Becoming a renaissance man

 Being a renaissance man

3 more days starting new job. 2 more books to go.

1. Early retirement extreme 
2. Outlier

Wah, early retirement extreme really intrigue to me read word for word and the concept is very align to mine. As though, the writer help me to put up a more detailed version of what my worldview is. I really recommend this book to people who like to retire early. Comparing to FIRE, although I haven't read it. I would think this is a better book.

In the book is part people into 4 groups. Salary man / working man / business man and renaissance man. What renaissance man is also a polymath, or commonly known as "jack of all trade". This align with me to be a generalist over a specialist. Being a special come with a benefit but people often overlook the cost of specialisation. 

So I advocate being a renaissance man, which the following clip say you need to have 2 things,

• dedicated learning : Cross learning a skill which can help you to learn another skill easier
• opportunistic learning : ability to learn things as it present itself and therefore able to learn new things quickly. 

Very good video and I like this speaking cadence which show so much confidence. Love it. 

Being a handy man

I want to research should I invest in bicycle maintenance tools. Which has some cross between handyman tools for general repair. If much item is similar or overlay. I think I will bite the bullet to invest in a set of tools.

These are long term ROI and very possible income generating. I need to start working on some hard skills, technical skills or blue collar skill. 

Everyone is a natural builder. From young as a baby, we smile with curosity as we touch the world around us and realise we are able to touch and modify things. As we grow older, we lose this kind of instint due to the busiest of work. We outsource simple things to others in term of services. To escape capitalism, I want to learn more DIY. 

When I finish my notes on retirement extreme, will share it. Inside a lot of example why we need to be a handyman

Be a generalist

 This weekend got fly aeroplane by 2 group of friends. 

1. Lilian suppose to meet at SP for singing end up cancelling as her daughter is sick. 
2. Flo and Herm cancelled Sunday cycling as Herm bike Brompton got gear issue. Same things that the connector just got disconnector. 

Knowing how to fix the Brompton yourself can help to save the $70 servicing fee. This information can be easily found on YouTube provided you have the leisurely of time of not working to study and DIY. Of course I agree the opportunity cost of spending time to research, study, trial and error vs paying for an expert to help you solve the problem. However, as a typical "S" quadrat guy. Learn a general repair skill has the potential to ROI the opportunity cost in your life time. 

I am advocate for general specialist. I no longer see the upside to specialise very deep. Able to know a vest knowledge broadly will help us to see solution from different angles. Your solutions are usually unique and more out of the box. 

Frugal living

End up I need to go through my phonebook to jio friend out for a pint. So hard to find friends now as all has their own group. Meet up with Michael at Bugis and he had been working for grab part time for 2 years. Very powerful, beside his main job, he part time as a grab and all good weeks he can get 1.4k usually in the 800 to 1k weekly. Due to his past 1 year, he say he got 20k annual from grab part time. 

He shown me that he has also upgrade his bike to electrical one. I tried and it was very good and responsive. He is getting fitter which is a good thing. He encourage me to go get the shirt and start doing it now. Well the bundle will need $70 so typically 2 days are enough to break even the start up cost.

I told him I don't really want to do it for the money. I looking more for the experience and also the work out part of the job. We had a small talk which revolve how he is inspired to clear debt, buy condo in the future and a car really soon. I really advice him against it as a frugal woke man. However, he is very quick to dismiss my point of view of course thinking I am a crazy man or a outlier. I really hope I can come out with either a book / podcast / video to advocate the frugal lifestyle. 

Aline, my friend from Vietnam had done a similar thing which is very good I think. Can copy her style.

Outlier is a good book, recommended. 10 hours rule in the core teaching and even Ali also recommend it as a very easy to read book which are being listed in the top 10 for a reason.

Feeling inspired. 

Internet review

Before I buy something online, eat something or watch a movie; I had the habit to search for review online. I almost enjoy the process of researching for review more than buying the item or experience. 

Sometime it will just cause me a lot of dilemma and confusion, even it will make to procrastinate on taking action or avoid doing it all together.

However, I am a very compare dot com kind of guy. 

I know a lot of reviews can be brought or fake, however it didn't know that review market had evolve to a state where most of the review are fake. 

At the end of clip, she mention that although it seems like the review system had benefit the food store, user and the broker. However, in the long run, it is damaging to all parties.

1. Restaurant have to particulate in rhetoric star rating system, waste energy and money
2. Broker / Platform that contain fakes review in the mix and lose real client base
3. User long longer able to get real information on platform

I should remind myself not to get too involve in comparing different product. Goes with the middle option to save more opportunity cost.

