The "Degree-Holding" Takahina, 2012 Week 29

As you guys all know, Takahina will be graduating soon. The official date is out to be on 22nd August. That's when I'll wear the gown and all, throw my hat as if it's chicken nuggets when extra curry sauce is known to cost 30cents more.

ORD lo!!

From what I know, after the few months you finished your last exams, people in the graduation ceremony will now be asking around like, "hey watcha doing?" etc, as if it's some Chinese New Year celebration when you're trying to break the very awkward ice between your friends and you. Well, I know some of my friends are already doing something, some found jobs, some found dogs, some found god. Some of them are also still slacking around finding a suitable job for them, I wish all of them good luck.

The queer thing however is that, I found some of my lecture mates doing sales in exactly the same place I work at. Sales, as in not selling insurance, but more like attracting or prospecting potential customers to deposit some money with us.

Don't get me wrong though, there's totally NOTHING WRONG with doing that. It's an honest job and frankly speaking a very difficult one. If you can get pass the initial hardship, you would be able to rise up and progress really well in life. Just that I felt this weird feeling that is that job the job they have wanted?

To be frank I'm not exactly working in a job I want to do now but it's all part of the plan for me to progress on to what I really want. But how about the many people around me? You study so hard for 3 years, in the end only to end up in something that as long as you have a basic diploma and good looks you can score, then what's the point of studying for the degree?

This is the misguided feeling I get when some people are studying and in the end working for something which doesn't require that education. Sure enough it's related, sure enough it has very very good prospects, then what's the degree for?

Being out in the "wild" now, I have a slight understanding of what a degree is. It's like a Poke Ball, you need it to catch new pokemons, before you can train them. So without a degree, you won't be able to get a job... kinda like a safety net or sorts. Next, the level of degree you have dictates the max rank you can rise in the company. For some weird ass reasons, degree becomes a gauge for employers to know what is your learning  capabilities. It's taken that the higher level your degree is, the more you're able to take over complicated stuff and higher level responsibility, hence if you're looking for a long term career prospects you better get a relatively good degree.

Dontcha feel like caressing it??...

Of course it's not saying that experience is not important, but it seems to be the norm now that if you don't have a degree you can't survive in Singapore. You use to hear all those stories like Bill Gates and Thomas Edison, drop outs from universities, schools etc became millionaire at their field of trade. Well, how high of a chance do you think you can do it like them? Now to be on a more realistic side, we all should not strive to be someone like them, being able to achieve success without tertiary education, I mean the chances of us being like Steve Jobs is almost 0%. We should at least get 1 degree, if not life would be difficult to proceed. Then after that whatever job you wanna do or apply is up to you, I mean you could have studied Masters in Economics and still go out sell Chicken Rice, to whichever rocks your socks I guess. Then what for study that much in the 3-4 years of getting that degree?

The sad thing in society right now is that degrees have ended up to be some sort of an insurance for us. It's no longer an instrument for us to learn things and we can apply it in our field of trade and it stems from 2 big factors.

Firstly, the difficulty of getting jobs. We have jobs we want to do, for example I want to be an analyst analyzing economic situations and how it will affect the economy. But then such jobs are far and few in between, so in the end I just ended up in somewhere that I can ply my services and knowledge into. A Bank. And being in a bank how much do I utilize my knowledge of econs and finance? Econs totally 0, finance at least still a bit, more on the accounting side. Is my degree useful in this sense? Yes, useful for me landing the job but not totally useful for me to understand the operations in this job.

Secondly, the realistic nature of working in jobs. You think you know everything and you just graduated, a proud and optimistic graduate ready to challenge the world. You enter into your first job that you obtained with relative ease, only to realized whatever you learn in University has no use at all. Is my degree useful in this sense? Again, YES.... for landing the job. That's all.

So as I said, degree mainly, is only worth for 2 things when you want to talk about it helping you in your career aspects, to grant you that interview with your future employer and to dictate how high you can climb in your corporate firm.

Why is it that career aspects are being held back by the level of degree and not experience? Look at the big shots around you and you'll realized those always getting headhunted or transfers around from here to there are normally people with either very high net worth (meaning able to garner a huge amount of sales), or they have those degree or certificates like CFA.

Now just by having those certificates aren't enough, you need to have experience as well. In this case though, experience would have long be gotten, the thing is how far you can go.

