A New Year Starts, New Beginnings – Week 96

2022 is upon us. The last 2 years have been weird for each and every soul on planet Earth. We literally compressed so many once in a hundred years events into the last 24 months thanks to Covid.

I will spend this week reviewing my 2021 New Year resolutions and give myself a scorecard before I define and state my new 2022 ones next week. I have been doing this in my blog for a few years and I believe that this exercise helps me stay focused on my goals throughout the year.

Firstly, just a follow-up to my Omicron Christmas experience from last week. All our household members were bundled up on Christmas day to a designed hotel facility to begin our compulsory 10 days quarantine. This was after my older son was confirmed with Omicron on Day 4 after his return to S’pore. It took them a few days to confirm that it was the new variant before the isolation protocol was escalated. He was already confined in his room for 3 days.

While he was moved to a designated hotel for positive cases, the rest of us landed in a hotel (for household members who tested negative) near our home as all of us had negative PCR results which were done on Christmas eve night. After spending 2 of the required 10 nights there, we were abruptly discharged on Monday afternoon. The authorities had decided that Omicron, while highly contagious, results in only mild conditions. Hence they downgraded the heightened Omicron protocol to be no different from the other variants and allow for home quarantine. It was bittersweet for us to check out from our large and comfortable suite rooms just as we were getting used to it though. Then there were another 3 days of home quarantine for all of us till 30 Dec. Son was officially “released” back to society after 10 days of isolation from the 21 Dec discovery date.

The world is now swamped with Omicron cases – in the US, positive cases resulted in a new high that was more than double of 2020’s record – it was almost 600k. Mortality rates so far seem to be low while hospitalizations are closely being monitored, especially for the unvaccinated. The expectation is that we will only hit the peak of the positive case in a few weeks time.

Below were the 2021 resolutions I set out to do at the beginning of the year last Jan: 1. Read 15 books, 2. Get a new consultancy project, 3. Upgrade video editing skills, 4. Learn a new programming language, 5. Create an online store and finally 6. Stay happy and healthy.

1. Reading 15 books – I give myself an A grade as I finally achieved this goal after 3 years. It meant that I had finished reading at least 1 book per month. Perhaps the trick is to read more than one at a time to keep the interest and have some variety to the reading. The other method that works for me was to borrow any ebook that may interest me from NLB immediately if it is available. That allows me to keep the book in mind on my virtual bookshelf with some time to vet the first few chapters to see if I will finish reading it. I may want to increase this goal for 2022. Just for my record, I have listed a short summary of the books I read below this blog as a matter of record for myself. It is also another good habit I picked up from a friend, to help me remind myself of the books I had read with a short book summary after I had finished reading each book.
2. Get a new consultancy project. I give myself a B for this. Things looked promising at the beginning of the year to get another similar Myanmar consultancy role but the military coup on 01 Feb killed it. Luckily, I had signed up for the 6 months IBM AI course which actually paid me to study full time. It amazed me that we can now use technology to have virtual classes, projects and exams without the need to meet physically at all. This was my top accomplishment of 2021. When it ended in Aug, I tried to sign up for another new full time course multiple times without success but finally found one that will start next week for 3 months at a highly subsidized course fee.
3. Upgrade video editing skills – this one is an F as in Fail. I spent some time looking a video editing software to pick up after seeing so many do it and produced great end products. Finally settled on the DaVinci/Resolve program but I never really got beyond this step. Have to try harder into 2022.
4. Learn a new programming language – a grade C for me. The IBM AI course made me realized that I was totally IT illiterate compared to all my project members. I was just a BS marketing guy trying to understand tech. The trainers encouraged us to pick up the Phython programming language as a starting point. I tried to learn more once the course ended in Aug. But programming requires practise and knowing the basics alone is not enough. One needs to roll up your sleeves to do real programming to gain experience. I was lazy and sort of tried to convince myself that this was hard and this old dog cannot do it, even though I did it for my A levels Computer Science 37 years ago. I need to buck up on this…
5. Create an online store – like point 3, I give myself an F. I initially explored a number of websites to get a feel of what it will be like to become an online entrepreneur. With this blog page I had created in 2016, I discovered that I am already partially there as I can add widgets to my page to create an online store. Then I got lazy again and was side tracked totally. This Canadian company called Shopify consistently appeared in my research, so I decided to buy the stock instead LOL. And that was it. No further online store developement after that.
6. Stay happy and healthy – I get a B+ here. With new Covid mutations stressing mental health, it is easy for anyone to get into a downward spiral funk. We just need to always look on the bright side of things and stay optimistic as all these negatives shall eventually pass. I had plenty of quality family time at home and we went for 2 cruise to nowhere vacations. We bonded as a family over home delivery meals in front of the TV watching K-dramas. Knowing that older son is safe studying in S’pore instead of in the UK for most of the year was a blessing. Then we had a last minute Spain vacation in Dec as the VTL flights opened up. I finally walked away from my Myanmar consultancy role in Dec after witnessing 4 years of work going down the drain with the Feb military coup. It is so sad and painful to know that one cannot contribute anymore to a hopeless situation that is beyond one’s abilities as things are expected to worsen. Also actively try to avoid negativity via exiting chat groups or just staying silent to minimize the aggravations of disagreements. Ultimately, I am the one that decides what works for me, to maximize my happiness. Exercising and running every day also helps me acheive my staying healthy goal.

