uncle lim kopi

 I cannot overstate how important freedom is. I am free and I don’t take it for granted and I hope will never. Drive safely, don’t rage Exercise  Eat well Enjoy fine things in life you can afford to without going bankrupt. Don’t be a miser Manage to investments and expenses wisely so you don’t lose this freedom by going back to work for a paycheck. I don’t wish to see a paycheck again. Freedom to read any books, watch any shows, try any hobbies, just laze around to enjoy a nice coffee and weather. To just sit back and think about life, or just mindless watching of YouTube  This is precious. Very. 

 What are values? These are things I believe I should do, rules of life that I follow.  First of all, be honourable, honest and have integrity.  Be respectful and polite by default. But stand your ground so you are not a pushover. Don't harm others, but be ready to defend and protect with all your means. Be responsible. To your family, especially your partner, children and your parents. And, keep your word. Don't make promises you cannot keep or have no intention of keeping, especially to someone close. Don't belittle what's important to someone else. And if you do end up making one and breaking it, take ownership of the consequences and apologise.  Personally, I am dealing with the consequences of a promise someone made but broke on me. Its horrible. It's an open wound that did not heal.  As much as I want to let it slide, I can't. Why? Because, in order to let it slide, I had to take action to rectify a situation. And taking this action, to me, violates my val...

Your body needs maintenance.  You can work and grind hard at your job BUT, you must always take some time to maintain your body.  Else you will have to pay for it in future. If it can be fixed, you pay for it with $ and suffering while it’s being fixed If it cannot be fixed, you pay for it in perpetuity suffering, and also $ to find and find solutions  Always exercise. Strength training, stretches to keep joints nimble, runs and walks to keep heart strong Always watch what you eat. Ensure you have sufficient protein, fruits, etc. eat your greens, drink milk. Take vitamins, they are really cheap these days. Just pop a multivitamin a day. That’s costs like $0.30 per pill. Don’t be stingy. It’s cheaper than your useless Starbucks coffee. Always take time to clean your teeth. Brush them properly, use good paste and brush, then floss properly. If you can afford it, get a good electric toothbrush, it will do wonders for your dental health. You won’t want to lose your teeth befo...

 We all want security. Personal security  Economic security  Emotional security  In this modern world, as long as you live in a capitalist country, I believe, for all practical purposes, economic security is what you must strive for. It is the bedrock for everything else in your life. No one will have mood to enjoy music, joke with your partner, take time to whip up a nice meal, if they are struggling economically, unsure if they can afford to have a roof over their head, or food on table

 It’s more laziness than anything in these days of ultra conveniences and internet.  We can read any book we want anything We can drink any coffee by just going to a nice cafe and spend a hour there  We can prepare any nutritious food we want with all the fresh produce available in supermarkets  When you have time on hand, no work commitments, good health and have some money, you can do anything  Don’t say it’s boring You are just fucking lazy 

Meta yesterday laid off 10% , or about 8000 of their global workforce. Probably some of my acquaintances were affected. I feel for them. I hope they saw this coming and are prepared.  Layoffs and reorgs at Tech firms are not new. It has been happening since 20 years ago.  So what's different this time? Previous layoffs are mostly reactions to market dynamics and external economic situations. Think the DotCom crash, the subprime blow up leading to the great recession, wars, pandemics.  Also, move to cloud, where in-house IT shop workers were laid off.  But this time round, it's a fundamental shift in how IT is delivered as service. Every IT shop now banks on AI to deliver services or most of it. This include creating the services itself (e.g writing a new application).  And then, such services will also replace the actual human workers that do the jobs today. e.g. translators  The big tech like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, they are showing the way now. They need...

As I reflect on my journey thus far, I felt I got really lucky, even though I am sure I worked very very hard compared to most as well. Without that luck, things would had turned vastly different.  One of the fortunate thing that I had was marriage + money My wife and I, so far, had never encountered money problems since we started working and then got married. Now, let me explain. There are many roots of money problems. First will be your family, i.e. your parents and siblings if you have any. We were lucky. There were no money problems originated from either side of our parents and siblings, so far. This itself is already very lucky. There are so many people who were tied down by money issues created or faced by their parents and siblings. These are blood ties, you can't just walk away and live your materially comfortable life and let your parents and siblings suffer, at least when you were still young. Now, at some point in time, if you had helped enough and these folks continue...