So you only have a basic degree, you can slog for years in this firm doing the same old shit but what is going to happen? At most you're just going to rise into being a vice president for a department or section that's all. And that's after like 10+ years of experience.

The ridiculous thing then would be those of higher position would be either head hunted from other companies, or not they have some satki certificates like CFA or Masters. It's kinda like telling you unless you get a Masters, your maximum pay per month is at most $5000 that's all. You wanna go more than that, get a freaking CFA or Masters.

Then look back at things, we from university after 3-4 years get our first bachelor degree. If we want to do Masters we have to sacrifice at least 2 more years being students and at least 2 years worth of education fee gone. After everything is done, then we'll come out to the world, experience-less but full of satki degree.

Now here's the unfair part. Most of us aren't rich enough to do so. My peers all around me finish bachelor degree would never think of going to Masters. And we go out into the workforce and slog, at the end of the day max pay $5000 per month, that is assuming we don't go into sales.

For Masters, they need to have the money from their family to support additional 2 years more worth of education/food/shelter etc. Which parents would plan for their kid right from the start to study a Masters? Seldom. Because the opportunity cost of affording for Masters is way too high for most families to support. Well if the family is somewhat better off, after realizing the kid's potential they can push for Masters, but most middle-class family would never think so.

Then when the Master's holders get into society, they earn close to $10000 or more max. In otherwords, they have broken the threshold to get into the high earners portion, something that for normal people, we could only get via very diligent sales.

So if you are able to sacrifice 2 years and you're in a well to do family, congrats you have just got into the top 25% of the rat race.

I'm going to study Masters, Bitches, YOU SUCK!! Hehehe...

Unfair? You betcha. The whole issue of the rich gets richer will keep going on and on. Income Equality is only but a dream if you talk about it. And sadly that's how society (at least Singapore) works.

So just know 1 thing people, if you're rich, go and get more education, if not you just be an ASK (ah sia kia) and wait for money to fall onto your plates.

My father owns Kopitiam and I'm gonna make KOPI for all of ya BITCHES!

For people who aren't rich, if you do not have the capabilities to accept the opportunity cost for going after a Master, don't go for it. You have to freaking farm your way up and attempt ways to get promotions, recognized, big certs like CFA. If not go do investments, or business or anything that can get you out of the rat rice. Hmmmm, where have we heard that before?

Ultimately, I'm digressing but I can't stress the importance of a degree or at least a good dependable diploma/cert. I used to believe that anyhow getting a degree and not using that knowledge is useless, but it's changing a bit now.

Society has deemed it necessary for any proper Singaporean who wants to so call progress huge in life to have a degree, be it you like it or not. Because a degree now, is an insurance. If you don't have it, chances are life is gonna be real real difficult for you in the future. So if you don't like any of the courses you see offered in university? Hate some more cause you're gonna need to spend additional 4 years studying that thing you hate or risk more years .

Life is a bitch. If you're rich maybe you're on top of that bitch. If you're not then you're in the a**hole of that bitch, filled with shit and knee deep in it. So suck up all the shit and climb up from the anus to the top of the head to be rich.

The Efficient Takahina, 2012 Week 28

Efficiency, work rate, progress, fast and accurate.

These are just some of the terms that drives people and work. Essentially, how fast the work revolves depends on simply, efficiency.

Efficiency is actually, something really simple to understand. Simply put, it's the work rate; how much work we can do in a certain time period like an hour for example. I can put it into many examples for many different types of environment, mainly into my own context...

Bands: What is the % of a song ready to be showcased in the public in gigs in 1 jamming session. Currently the fastest band I'm was in to learn songs had been Grover with up to 4 songs ready to gig in just 1 jamming session.

Data Entry: How many entries has been typed in within an hour. My record is 70+ conscripts. That's like less than 1 min per con.

Work: How much $ do you earn for the company for every hour that you work. I work like 8hrs per day but only spend like 4hrs fully on work.

Projects: What is the % of project is completed by every week. Ask my uni-cliques, I make up for their lack of efficiency HAHAHAHAHA..

School: How much % of the syllabus could you study in an hour. If it's science or maths, 0%. If it's econs, it's almost 50%

Blog: How much blogs can I write every week. 1?... I guess?

Weight: How much weight can I lose per week. Well to be frank it's 0% or even negative right now. 

