak, also we could accomplish a lot of things in the early morning and have more time to accomplish something else in the afternoon and night. 

However, my friends weren't interested, they were concerned about why do I choose to wake up when can sleep longer? Isn't it more effective to have sufficient sleep? I made no answer.

Perhaps waking up early is seem like a difficult task to most of us, and most of us have different perspectives of sufficient sleep.

Till now at the age of 28, I'm still a morning person. 

I love a cup of coffee, deep focus on my thoughts, and enjoy the daybreak. 

Morning is always a great moment for me.

#sunrise#daybreak