As I complete my personal review of 2021, I will have a week to finalize my 2022 resolutions which I would pen in my next blog. My NUS FintechSG course starts on Tues and an ex-colleague had sounded me out on an interesting project that may also be useful to incorporate into my new course. More on that later as things develop. Barring any more new surprises, we should be seeing light at the end of the Covid tunnel soon.

15 books I read in 2021:

1. Too big to fail- Andrew Ross Sorkin – Amazing about the twist and turns where all the 5 investment banks Bears Stearn, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs almost failed, plus AIG fiasco, Fannie and Freddie Mac. Everyone was scrambling with the unknown and so many moral hazards abound to make “too big to fail” a reality. How GFC 2008 was a prelude to distrust with elites and the rise of Trump.
2. Firefighting : The Financial Crisis and its Lessons – Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Henry Paulson – Review of GFC 2008 ten years later in 2018 from the 3 persons at the heart of it – More details from the 3 persons at the heart of the rescue operation that spans 14+ months as one after another from Bear to Lehman, AIG to Fannie created a domino effect. A lot was adhoc and firefighting reactions to the escalating meltdown. The summary recommends a return of more power for the regulators to react which was granted during GFC but have since expired.
3. What Retirees Want – A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age – Ken Dychtwald, Robert Morison – Book talks about mainly baby boomers. Was surprised that above 50 years old is classified as senior now and that includes me. Most of the concepts are familiar to me like life long learning, giving back to society and staying active into our second halftime. Affirmation of my current thought processes on what I should focus on for the next 10 to 30 years of my senior’s life journey
4. The McKinsey way – Ethan M Rasiel – MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive. Good tips for work life especially for a fresh grad. How to work in a stressful environment and with a team, how to be a successful consultant.
5. Fifty secrets of Singapore’s success – edited by Tommy Koh – 50 essays on various topics by different people on why Spore became successful.
6. World Travel – an irreverent guide – Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever – highlights of places via his food porn shows
7. Anthony Bourdain – the last interview – various writers – interviews from 2014 till the last one a few days before his sudden suicide in 2018. Going into the mind of someone who only found success after he was 44 and it lasted 17 years. Hidden genius who found his calling late in life and left too soon and suddenly.
8. The man who solved the market – how Jim Simon’s launched the quant revolution – Gregory Zuckerman – About Renaissance and their Medallion fund, the most successful in history, making 82% in 2008 GFC. Very similar to my data science project, analyzing data for patterns and trends to exploit small and reliable gains that adds up. They started in the 1980s and computers and data have jumped by quantum leaps since then. Very interesting parallels to current AI studies.
9. Born a Crime – Trevor Noah – growing up in South Africa during the ending of apartheid and a coloured person (white father and black mother). Eye opener from his perspective while growing up in the midst of apartheid dying. His strong relationship with his mother and taking after her.
10. The Premonition- Michael Lewis – His new book on covid and people who fought it and against CDC. Joe Derisi and his Virochip, Carter and the Wolverines trying to save the country but no one would listen. That shutting down schools would be the most effective way to bring the virus transmission cycle. That testing was critical to track the virus mutation.
11. Amazon Unbound – Brad Stone – Picking up from 2010 onwards by same author till covid and early 2021 when he announced that he was stepping down as CEO. Interesting take on Bezo’s principals to run the company and also what actually happened in his affair and the blackmail episode. His mistakes and successes over the last 10 years and a willingness to bet big on future potential growth plus attacking the blackmailers of his affair episode, turning against them Amazon style.
12. Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain – I thought I had read the book before but discovered it was new to me. Feeling nostalgic to want to read his first book that made him popular and jump started his food porn career after watching his posthumous “Roadrunner” movie. Enlightening about his chef career and how he started.
13. A Cook’s Tour – Anthony Bourdain – his follow up book to kitchen confidential about places he visits for his new show, usually with friends or ex-colleagues. Then some chapters on his philosophy on life and his admiration of great chefs.
14. The Everything Store – Brad Stone – about Amazon from start till 2013, how it began. Interesting read on how it accidentally created AWS and ruled cloud computing. Bezo’s take no prisoners aggressive style creating Amazon work culture of chaos and 6 pager memos.
15. AI 2041 – Lee Kai Fu and Chen Qiu Fan – 10 interesting stories about live 20 years from now that explores different aspects of AI development with intro at the start and explanation at the end by him while the stories were written in chinese by the co-author who is supposedly the top science fiction writer in china. Interesting for me bec it highlights the AI topics like NLP and deepfakes which I had learned from the IBM course recently.