Travel to London/Paris

My passion in travelling shall be shared with my wife. Yes, that's my goal. The first thing I did was to bring my wife to the place known for their history and romanticism. And there we were, travelling to London and Paris back in 2007, exactly 4 years back...

Buckingham Palace, London

My wife is MU supporter, but here I was trying to influence her to be Gunner like me :)

Du Louvre museum, Paris

The famous Eiffel Tower

Happy 4th Anniversary

On 25^th December this year, we celebrated our 4^th Anniversary as Husband and Wife at Atmosphere 360 KL Tower. How Time Flies….Our little family is growing. Insya-Allah, Aqeel will be a big brother and we will have new addition into our family middle of next year J. As my wife said, ‘tak semua manis itu madu dan tak semua pahit itu jelik’ or translated something like this ‘sweetness is not all good and bitterness is not all bad’. Well, we are all not perfect indeed, but we learn to understand and compromise with each other. The most important thing, man and woman always compliment each other, a perfect summary for us. May our marriage blessed and last forever…Happy 4th Anniversary to us!  

Sekolah2u Revisited

I haven’t been in touched with my entrepreneurial side for a long time. It seems I’ve been very comfortable with my position and the urge to be more adventurous gradually fading away. Couples with various commitments nowadays, it looks like my entrepreneurial goals will always be a secondary goal. But I’ve been awaken recently from The Edge article on Web 2.0 start-up who has made it to Sillicon Valley thru fund raised via venture capital in Malaysia. It seems the idea is pretty similar to what I had back in 2006, but these guys made it all the way to Sillicon Valley! Congrats to them. So what business venture is it?

Back in 2006, I was trying hard to push the Software-As-a-Service Solution for School Management System thru MDEC. I did all the software development and we called our solution as Sekolah2u (macam maybank2u laa konon).  We (me and a friend) even had the presentation with the MDEC’s General Manager to share our ideas on our solution. But they seem reluctant to proceed on our ideas, most probably because the concern on who will pay for the service. Our solution is based on subscription model rather than selling the software. Basically, it is the SAAS business model. From then on, the idea just fading away and we were getting busy with our work. Our mistake was not trying to push thru venture capital back then, but I remember it’s pretty tough to raise fund for start-up company like us. Without some capital, we were unable to sustain our business especially the needs for marketing, expenses, etc. Most importantly, our mistake was trying to focus on public schools (which of course has lots of bureaucracy) and not private schools. In addition, the market in Malaysia was definitely not ready at that time and even if we secured some private schools, it’ll be less than 10 schools. Lesson learnt!

But these guys, QuickSchools.com (see above – see some similarity) took a different path from us. They raised fund from venture capital in 2009, focus on ‘The Biggest Market’ in US and moved their operation to US. The rest as some would say is history. They managed to secure many schools around the world and surely, they will grow in time. While I’m sad I could not make it as what they have achieved, but I’m happy some Malaysians successfully deployed the idea to a reality especially in Sillicon Valley. Hats off to these guys….

SAP Consultant ..wondering what they are?

Besides Con + Insult people (that’s what we think about ourselves, just kidding J), it’s pretty grey area for people out there to really understand what we actually do. As I explained in my previous post, we are a hybrid between IT & Business. We try to enhance business processes in SAP context, the ultimate target is to eliminate unnecessary manual processes and improve efficiency and productivity. So you could have more time to be productive/decisive rather than wasting time doing manual and routine jobs. I hate to say this, at one point I feel guilty of trying to automate everything because eventually, people could be redundant and lost their job. Is technology guilty of reducing job opportunities? Is technology benefits highly skilled workers only? I read one article on this issue and the author said, we couldn’t blame technology because lets face it, it improves our life tremendously. We need to recognize that there is shift in paradigm in today’s economy, the knowledge economy. Everybody has the responsibility to upgrade their skills so that they won’t be left out. But it’s still frightening to see only 20% of Malaysian workforces can be considered skilled workers. I guess this need to be sorted out a.s.a.p!

Wassatiyah/Minimalist/Keserderhanaan

As a Muslim, the concept of Wassatiyah should be practiced in our life. It means simplicity and balance, it doesn’t mean you can’t posses material and wealth but it focuses on how you should consume and manage it according to your own needs and affordability. Can you afford it? Is it necessary? In western world, the word ‘Minimalist’ more or less shares the same meaning as Wassatiyah (in material possession perspective) or in Malay ‘Kesederhanaan’.

