So many things happening at once as we started the 2nd last month of an otherwise horrible year for everyone. It has been a blur for most as we grapple with factors out of our control, with an invisible enemy that ravaged the world and still continues to do so into the winter season.
I started my first week of freedom busy catching up with life in general after being away for 6 weeks – 4 in Oxford and 2 locked up in a hotel room for quarantine. The sweet smell of freedom coupled with being around love ones and friends again was priceless. We do take such things for granted until it gets yanked away from us. The enforces Spa Detox staycation at Shangri-La was a discovery journey of myself. I have never before in my life been locked in a room for 14 nights before this quarantine.
The US election is starting to feel like a shit show as predicted. The blue wave did not materialize as hidden Trump supporters emerged on polling day. Polls were initially thought to be very wrong again as voting counting began. Given that the polling stations counted the in-person votes first, Trump started with more votes because he had been encouraging his supporters to vote in person rather than doing it via mail. He claimed mail-in fraud without evidence while Biden did the opposite. Biden encouraged mail-in voting due to COVID19 safety worries.
As of now (Day 3 after polling closed), Biden votes have been rising to close the gaps as mail-in votes get counted last and the majority are votes from Democrats. Trump allies have started to file lawsuits left, right and centre without evidence of election fraud. 2 have already been thrown out of court. Hopefully, we should see Biden cross 270 electoral votes in the next few hours.
There are a number of factors against Trump in 2020 which is different from the 2016 elections. Firstly, their Cambridge Analytica secret weapon is no more. The market had adapted and even TikTok fans have managed to use this same force against Trump at a recent rally. The Russians are a known unknown force now and Americans are mindful of the threat. There were a number of swing states where Trump won by the slimmest of margins, from a 100k to a few thousand votes. People then were tired of the incumbent status quo and longed for a rebel to shake things up. This is unlikely to happen again now, after the chaos the have seen over the last 4 years, plus the total mishandling of the virus.
COVID19 has made it harder for him to rally his fan base and attract new troops. By denying facts and doing super spreader rallies, he is literally trying to eliminate his voters. The older generation support has diminished too. Trump, who is part of this group, has implied that they are dispensable. Even when he caught the virus, he had the best medical treatment the world can offer. His supporters do not have this luxury if they catch it.
Seeing the rallies of both presidential parties is like seeing day and night. Both sides say opposite things and only one can be true, right? COVID19 cases have also been hitting historical highs daily – it is wishful thinking that this will magically disappear after 03 Nov. Denial of facts against this virus is a fool’s errand. The rest of the world is still fighting it as Trump ignores the pandemic. We in Asia look in disbelief at how the Western world is really screwing this up big time.
With winter approaching, it may become worse before it is brought under control. Given that the US inauguration is only on 20 Jan 2021, even a Biden win could result in 2 months of limbo as nothing concrete may be done to stop the virus. SAD!
While serving my 2 weeks quarantine, I was supposed to read more. I borrowed a few books I wanted to read but somehow managed to squander away the time watching too much TV and other useless stuff. A book finally caught my full attention as it was a captivating true story. I should be finishing it soon and I have learnt so much in the process.
The book is about Elon Musk, written in 2015 by Ashlee Vance. It was a fascinating story of how he became the person he is and how he had accomplished the amazing projects. I had always had only a vague idea of how Tesla and SpaceX came about and not much about Solar City.
The book does not concentrate on him alone but also mentions about important characters who had helped him along his crazy journey to achieve what no one had done before. Rockets and space travel were his first love since childhood days. Most of what he did was towards this aim. The EV car venture was something he picked up along the way.
His laser focus and deep intellectual capacity made him an ideal candidate to oversee these audacious plans which require a superhuman to pull it off, betting the whole house on these projects all the time. He reminded me of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put together. He could turn a weakness/disability into a strength by sheer mind power.
Since young, he could move into a Zen state of mindfulness to engage in deep thought. His mom would say that it ostracized him from others as he would freeze and go into a zombie-like state for hours. But he was actually retreating into his inner mind to conceptualize his thinking based on the huge amount of knowledge he had picked up while reading and talking to experts.
He was uniquely placed in this world to accomplished goals that would benefit mankind. Making money was just a secondary byproduct of his successes as he betted the house every time on a new venture. It was interesting to get into the mind of the genius via this book. I have a better appreciation of how he got to where he is now and being rewarded by a 500% jump in Tesla stock price in 2020.
At one time a few years back, I did buy Tesla at $158 (pre-stock split)and sold around $320, trading this range a few times. I finally chickened out as I thought that he was becoming unhinged. He was fighting everyone and blabbing about punishing the short sellers and trying to set a higher price of $420 as a target.
Last year, the stock went to the 800-1k range for a bit and never looked back after that. I had missed the whole ride to $2k before it did the stock split. I should have read this book earlier to understand the man behind the company. It would have been as inspiration to want to participate in his dreams and to buy the stock for the long term.
The book also concentrated on the SpaceX journey which was pretty interesting. It almost went broke a few times after early rockets blew up. The SpaceX innovators from Silicon Valley had no baggage from the old NASA world and just wanted to build an amazing dream for space travel. When you hire many smarter people than yourself and give them the tools to succeed, miracles can happen. Musk was the driving force to bring all of them together.
Finally, a bit of good news on the Skillsfuture front. I came across an opportunity from IBM to train mid-career PMETs who currently are not working to do a full time 6 months study course on AI or Cyber Security to help them pivot to another field of work. https://webibmcourse.mybluemix.net/SGUnitedProgramme
The interesting thing about this was that they will also provide an allowance of SGD 1.5k per month while you study. The whole course cost about 20k which is heavily subsidized and the remaining amount of $500 can be paid using your own Skillsfuture funds given by the government to all S’poreans. The only condition was that you cannot be working full or part time to be eligible. If you do find a job during the course, you have the option to drop out without any penalties.
I had my consultancy work so I figured after talking to the program coordinator that I may not be eligible. That did not stop me from promoting it to my friends. I am happy to say that 2 of them did apply and qualified for the courses eventually. It feels good that I could share a bit of positive news with both of them who have lost their jobs recently. At least there is a decent allowance and that they are given an opportunity to enter into a new career path.
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