I think it's fair enough to say that almost everything in this world has it's efficiency level, it may be difficult or ambiguous to determine, but it's definitely there. Similarly I think it's fair to say everyone in this world wants efficiency. FAST FAST FAST FAST they said.

However after working in NS, and currently in my job. I can tell that efficiency is only but a notion. I'm quite thoroughly convinced that despite the emphasis on efficiency, things aren't really working efficiently.

Many guys in Singapore would know, NS is a big freaking waste of time. I don't mean the waste of 2 years of your youth (because I believe in the value and necessity of NS), but the inefficiency of the whole "corporate" NS itself. Look at any clerks there sitting down, how many of them are really doing stuff? I know very well when I was in my camp as an sergeant I play Puzzle Fighter for like 25% of my time there. Like really a great big waste of time. We go to reservist, how many of us literally sit there and sleep our asses away? There's a very big reason why some people love going to reservice, because you gain $ there for sleeping.

You know Chun Li is f**ked.

Then bring in the normal working environment here. I sit in my office and I look around, some are surfing Hardware Zone Forums 'pres huan.', some are looking at facebook, some are looking at the latest transfer news going on in EPL right now and I'm sitting right here writing a freaking blog.

That's what HWZ EDMW do all day long... 

And you claim that you want efficiency?

The thing is this, everyone here knows how to do stuff, and we do it fast and well. So in a sense we're really efficient, but imagine the amount of pay given to us for sitting around growing round asses. From the society and corporate point of view, how much money could have been saved if we are only paid for the amount of time we actually work? Maybe if the corporate one day does a test and understands how fast we can work, you could retrench or transfer like up to 25% of the people here and save up on tons of cost. The fact is that this world is not efficient, at least the society from my point of view is far from being efficient.

It actually sucks to know that because people's full potential and capacity are not fully explored. My supervisor is doing an evaluation on how "fast" we can finish our task upon the hours that we work, however he dares not submit it up to the higher ups. Reason being we're "too" efficient. You submit such a report, they will surely cut the amount of estab that my department can have and next thing you know, BAM the whole department will be merged with another department, ultimately resulting in retrenchment which NOBODY WANTS except for shareholders who wants to save cost.

So it's actually a big political issue behind all this. Efficiency in real life is actually hindered by a lot of red tapes around. Also, if suddenly there is a surge increase in the job load, the department will need extra hands in to help, what will happen then? A company can't suddenly increase their estab because of additional cost involved. Besides that there's a whole bunch of procedures and systems to adhere to, resulting in a very much delayed process. So to be safe than sorry, a company will rather spend additional cost for inefficiency to save up for the rainy day.

Secondly, even if let's say this department is very efficient and they fully utilized their time, there will still be a situation whereby they have to wait before something gets done, that is the effect of procedural compliance.

Let's say we finish some paper work and we want to get on to the next phrase of the work but before we can do so, we have to let some superiors check through, cover the whole department's asses before it's approved and could be carried on by the lowly officers. By right it should be fast and immediate, but no. Normally such higher up people control tons of people under them and numerous departments under them. They have to check through every little single details of every department which could be like hundreds of emails, reports, documents etc to check through. You think your paper work could be accessed immediately? Nope... you have to wait like for 2-3 working days before it gets access. Now you understand why banks and companies always say you have to wait certain amount of working days before the process could be done? I mean for my wage to come to me, it has to go through this additional process of my employment agency to view my payslip for a week, then it'll come to me. So by right my pay should have arrived every end of the month? Mine takes like an additional week. I can't blame them, cause there's so many payslip to go through and so many departments/hands for the work to get process through it's almost impossible to get it done within like 1 day.

Don't even get me started on government organizations. >_>

And I'm sure, that's not the end to how "efficient" this society is. Things like budget constraint etc are a freaking big pain in the ass.

My Ass is pain.

If so then why do you even emphasis efficiency? It will only result in a Rush to Wait and Wait to Rush situation; something that we are so familiar in NS.

Since I'm already waiting, might as well take a pic...

 All in all, to me it boils down to management.

The current way of how companies run is standard throughout. Different departments handled different jobs and they will pass to the next in hand for it to be done. All this processing takes waiting. All this checking takes waiting. The more wait there is the more inefficient things become. Yet at the same time, all this checking can't be done without. So is there any way to bypass all these processes?