Hari Raya 2011

It has been 4 years for me celebrating Hari Raya as a family man and this Hari Raya was quite special for me. Essentially, the meaning of ‘Family’ truly sparks in this year celebration. We travelled from one place to another to visit our relatives from my side and wife’s as well. On the first two days, we were in Seremban (my side) and the next three days we were in Kota Bharu (wife’s side – well, her family lives in KL now but still got relatives in Kota Bharu). Travelling back from KB to KL was quite an experience, it took 14 hours + massive traffic jam to reach KL where it takes 7 hours in regular time. It shows lot of Kelantan’s origin migrating to KL perhaps for better opportunities.

Krugman's Economic Analysis

I love Paul Krugman’s analysis on economy and yes, I’m a regular reader of his column in NYT. Such a good insight on current economic issue and the latest article by him is another masterpiece on assessment of US’s wrong policy of debt deficit reduction. It’s not a debt deficit reduction that should be pursued, but job creation it’s the utmost priority to fix the ailing economy. In order to create the jobs, as the private sector hold back the spending due to uncertainty, government should take the role to spend to keep the engine running. Without any spending by either private or public sector, it could cause a catastrophic consequence and the most affected would be normal people on the street.

Travel to New York City 2003

I flew from LA to NY via American Airlines to visit one of the celebrated city in the world, New York baby! It's a five hours flight (no surprise there since it was from one end to another). Unfortunately due to budget constraint, I could not stay in Manhattan itself but further away from the city. To be specific, I stayed in rather notorious city called New Jersey. But I certainly have no complaint as I was enjoying New York so much!

Statue of Liberty 

View of Manhattan from Empire State Building 

Unfortunately, no one was helping me so I resorted to cam-whoring. At the top of Empire State Building. 

The famous Times Square

My workplace - IOI Resort

While IOI is known for their plantation business, they are also one of the main player in properties segment. One of their best development is a resort style city known as IOI resort city http://www.ioiresortcity.com. I'm blessed to work in this wonderful and peaceful place. It's 20 minutes away from my house in Bangi and yes it's traffic jam-less and toll-less every single day, the thing I value the most. Parking is abundant and another worry-less issue for me. The resort itself is green in concept with many facilities available. Two hotels (marriott & palm garden, golf club, residential area (condo and bungalow) and of course two towers for office where I'm based now.

Losing doesn't take away your elegance ....

You are still the greatest for me no matter what.. Age is catching up on you. Not losing tamely to new Ali, but you fought like a true champion. Salute! See you again in US open...

Travel across Europe 2006

This was one of my favourite trip in my adventure all over the world. It covers around 3000 - 4000 km road trip circling around cities in western Europe. Our adventure started from London to Berlin with RyanAir. Then, we drove around 800 km to Zurich bypassing briefly in Munich. From Zurich, we went to Jungfrao region in central of Switzerland to witness the awesomeness of Alps. Then, we drove north to Paris for 800 km journey. From Paris, we drove another 500 km to Amsterdam bypassing briefly at Brussels and also Rotterdam. And we went back another 800 km to Berlin to catch our flight back to London with RyanAir. It's certainly exhausting but worth every minute of it. Thanks to Expedia, our trip was carefully organized with best deals we could get.

The journey begins....with hard look at Map :)

Berlin, Germany

Berlin Wall

East Berlin - West Berlin Checkpoint

Brandenburger To Monument 

World War 2 Remaining Church

Munich,Germany

Munchen Olympiaturm

Zurich,Switzerland

Limmat River

City Center

Jungfrao Region,Switzerland

Magnificent view of Alps

Lauterbrunnen Town

Paris,France

Arch de Triomphe

View of Paris

Eiffel Tower

Brussels,Belgium

View of Brussels

Grand Place

Grand Place

Amsterdam,The Netherlands

Classic windmill

Traditional Dutch..haha

City Center

Rotterdam,The Netherlands

Meuse River

This was certainly one of the longest journey I've ever experienced. The other journey as I remembered occurred in 1996 when I was travelling with my father from Birmingham, UK to Rome, Italy. In the journey we passed thru cities such as St Nazaire, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Monaco (France), Turin and finally Rome (Italy). I hope I could write about this later.