Blogging

Blogger is very hard to use and it don't have a app to do it. Wordpress had gotten better over the years.

3sixty

My brakes cable replacement parts had arrived. Thanks Jacky for the help. Too bad she is down with COVID also. It was so hard to avoid. Even I catch it when I go golden mile.

This weekend might go out for a foldie ride on Sunday. This bike is really good and I like it after 1 year still. Although the ride frequency reduced but the need to use it once in a while is always there. If I take care the bike and dry and oil it. I can last me a life time. So it is a 1k well spent.

In between job, 2 months break

Today after watching Samurai Matcha, I got inspired to start writing my online dairy. I guess I still love my blog. 

Travel

I am midway between my job. Now taking a short 2 months break. I did travel a bit after COVID reopen. In case you had missed out my Selangor Trip and Dalat Trip. The motive behind these trip is first, relax and secondly, introduce Jacky to micro retirement. From blogging for many years, I realise it is good to have records over the years so we had started both a channel on Youtube and a mini project for podcast. 

Capitalism

Today I was telling Jacky about capitalism market and how they suck you in to keep purchasing things that you end up throwing out a while later. I was trying to avoid falling into all the marketing and selling technics in recent years. Take for example that, fashion industry was so saturated so capitalist designed fast fashion that promotes planned obsolescence which phrase out product in a certain life span. Fast fashion had been known to cause depletion to our earth natural resources. 

Living a frugal life

• Spend only on my needs not want, when I want to buy something I usually delay my purchase, only if I sleep over it and I had the urge I will return again to buy
• When buying I always avoid single purpose products, there needs to be multi functions
• Instead of buying for comfort, I buy for value. Looking for potential ways the item could ROI or be monetized in other ways

 Gig economy 

Recently, we had plans to move from E to S quadrant. For the lower and non guaranteed income, we hope to exchange for anatomy, flexibility, diversified, purposeful and aligning to vision type of life. I had borrowed the book "The Gig Economy" on Kobo. This E-reader is better than kindle due to the app is able to connect to local library via overdrive to read infinite books. So far I had read 2 books. Barefoot investor and 中国历史一点通

COVID make me positive

 This week I was tested positive for COVID.

My first instinctive thought is the fear of horrible lung infection and long term organ damage the virus can do to my body. I guess many will feel the same way. The worries, fear or pressure may be overwhelming to a lot of people. I can see some few might even suffer from depression from his unfortunate mishap in life.

However, this fear lasted only 3 minutes within me. Fear I believe is due to the natural human defend mechanism when facing dangerous situation that we naturally comes out with some worst case scenario to better prepare our brain.

But what went through my thought was, my belief system that our life is all being watched over by an good person. Many call that god while I just call it a good person. They will watch over us and make sure they will provide us the best possible outcome for us. All choice that you make regardless of good or bad ultimately is the only choice that you will make to lead you to the best outcome.

The virus was cast against me so that my body will build up the natural defend mechanism probably to protect me against another bigger problem. Which otherwise will kill me in an instant if not because of this COVID experience.

Measurement of time in second, measurement of length using metrics, measurement of wealth using dollars. How funny all this are just man made. And if we are always worry about how young, how tall and how successful base on these metrics. We just leads ourselves to misery. No one cause us to feel sad. We just allow ourselves to be measure against other's expectation. Hard to describe but 你懂的

I was shocked how come I can be so positive as if I can’t even be scared in front of this kind of life and death situation what else can hurt me anymore. I felt invincible.

The reason I am sharing how I mitigate stress and pressure is because I felt a lot of people are always worrying too much. While a lot of illness is cause by stress and pressure itself. And it was only amplified by our own mind. So nice if I am able to advocate to people how to be as positive like me. 

Marriage scam - Nuturing love the natural way

Imagine you flip a coin. The chances of it landing out as head have the same likelihood that your marriage will last a lifetime.

Ask yourself, will you buy into an investment product that made you lose all your money 50% of the time?

Then why do we still believe marriage?

Marriage history

In ancient, marriage started off strategically to bind noble and ruling classes with diplomatic and economic ties. It is a treaty to establish a peaceful relationship, trading relationship and mutual obligation by marrying families together.

More recent time, marriage serves a purpose to keep our wealth contained and passing it down to our lineage. The benefit of which is to safeguard assets and to form a coalition group.

Presently, marriage is merely to satisfy peer pressure, obtain legal entry to government programs entitled for couples and to have a consist person to fulfil our sexual desires.

