Author: CMR.sg

Spent a pleasant afternoon with Prasoon yesterday at the Shangri La, sipping coconut water.

Prasoon has,over the course of many years, built good friendships and business relationships with influential people in India and Indonesia and he has therefore excellent insights into what is happening there and the current thinking of their leaders.

And sometimes what is the truth may well be different from what one reads in the papers. So it was good for me to understand what is happening in these countries from someone who has his head to the ground.

We also spent time talking about the living costs in Singapore. And to me it is clear that this now a serious concern of not just the middle class but also the upper classes. Something Singapore has to look out for, although I am not sure what is the solution.

An early morning breakfast with Murali this morning at MTR restaurant.

We arranged to meet at 830am but I wanted to get there a bit earlier to do some reading. Unfortunately I only realized that they open at 830am when I got there so I ended up waiting outside and reading a bit of the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which I was asked to read. More on the book some other time.

Anyway catching up with Murali is always good. We share many common views on things. We each had a rawa onion dosa and a coffee and chatted till he needed to rush off for his next meeting. Also good to see that he has almost fully recovered from his knee surgery and is walking well.

Good for Japan. They have finally elected their first female PM. That has to mean something in Japan , which is a traditional male dominated society. She is younger, media savvy and appeals to the younger voters.

Of course, she has done and said things that appeal to voters. Tax cuts, more defence and infrastructure spending and reducing immigration and the presence of foreigners. None of which is fiscally good for a country which is already seriously in debt. How will they balance their books by spending more and at the same time cutting taxes? Of course the people don’t seem to care so long as you promise them what they want to hear.

I did think as I was writing this, these were the same things Trump promised the US voters, who then duly elected him. Perhaps this will become the new playbook for politicians. Be populist a d forget about economics or budgets.

I do think the firm stand she took against China also helped her. The high handed Chinese response to her remarks made her even more popular a home. Strangely China seems to be getting things wrong so regularly nowadays I do wonder whether they need a new group of people to do their thinking for them. Venezuela, Panama, Brazil, Peru and now Japan are just examples of how they are now seriously under pressure on the diplomatic front.

I did a heart stress echo test at the National Heart Center yesterday. This combines an echocardiogram and a treadmill test and it takes about 45 minutes to complete.

The bill for this test came up to $842.57 after gst.

I then compared this with the heart packages offered in Malaysia by their prestigious heart center, National Heart Institute or IJN.

One of their packages, which includes both these 2 tests and a full range of other things, including a chest X-ray, 2 d echocardiogram, complete blood test and a doctor’s consultation and review of the results is only RM 1388. They have several other packages, some with even more extensive testing, including the calcium screening test.

Gosh. I didn’t realize that we were that expensive. And this is at SGH. The price I paid for these limited tests in Singapore doesn’t even include my next visit to the doctor to review the test results. Perhaps I need to start looking at the issue of medical costs here seriously and start doing my medicals in KL.

Today was our food tasting for our Club 100 dinner which will be sometime towards the end of March.

We have chosen Asian Civilization Museum as our dinner venue and one of their preferred caterers is Rasel Catering. Since we have never used them before, I suggested that we try their food first.

So 6 of us were going for the food tasting and I was informed yesterday that after the food tasting if we decided to go with them, the tasting today would be free. But if we decided not to use them, then we would have to pay $800 for the session tasting session. I thought that paying something for the session was fair but certainly not paying $800.

Anyway it turned out that we will be using them and so the issue of paying this amount didn’t arise.

Not everything that we tried today was to our liking. We gave our feedback on some items that we still wanted to have and we replaced some items that we didn’t want at our dinner. We avoided beef and lamb. We also made sure there were sufficient vegetarian dishes.

And so I do believe that with all our feedback in place and the fresh choices we made, we will have have a good dinner that night.

Yesterday evening I went up to the Razer offices for a meeting.

I have only been there once before, when they had just finished their construction works and they were about to move in. I remember discussing with Min then as to whether I wanted to rent premises there.

Now the place is fully operational and it is buzzing. So many people working there, mostly young and in black t shirts. And the whole place looks nice in their traditional black and green decor.

The meeting was with Min, Wei Pin, Bryan and U Zyn regarding a Project Ace. It was an interesting idea and concept but I had so many questions which I felt were not quite thought through. I think the whole idea is still in it’s very initial stages and it needs to be looked at carefully from all angles especially from the risk and the investor perspectives.

Just glad to have been there to offer my preliminary thoughts and to catch up with friends!

I was walking in KLCC yesterday and this Chinese lady came up to me and said hello. She looked very familiar and at first I couldn’t place her. Later I realised that I had met her at Scotts Square in Singapore and she was in the jewelry business. Her name is Liya and she worked for an auction house in China for many years before she came out to do freelance work.

She was with 2 other people and she suggested coffee nearby to chat. She introduced the young man with her at Fan Wen tian.

He is just 25 and is an artist. They showed me his portfolio of works, which was really impressive. He must be doing this full time and must have been doing this for sometime. They were in KL to decide whether they wanted to open a gallery/workshop either here or in Singapore.

I spoke with him and then found out that his father is a famous calligraphy artist in China, Fan Guo Qiang. He is national level artist and is a full professor at the 2nd highest rank.

Wen tian is a pianist and a singer as well. He has appeared in Sing China and he plays the piano very well although he had never learnt music. He listens to a piece and plays it. He gave me a demonstration of his playing on the piano at KLCC and when he played so many people stopped by to take pictures and record his playing.

He invited me to Qingdao, where he resides, to visit his gallery a d meet his father and see his father’s works. This is an invitation that I will accept.

Yesterday was Thaipusam and I was in KL. So I found out that Thaipusam is a public holiday in many states in Malaysia. And from the news reports they were expecting about 2 million devotees and tourists at Batu Caves in KL alone. And there are also big celebrations in Johor, Penang and East Malaysia.

Today’s newspapers had extensive coverage of the celebrations throughout Malaysia. To me it is always surprising that Malaysia in many respects is more multi racial and multcultural than Singapore. They have declared that day as a public holiday, something Singapore has not done.

I finally managed to convince U Zyn to come and take a look at Anyara today.

He was already driving up to Malacca and he kindly agreed to come up to KL to meet me and then drive up to Semenyih.

So this morning, I came up to KL by flight and he joined me for breakfast at Kenny Hills at KLCC. After he had a hearty one, he drove me to Anyara.

I am glad he was impressed by what he saw. I felt it was some form of affirmation or confirmation of how I felt when I first saw this place and my own decision to purchase here. Even today when I was here, I still feel that this will become a great place to live once people complete building their houses. It is just so peaceful, clean and beautiful.

I was invited to their anniversary dinner last night at the Shangri La. And as a company they have done well. Started off as a very small construction outfit in 1966 to now a group with 3 listed companies under their belt. They have been enterprising in being able to partner with major international players to tender for big construction projects.

I have known Francis Koh, their CEO, for a very long time. Have done so much work for him and worked with him and his team on so many matters. A very energetic and enterprising man.

Happy to have been invited to be apart of their celebrations. The only only one comment I had was that the dinner started so late. They had so many preliminaries such as a lion dance performance, 2 speeches, a logo launch and birthday cake cutting that by the time the first dish came out, it was already 815am.

I had to leave early as I had some very pleasant task that I wanted to attend to that evening.