Retiring earlier, while seems enviable (and should be!), is kinda scary TBH All the computations and analysis done to ensure financials are in order were key. Even then, there is always a risk of something going south. That's why the plans have backup, which themselves have backup. Still, once you made the leap, there's almost no turning back. You can turn back to find a job, but its going to be hard (once you tasted the honey of freedom, which I did, its very hard to accept its loss) Now that I made the leap, I am on my own. There is no safety net of a job, and large corporation that pays the bills and medical expenses.  I have to be on my toes on financials, not everyday, but still, be very conscious on expenses and projected expenses and if there are looming changes coming.  You will want to not step onto something that gives way to your weight, if you get what I mean.  Still, confidence takes time to grow. Bit by bit. It takes discipline, stick to your plans, be brave...

 No, not about the $$ I have, though I think I have a decent amount relative to others I am rich, because I am free. I have time to do things I want (not any thing, but thinks I can do) I am rich, because I can be there for my kids anytime... Meet the teacher? No problem.  Need to get something urgently from the store to do a school project? I'll do get it! Need to accompany my spouse to all her medical appointments, even those which simply involve waiting for a long time ? I'll be present. I don't have answer to other things that can override my choices on how I want to spend my time.  I am therefore, RICH. 

 The freedom I am enjoying now is Awesome I must remind myself how precious it is, lest I start to normalize it and take it for granted. When we are chained to our job to make ends meet (and then some), we yearn for the day we can break free of the chains. The deadlines, the meetings, the networking, the schemings, the anxieties, the yearly performance targets, the stress etc. at those moments, we dreamt of freedom.  But when we actually get freedom, we may ironically say we are bored. Now that’s very ungrateful.  I must never be ungrateful to my freedom. This is hard earned by myself with some dosage of luck of meeting the right people who helped me.  Really appreciate it. Will take good care of myself, my health and my mind and my family and my resources to fully appreciate this freedom !

 Now, that's a statement that can be made by anyone. I say that when I was still working I say that now that I am retired But it has a very different meaning Before retirement, saying you have nothing to do is probably born out of boredom that comes from too many things to want to try with too little time, where time is so short that its not enough to even do one thing. With retirement and all the flexible time on hand, say you have nothing to do can still come from boredom, but it's a a different kind.  With all the time on hand, you are limited by mostly the resources (mostly money lah) you have, as well as, if you are old fart like me, also limited by what your stiff joints and dwindling muscle mass allows. So that naturally cuts down, from a theoretical unlimited list of things to a more reasonable list of things you can do. And with all the time on hand, you can do all of it! But you can still say you have nothing to do when someone asks what you are doing now. It's a ...

 $692  Probably my last time paying income tax lol That’s about $50 per month What a relief 

when you have kids, you gave dilemma  Why With the ease of digital media, parents have easy access to all the videos and photos of their kids since the day they were born.  This is double edged Yes, the ease of retrieval of old photos and videos is nice, especially when you want to reminisce the cute times. But have we thought about the impact of our behaviour on our still growing kids? How do they actually feel when their parents keep showing them their cute photos as babies and toddlers? Will they feel that their present form is no longer as appealing to their parents? Will they think their parents are just happy when they were babies? As parents, the time and energy we expend on looking at old media meant we lose time and energy to appreciate the "present" form of our kids. its ironic, but we end up taking lesser and lesser videos and photos.  Yes, babies and toddlers are cute, but so are teens and young adults kids! Let's not abuse the tech we have at the detriment of...

Now, if someone who has no worries whatsoever on their living expenses and material life, comes and tell me they are unhappy with life and has so many issues and feel so down...I cannot understand it on surface.  But I can also understand it. Why? We all need our basic needs, think safe home, food, clothes, internet, entertainment.  If you don't have basic needs, you will be miserable most of the time, but you can try keep your mood up sometimes with positive thinking. But you will generally still be unhappy. Once you have your basic needs (so some) covered, you have a baseline of happiness that you can hit easily. But the human mind is never satisfied. You will now have time and energy to find faults with things. The food isn't so good, your home isn't that nice, your spouse isn't good enough etc etc. So, to the unhappy and miserable rich man....how about you give away all your riches and go back to working for others? And then find happiness from that position?  Or yo...