Today I rode to Johor Bahru with my wife for a breakfast ride.

Today I rode to Johor Bahru with my wife for a breakfast ride. Rode my new motorcycle, the Yamaha XMAX 300 Tech Max, commonly known as XMAX. 

Now, if you are fellow motorcyclist who loves to go touring, you will understand the joy of riding. Never mind the destination you are headed, its just the pure joy of riding. It is therapeutic for me. I am thankful my wife enjoys it too (that's what she say and if she is lying, she hides it pretty well).

I have been on many trips across the border to JB. Did regular trips to Malacca during pre-covid days and a few trips to KL. I enjoyed all of them (except when there is a heavy downpour!).

So today, we googled and saw this site - https://eatbook.sg/johor-bahru-cafes/. Decided to give some of the cafes a try over the next few weeks. Today we tried the cafe called The Replacement – Lodge & Kitchen . A decent cafe. Along that street there were many other cafes / restaurant. Plan to try some of them soon too.

Man, this blog entry is rather nostalgic. It's like those days where you simply write how your day went...haha!

However, a blog entry on the joy of motorcycling cannot be told in one post. It needs many more to do it justice!

Hope to share more on how i started, the good and bad days of riding and the multiple bikes before deciding i finally found that one bike (you know that's a lie, because one bike is never enough!).

Good night.

-SMN

Last blogged date was in Aug 2023.

 Last blogged date was in Aug 2023. 

I admit, that was terribly long ago when considering that i promised to blog more frequently. School was a factor. Laziness was another. It is not that there is nothing to write about. It is too much unstructured thoughts which can be chaotic and it takes too much time to put into writing in a coherent manner.

For instance, i would like to talk about investing and finance. The subject is not only voluminous but also operates in the subjective realms where any opinion likely has a counter-argument. But, agreeably, that is not a good reason not to talk about it. The trick is to narrow the topic and offer a short summary. Perhaps someday I can talk and write more about it because it is important i track my thoughts on this subject. I have found that what i held to true in finance may be no longer be true. So it is important to remind myself that it's perfectly fine to be wrong. It's the learning from the wrong that is pivotal.

And since we are at the subject of finance, i was saddened to hear the passing of Charlie Munger a couple of months back. No doubt many saw it coming since he was approaching 100 years old. More than investing, both Munger and Warren Buffett have shared wisdom that there is more to life than just investing. May Munger rest in peace. Interestingly, Munger was a fan of Lee Kuan Yew, so much so that he has a bust of LKY at his home.

Says a lot about Munger and also about LKY. There is no mention that they ever met personally. Who knows, may be they did since LKY is know to travel to US and meet the top officials and business leaders.

To end, will blog more often. About bikes, bags, books, football and everything. I enjoy reading back some of my old posts. Even more satisfying is to know there are no followers of the blog. With followers, it would be tiresome to question every blog post if it comes off as offensive before posting it. To any one who eventually comes across this blog and reads it, i hope you will read all or most of the posts to know that my intent is never to offend. Sometimes it may come as so. But i hope you see my intent of it.

Thanks and good night.

-SMN

 Again, guilty as charged. Not blogging as frequently as I had hoped. Nevertheless, better something, even if infrequent, than totally inexistent.

I came across this quote today by Anton Chekov - "Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass". The quote taken from the book of  Steven D. Stark who emphasised the importance of storytelling.

Another quote, from Aristotle - "There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses."

 We often take good writers for granted. When something written is so easy to understand, we think that it was written in a simple manner. Simple means anyone (or most) can do it. Which sadly is not true. 

A mark of great writer is to make the complex simple. 

In making it simple, the writer often gets forgotten because of his simplistic writing.

So next time we come across an article that is simple to read or it paints an imagination in your thoughts. Take some time to remember who the author is.

Good night.

-SMN

As best put by people who ventured into the deep sea, that "it is an unforgiving environment".

You know, it has been hard trying to write consistently. I was hoping to write regularly on this blog. Unfortunately that has not come to fruition. The struggle seems that I spend more time reading many things and consequently running out of time for the day, which then means there is little to no time for writing.

A terrible excuse, I admit. Well, l must not lose hope. So may the Lord grant me strength to repel the habit of reading too much and writing too less.

So, you may have heard about the Titan submersible that imploded. In its excursion to see the Titanic which lies 4,000 metres beneath the sea. 

It piqued my interest and I spent a fair amount of time reading about the deep sea. The deepest sea is the Marian Trench located at western Pacific Ocean and the maximum known depth is found to be 10,984 metres - source: Wikipedia. 

What's even more interesting is James Cameron (director of Titanic and Avatar series) is an avid deep sea explorer. He took the deep dive with a machine called Deepsea Challenger (DC). A machine whose capability is phenomenal. In contrast, the Titan submersible seemed to lack (at least going by the comments and views shared online) the necessary safety features and poor engineering. For instance, the DC could only house one crew member, and that too in a curled up position. While the Titan had 5 crew members. A luxurious space no doubt. Which, unfortunately came at the expense of the lack of safety features.

And even more interesting, the pressure level in the deep sea is equivalent to three cars pinning down a single finger of the human body. So you can try to imagine (I struggled imagining the pain) the pressure it will have on your whole body.