Well, I doubt it can be bypassed. but then at least to prevent people to have too much time, so much so they have to surf the web and do nothing, why can't the lower end departments or departments who are very much "free" in a sense, merge? So in a sense rather than just "you do your stuff I do mine", it becomes "you do your stuff, I do mine. But if you finished doing your stuff and I'm not done, you come help me until you got things to do." At least efforts and time are not wasted.

Secondly, I find firms can actually learn something from NS. Train your workers/sergeant/cadets/officers.

You always see things like to acquire this position you need like how many years of experience etc. Sure, it's clearly understood why they need experience to get a high position. If so then why not you train any existing staff that wants to be promoted with relevant knowledge, and when a position is open, these existing staff who ARE trained can apply confidently?

I'm a lowly settlement officer in a bank and I want to build up my career in this bank. There are internal job postings coming up every month, but they all require this knowledge or that experience etc. I will only be accomplished in my knowledge of settlement, how am I expected to know other expertise such as maybe compliance or analyst unless I work in it? If this is so then I'll be stuck in settlement for the rest of my life, which is totally unfair cause I won't be able to enter any other jobs unless I get any experience. In the end I'll be sick of it and transfer to another job or another bank, breaking my loyalty to the bank.

If you train them up and prepare them for upcoming positions, you won't need to go around looking for external sources cause you have already capable personnel working for you. Save up on the many labour turnover cost and you make staff happier as there is a very sizable career opportunities open to everyone.

Training is not only for them to gain the additional skills and knowledge, it's for them to have the confidence to be able to perform in that job. If staff have no confidence in applying for jobs, they won't try it out even if they may be really good in it.

You save up on labour turnover, save up on time since it will mostly be internal transfers and they are already trained so they know what to do. All this time and cost savings, won't that be much more efficient? Plus even if there is no open position for their new expertise to be utilized, they are in a sense "qualified" to do checks and hence help higher-ups with their checking. Like this they can filter through a big part of their procedures and utilize their time.

Thirdly, a firm can actually choose to pay via efficiency level. You do your task, you finish your task, you can go home, then you pay them accordingly to how fast they can finish their work. The faster their work rate, the higher you pay them. Then since workers can go back earlier, in a sense they are rewarded for their efficiency. It creates incentive for people to push for efficiency and hence you get your FAST FAST FAST effect. More time for workers to be at home with their family, go for another 2nd job if there is time and maybe even the country earns by having more babies. ;)

You won't be thinking of 'hey shio hey shio' with bushes like those...

Actually if the firm goes via the 3rd method I proposed, I need not even be at the office in the morning. Just be there by 2pm and I can finish everything by 7pm tops. But oh well, stick to the system.

All in all, I just want to say this. If firms and corporates want to look for ways to up their profit, look no further than the inner working of your own company and you can notice the many flaws of the systems. Systems and procedures can be tweaked around to provide for a more "fruitful" job experience. Efficiency are being compromised to these systems to such an extent certain procedures are totally redundant and it makes completely no sense to keep adhering to such redundant systems or procedures.

When people are truly efficient, you will start to realize actually there's so much time we can save. So firms, corporates, government bodies.... wake up please.

The Future of Singapore, Takahina style, 2012 Week 27

You think that life is bad now. Think again.

For us 60% Singaporeans in Singapore that have lived for all our lives, we complain about things all the time and truthfully, we should complain. But not about Singapore or the world or whatsoever, you want to complain you complain about yourself.

A recent talk with my bro Tian Wei over lunch one day caught me to my underlying attention on how Singapore could become. Well, it "could" become. You refer to other similar countries like Hong Kong, Japan, it's all getting really similar and yet so distinct as well. Think of subjects such as moral values, religion, politics, economics, geography, sociology, psychology, globalization, it's all getting too predictable on how the future is going to shape and it's not a good one. You should have notice by now there's so many "secrets" and "conspiracies" going on in this world, why do they even exist? Because the rest of the population can't take the truth, even though it's so out rightly in front of us.

Let's take it this way, imagine that society has been brought up on the so-called moral values that we have now, religion continues to impose and set the values for us to follow and it will change accordingly with time. With this moral values and beliefs from religions, sociology will be set to "obey" these values and rights, hence affecting each and everybody's psychology itself to follow to these values. No doubt not everyone will follow to it, depending on the environment they are brought up but in a sense our "right" and "wrong" are highly determined by our environments which in return is affected by society. Next government will set laws and name it under the term "justice" so that we will be deterred from doing the wrong, as this will be "beneficial" for the government politically. With available power from being a popular government, they could then have to power to conduct economic policies beneficial either to the country with factors dependent on the country's situation and ability, or to the politicians themselves, if you know what I mean. Currently with the added flux of globalization, technology, information spreading, the previous known boundaries of geography and information retention has been changed significantly, hence society itself changes unconsciously but definitely and government will change themselves accordingly.

