ringgit.me

CNY is round the corner. But the mood is not as bright and happy as befit a New Year. What to do, this year of 2014 is a year where we will see price hike in many things. Life is going to be hard. Business is slow. The feeling is worse than 17 years ago when we had a recession in '97. 17 years ago .. that means instead of progressing towards a developed country of 2020, we are regressing. We are going back to Ice Age. Our neighbours (apart from Thailand, who is now kinda sick due to their state of emergency) are progressing well: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. Many more people are contemplating migration. Even more brain drain. The sentiment in the office is not that good either. With so many expense cut worthy of Edward Scissorhand, this company I am with has devolved into something worse than a Chinaman company. All in all, a gloomy year.

I have lived in Malaysia all my life - 40 years of it. We are all bracing ourselves for a tough 2014 - electricity tariff is increasing, so is toll rate, petrol, sugar, GST is coming .. all these are bound to create a lot of hardship for the citizens. It's almost like we are going backward, back to the olden days when life is hard for everybody. But the strange thing is, we are seeing a lot more foreigners in our country. We are importing a lot more skilled workers. Talent Corp is getting Malaysians from abroad to come back to work for the country. I often wondered why skilled foreigners and Malaysians want to return here to work? Is it the opportunities .. or is it the weather.. or is it because Malaysia sounded exotic and how often does one get opportunities to work in Asia and experience the culture? A word of advice - the country is generally safe but there are many petty snatch thieves around. I'd think that things could get worse in 2014 when life is hard. One mista

So I have now created a Google+ profile. Follow me there. The problem is, I am more active in Twitter than Google+ so I am not sure the point of the profile yet. And I wonder if every blog post I made appear in the G+, if it does that will be great. We will see how it goes.

In our practice, we believe that when you are in rhythm with the Universe, things will go smoothly for you and you will meet people who will do the right things for you. It's very much what feng shui will teach you. When things are aligned, your life will go smoothly. So, if you can just employ a feng shui master to fix up your house, why do you need to spend hours chanting and meditating? A friend once asked - if I am a very positive person, such that I truly believe that I can do things, do I still need religion? Sometimes, you see CEO of big companies. They are very positive guys. They can do big things and make lots of money. Do they need religion? Another friend was reading the very popular book "The Secret" which says that when you focused your mind on the positive things, on things you want, you are harnessing the environment around you to move along that path you are focusing and thus you get the stuff you wished for. So why do people need to then spend hour

Yesterday in Facebook, I posted a simple status update: "Thirsty, no paper cup to drink water" . The post was in jest of my company removing paper cups in the guise of being environment friendly and asking us to bring our own cups. But I was surprised when one of my FB friends actually asked me to bring a cup. That statement made me wonder whether I have over-reacted? Perhaps this is a common thing among other companies out there. But I wonder which company: 1. does not provide any stationaries - no pen, pencils, staplers, rulers, tape, etc. As a new employee, you have to bring these at your own cost 2. does not provide coffee/tea - you have to use your money on the vending machine they allocated 3. does not provide paper cup for water 4. at one time, decided not to include paper to dry your hands in the toilet and instead use toilet paper rolls to dry your hand. If this sounds to you like I am working in a Chinaman company or a local Malaysia Sdn Bhd company -  I