Wedding industries

In fact, marriage is such bullshit and is so fragile. It is the only relationship in this world that requires an institute to penalize people from letting out of it.

Think about a true kinship or friendship. There is no need for a certificate to penalize you. You have a friend of a lifetime. You just feel right, and you don't mind being friends forever. Both of you are busy with life, both of you have a different social group. No matter how long you didn't get to see one another, there is always the feeling of closeness and connection when you get united again.

Cost of marriage

Can you really put a price on love?

In fact, yes. On average, getting into marriage will cost you somewhere between 30k to 50k. (according to dollars & sense, seedly, value champion)

Marriage is a scam due to the ease of getting into one verse the exorbitant amount of ordeal at getting out of it.

As a Singaporean, you just require a nominal fee of $50 to legally bind yourself to your partner at the institute.

On the other hand, to get out of one you have to invest an enormous amount of time and money. It is almost impossible to divorce on freewill. Once you are married, to consider a divorce in Singapore you need to provide proof legally that your spouse had committed one of the followings:

1. Legally obtained evidence of spouse adulty behaviour
2. Legal proofs of unacceptable behaviour
3. Proof that your spouse had deserted you for 2 years
4. Proof physically separation of up to 4 years

Then you have to go through the legal proceeding of the dissolution process and settling the complex dividing of assets in ancillary matters. If a baby is involved, custody decision and spousal maintenance so on and so fore.

Is marriage natural

Evidence shows that only 3% - 5% of mammal species in this world practice monogamy. (One partner of life). Most of them evolve into monogamy is for the increase of livelihood. Since human is so rich in emotions and more complex in our thinking process. We are only cheated into believing it only right to stay committed to our spouse or otherwise we will be deeply frowned upon. The social pressure of marriage fucking us up on our moral compass forces us to stay faithful to our counterpart even when our heart and soul is saying otherwise.

So is monogamy a natural evolution?

Scientifically, while women have limited egg to carry offspring. Men, on the other hand, have an unlimited amount of sperm. Since our ultimate purpose in life is to reproduce for the extension of humanity. How do we handle the extra desire fueling inside men's body?

Socially, we have to look into masturbation and ask if it is natural. In many countries, paid sex services are legal due to it will manage the needs of many men and in turn, bring down social crimes in general.

New role in job - corporate ladder climber

Whao, that 7 months since my last post. I joined BB since Feb 2019. 5 months into the job but I still haven't cleared my probation. They say the learning curve was steep, I don't believe. Now from the look of my KPI. I just managed to clear 10% KPI averaging over 5 months.

Many people ask if I regret leaving my last job. Why did I have to leave the job that I can do with my hand tied behind my back with big fat payroll, flexible timing so on and so fore. Honestly, I do not regret and I love the new challenge that I am facing.

First of all, promoting credit facilities had bottlenecked. I had learnt all that I need to learn and from that moment on, I am literally "working" for money. Jim Collins in his book "Good to Great" mention that for you to really find long-lasting satisfaction in your career you need to have passion, value and talent.

Real friendship and why you are wasting your time

"没有永恒的朋友，只有永恒的利益."

No lifelong friends but lifelong interest.

Since young before primary school, I was a strong believer in friendship. I was always the first who initiated contact with friends after we graduate for a gathering and catching up. But to my dismay, a lot of time this kind of affection is one-sided. I was almost a bit jealous of friends who got into new clique to the new environment. It like I am having withdrawal symptom towards friends "moving on".

After secondary school, I already understand there is almost no friendship that will last forever. So I tell myself, 朋友是阶段性的。And after the army, I understand that friend is mutually beneficial and you are automatically excluded when you are no longer useful. 朋友是互相利用的。

Over time, from extorvert, I became an introvert. Excluding myself from gathering, get together, almost like social withdrawal.

Twlight zoned - The road to recovery

After the "big bang", I was rescued by 3rd Uncle who brings me back home. I was paranoid and constantly on the edge of the feeling that I was under supervision by the authorities. I constantly doing streaming on Belive and FB. A bit siao liao.

I threw a way macbook, Iphone X, passport, Iphone 7 and my favorite Addidas Blue dry fit. + many many more. I was at the airport and brought back a macbook air and Iphone X. The spending spee started.

Workplace Banking the short and sweet

WPB047 Alternative Sales Division

I tried many interviews and ended but had 2 offers. The Dbank offers a higher basic Relation Manager, which I applied through job street. The Ubank offers a higher commission by success HR. One job is a new undertaking of new financial products the other the old credit facilities product.