This is how I see the current general system works. Of course it's just a very very brief outlook on how things flow with all details excluded. In a brief sense, all I'm saying is this; things are changing, fast and if you do not catch up fast enough, you will find it increasingly difficult to catch up.

Now the reason I'm writing this, is a sense some form of warning to myself to better buck up my own socks. I'm working comfortably now at UOB and I'm sensing that I'm losing my drive, something that is very dangerous in anyways in this kind of fast moving global world. Secondly, it's to bring to you guys a very sense what is the worst thing to happen to our home Singapore if it does get bad, so to people who are reading this, I hope this can help you guys brush up a bit.

Takahina has stated tons and tons of times long ago and I share the same sentiments with my brothers, in that this world waits for no one and as it goes on progressively, as long as we do not hit to the top 10% of the population in Singapore, we can expect to not ever hit there unless some miracles happens.

Let's look at the situation in Singapore now, a stagnant economy being propelled highly by FTs and Singaporeans remain disgruntled with their life complaining over PAP all the time. We want an opposition to enter into parliament so as to better keep check what PAP is doing and to ensure the government is doing what is correct now.

What if you look at the future? We can take reference to various countries like Hong Kong and Japan. Inflation is set to rise yet again, housing especially will reach to an exorbitant price (look at Hong Kong's property price now), aging population (like those in many developed countries). In a sense you can imagine Singapore to be like a kid with very fast growing cells, due to the fact that we are small, things, information, policies can get done much faster here in Singapore. It gets developed faster, as is evident with us reaching a "developed" economy status in a matter of decades while other countries take centuries, our currency growing superbly fast and strong compared to countries like MYR etc. So we grow fast, hence at the same time we die fast.


Take this into account, and you'll start to understand that's why maybe Singapore's government is pushing our economy and society so fast. Because if Singapore doesn't plan things, doesn't look at things fast enough, we will be behind the whole world and outdated by it. In the past, things planned can be done rather fast, but now it's a different case with globalization and the internet itself. Anti-government sentiments are being blown out of proportions and netizens only look at the good side of other countries, but what most Singaporeans failed to realized is that the situation of Singapore is very different from other countries.

Like what I mentioned above, for a government to be able to handle our it's policies effectively, it has to be popular. The inclusion of globalization rendered it increasingly difficult for not just Singapore, but the whole world as well. However for Singapore the effect is much faster, why? Because we are small as I've mentioned before.

That's why you have seen now, PM Lee apologizing to Singaporeans, doing somewhat populist policies not done before such as increasing wages of low paying jobs. In a sense they are necessary, because PAP is losing favor with the citizens. At least Singapore's government system is still on a more steady stronghold, imagine if our PM changes every half a year like how Japan changes theirs as if changing clothes, before the policies implemented would show effect a new set of policies would be implemented by the new PM. If Singapore ends up like that, we would be dead and PAP is doing their best not to let that happen.

 In a sense it's not saying that PAP must be the sole ruling party with no one to "keep check" on their behavior, but seriously look at the few opposition party members elected into parliament. What kind of "difference" are they making? Does citizens in the Aljunied region feel happier? Nope they feel the same as with the rest of the other Singaporeans.


Then again, maybe the opposition party is not strong enough to make any difference. But think about it, if Singapore's government is split into almost a half-half party like Taiwan's Kuo Ming Tang and Ming Jing Tang, there's bound to be high conflicts which can potentially split a country into 2. For a country that is as small as helpless as Singapore is, we cannot afford that. So no ways will PAP in a sense let that happen.

What I believe is that the PAP knows certain things that we won't know of, and in a sense even Presidents don't know of (remember ex-president Mr Ong Teng Chong?). The one who holds the most power in Singapore still remains to be the key members in PAP. Maybe it's highly confidential secret that holds the balance to our economy? Or certain deals signed in the past which enabled Singapore to survive it's infant stages I have no idea. What I know for sure is that every country has certain secrets that they can't divulge and that opposition party will never know it unless they become the official ruling party. By then who can confirm that the opposition party will not become another PAP again?