As best put by people who ventured into the deep sea, that "it is an unforgiving environment". A wave here or a loss of communication or guide elsewhere, would put the crew and the submersible at unimaginable risk.

May God ease the suffering of the families who lost their loved in this unfortunate episode.

-SMN

Singapore's 7-0 loss to Malaysia

 Occasionally blog posts are made up of social commentaries. Often dry, but best written with wry humour.

Today is about my beloved sport football. More precisely, Singapore's 7-0 loss to Malaysia in the SEA games football 2023. This tournament is for players aged under 22. The unfortunate thing was both teams had nothing to play for but pride, since both cannot advance to the next stage regardless of a win for either team.

Fans were not happy. To lose to our causeway rivals by a high margin is downright embarrassing. To be fair to the boys, I believe they gave their all. As it happens in life, perhaps luck was not in their favour. But more so that the boys may have not grown up in the Malaysian Cup era days where Singapore dominance had fans visiting the old national stadium every week. It was truly the best days of Singapore football. The passion of the fans was at its high. 

Present day, with our own Singapore Premier League, fans turn out has been lackluster. How can the boys understand that to not give their all in a game against our rivals is unforgiveable? With keyboard warriors (such as myself), all we do is to complain and criticize at their performance. Rarely, if ever, do we raise the boys up and congratulate them for their performance. In summary, would the boys have played well with better fanfare support and, more importantly, with the understanding of the rivalry between us and Malaysia? Well, I do not know. 

To cut the story short, Singapore football is going downhill. If you have been following ASEAN football, you would know the gap between us and the other nations (TH, VN, MY, ID) is constantly widening (and there are reasons which I personally feel contributed to it - which I will leave for another day's discussion).

So fans are holding FAS accountable (rightly so). FAS has commenced a review to evaluate our football. We will see how that turns out. 

However, one issue that has always bugged me is that FAS occasionally comes up with fancy (and unrealistic goals). Whether they do this with the government's blessing, we do not know. But to have a goal of qualifying for the world cup in something like 16-20 years time says two things, 1) their ignorance of the prowess of other footballing nations in Asia and 2) being out of touch with the state of affairs of our football.

A realistic target would be to be the top four nation in ASEAN and to qualify into the final group stage in the Asian cup. Even countries like TH, VN, ID struggle at the Asian level. Hence it is disappointing that FAS goes on to set goals that are to be achieved, not by the board that sets the goal, but the future footballers. An unnecessary burden the footballers should not carry. 

Anyway, as a fan, I appreciate the difficulty that FAS has but they ought to be answerable as to what they were thinking with the Unleash The Roar project (i.e., qualifying for the world cup).

With that, I end my humourless social commentary.

- SMN

So I have been out for 2 months from blogging

 So I have been out for 2 months from blogging. In the old days, this is an eternity away from blogging. Pre-social media era, people would be concerned that you have not blogged and will ask if everything is alright. In customary response, you apologise for being away (with the fancy belief that people actually love reading your blog posts) and state the reason(s) why you were missing. Often, bloggers share intimate details for their long absence. 

Some can be very emotional. While others simply summarise they were not in the mood to do blog or can no longer commit their time for it (this, a fatal response that risks closing doors on their fellow 'readers' - modern day known as 'followers').

With no readers (followers) of my blog, I can speak without any political correctness, which is, I had no time to blog as I was busy studying for my exams. Exams ended yesterday and I finally found some space to squeeze this post in. 

Might I also remind myself (and my future followers), as a working adult with an 18 months old son, time is a scarcity and compromises must be made. However, as I find that reading my posts is fun (especially when I realise some are downright silly), I once again promise to blog as frequently as possible and share my personal thoughts on the many things that life has afforded us.

- SMN

So let's talk about what happened in the intervening years

So let's talk about what happened in the intervening years between 2007 and now. As many young unambitious men, I was clueless as to what I wanted to do when I completed national service. 

After much introspection, I applied to study psychology in NTU and was not accepted (well, I am not sure if my application went through at all, since I received no rejection from them). In any case, my diploma grades was abysmal, and it is likely an IT diploma was viewed as irrelevant in pursuing a psychology degree.  

On hindsight, unacceptance was a blessing. In my own readings of psychology, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of the subject. Yes, I was smitten by Sigmund Freud and his student Carl Jung. But overall, I doubt I would have penetrated the subject at a very deep level (I do, however, scratch the surface).

Eventually I applied for accountancy in SIM-RMIT. For the simple reason that it offered a 1 year full time (1st year) and 2 years (2nd and 3rd years) part time programme. The idea was to enjoy my first year of university life and work in the later 2 years. Enjoy I did, the best thing that happened was I met my future wife and made some great friends. Graduated with, again, abysmal grades. 

Did I enjoy accounting? well, to a very small extent. I found a job as a finance executive in healthcare (lasted about a year) and crossed over to financial audit where I spent about 6 years. Finally into my current role as an accountant in a professional service firm.

Right, so career wise my excitement is as good as Singapore's hope of qualifying for the world cup. Which are - big dream, poor planning and half-baked executions. 

Jokes aside, there are many more things (not career related) to share. We shall catch up again.

-SMN