Few things are for certain though, PAP's method of reaching out to public is definitely less effective now. The words, "What Do You Think We Should Do?" should have never been spoken by a high member politician. The words used are much more tactless now, as is evident with how politicians, especially the older ones, are frustrated with the comments thrown at them, something which they have never really encountered before in the past. In fact right now the younger ones seem to show a bit more promise if you ask me. Laugh at Tin Pei Ling all you want but the fact that she's a MP of PAP proves that at least she's more promising than the average Singaporean her age. 

Secondly, PAP can never do everything correct in current stages. I sincerely believe they didn't expect the outburst of information and technological widespread. I sincerely believe they didn't expect the social outcry and the overly too effective FT policies. They used to be so powerful and correct in the past because we are not informed. Now that we ARE informed, they can't just simply say something is good and that we will take it to be good. They have not yet adapted to the "proper" way of convincing us and still have a long way to go. The FT policies done a few years ago are indeed necessary for economical reasons, but I'm sure they did not expect the huge influx at such a pace. Population has grown too fast before our own systems such as the public transport can adapt to it. MRT breaking down in Singapore high chance is due to our MRT being over utilized and MRT could not support the immense overcrowding weight and frequency.

But in all certainty, we definitely do not know certain things but the government is already conducting something to "curb" it. However remember this thing, neither PAP nor the opposition party can do everything correct and expect the effectiveness to be as expected, so don't put 100% faith in them or the government to be able to help even if they wanted to.

Additionally, similar countries like Hong Kong are showing sense of what is going to happen. Expect things like sky rocketing housing prices, further inflationary pressures and in a weird sense retirement at other countries. I know there's this trolling picture of Singapore's future MRT lines, but don't find it weird if it really happens. I mean 1 Tampines can have 3 MRT stations, what's up with 1 Malaysia line?

Well I'm sure few of the lines are bullshit, but a future Malaysia line I don't find it implausible. Singapore is in desperate need of space, so why won't we take over some land from them?


Inflation is very dangerous in Singapore as we know it. Increasing income gap coupled with increasing prices but not increasing income for the poor makes it a lose lose situation in any sense. Problem is that the few causing it are the rich people themselves. For those with at least a bit of econs sense in your mind, when you have additional income you will demand more. The more you demand, the higher price will be bid up. Hence inflation happens.

Now remember, the rich people gets richer due to them knowing how to get rich and know how to exploit the market. Every consumption, investment that they do will serve to increase the country's aggregate demand by a significant factor due to them being filthy rich, thus increasing inflation as well. How about normal middle/low income citizens like us? We will not get that increase in income but inflation will still grow, so our burden will increase to the extend that there won't even be a middle class. You're either rich or poor.

This effect will be even more severe when houses price shoot up, this is a very basic simple economy theory. Singapore is a small country, so our supply of houses will eventually be limited by it. Yet at the same time the country has to grow, so our own growing population and growing FTs will demand more and more houses. With an increase demand but yet no corresponding increase in supply, don't be surprised if 1 normal HDB reaches $1mil.

Middle class will be gone as we get lesser benefits from government but we have to afford for the increased cost. Buying a house will slaughter us into paying debts for the rest of our lives, and yet it's almost a necessity to buy a house, so be expected to pay debts to pay off for your house. Lower income group are already disadvantaged, but because their expenditure is already low, the impact felt by them is understandably less painful than that of the middle income.

Higher income group? Their real wealth will be unlikely to drop and they will leverage on the middle income and lower income to grow up in status and wealth, because they would be the one to lend $ and property to them and earn interest/rent from them.

Now this is a very scary truth, but it's yet just a possible truth which has been shown in other countries. Its like saying that, if you're not rich within the next decade, you can proceed to be slum residents.

So what can we do now? Must we all be rich and wealthy to be able to survive in the future. Not exactly. No one is asking you to compulsory become rich with over $1bil worth of assets. But you must basically be able to have certain personal financial knowledge, discipline and to know the consequences of your decisions. I'll get to that in a future post.

For now though, just don't expect the future to be cheery. For those who still have the luxury of going overseas, enjoying and slacking like no tomorrow without a secure future... better do something. For this time it's not something that the government can help like what we are so used to, but only you can help yourself this time, and you don't have all day.

Even I need to wake up.