SAP BW/BI Training

I’m really excited that Dato Lee has approved my training for BW/BI. I will attend two courses for BW/BI, next week and mid July at SAP Malaysia. The courses are pretty expensive (around 20K for both) and thus required board of director to approve. As I said in my previous post, BW/BI is my next target in order to enrich my skills/knowledge broader. We have exciting BW/BI projects coming up for all Loders Croklaan companies all over the world. Presently, big companies such as Shell, DKSH,etc have embraced BW/BI for analytic purposes. It’s becoming essential nowadays to analyse the information intelligently. As the saying goes, time is money. BW/BI has enabled the process of analyzing data intelligently within seconds. It’s a great tool for managers to make an informed decision quickly. From my development perspective, it’s another milestone for me to acquire this highly sought knowledge. Just a glance from jobstreet, BW/BI is really well paid at the moment.

Money aside, I really enjoy new challenges as it keeps my motivation steady. Some actually are wondering why I didn’t join big consulting company like Accenture or IBM for better challenges. The answer is simple, one I would like some stability. Perhaps, I’m a risk averse kinda person. Second, I prefer to acquire deep knowledge industry rather than hopping from one industry to another. In my case, I really treasure my manufacturing industry knowledge nowadays. By understanding business processes more, I as technical person would be able to comprehend and design a better solution in order to meet business requirements. From my experience in consulting company such as IBM and Axon, my business knowledge is very much limited but rather our goal simply to complete the technical requirement.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to BW/BI training next week J.

Bit of Perspectives from Republican & Democrat struggles

I couldn’t help thinking and reflect about what happen in states now to our beloved country here. In one side, democrat is championing the ‘socialist’ agenda to American, which I think pretty similar to what government here prescribes the NEP to bumiputera. On another side, republican remain upholds their capitalist agenda, which in my opinion, forcing the non-bumiputera to live their life the capitalist way in order to succeed. For me, there are good and bad sides for both ideologies. On one hand, while socialist in theory seems a good idea, nevertheless it is very much vulnerable for abuse. In theory, the resources should be distributed evenly but that’s not what always happens in reality. Experiences suggest minority of the people benefitting tremendously while others are struggling to share the rest of resources. Looking at European countries to some extent or even Cuba or Venezuela, it seems the socialist ideology very much questionable. The not so good thing about socialist idea is that it inculcates the ‘laziness’ culture, every thing is dependable to government. You name it, Healthcare, education, pension and everything is provided by government. Let takes some example on Pension scheme. Pension scheme is like a giant Ponzi scheme. The fund for pensioners effectively coming from new tax contributor, the young guns. As long the young guns keep contributing the tax, then the pension scheme will still be alive. Ok, imagine when cost of living become so high, there are not so much young guns in the country because parents can’t afford to have many kids, then the tax collection will be lesser in the future. At the end, the scheme will collapse. Just like what happened to Madoff. He started to crack when the redemption request from old investors is bigger than new fund from investor coming in. Anyway, I would like to emphasis that socialist and social market economy are two different things. Some European countries such Germany and Austria practice social market economy that balance off between socialist and free market ideology. It seems working for them. On the other hand, Switzerland is a perfect example of free market economy. Also, it seems working for them.

So, capitalist ideology seems good then. One thing great about capitalist is that it encourages the culture of entrepreneurship. That’s good. However, the not so good thing about the idea is that the unable ones would be left behind. The rich is getting richer while the poor remains the same or getting poorer. Profit is the ultimate target which then encourages the greediness to the people. That’s what triggered the financial meltdown recently. I also could go on and on about the bad things of capitalist ideology but I won’t.

So what’s the best for us regardless of bumiputera or non-bumiputera. It’s hard to find the magic solution. On one hand, to some extent bumiputera somehow is benefitting from the NEP but abuses as described earlier are the cancer of the policy. After 30 years, still ‘majority’ of bumiputera are lagging behind but the minority ones become super rich. Does the policy work? Does living condition improve? Could it be because bumiputera is depending too much to government that we fail to improve ourselves? Does the laziness already been instilled in our heart due to the dependency? With 30 years of experiment, we should have the answer now. So what’s your answer?

San Francisco & Vegas trip 2005

California is such a beautiful state with a mild mediterranean weather. It's also one of the richest state in US. Nevada on the other hand is pretty much a desert state. But out of nowhere, there is a sin city called las vegas. A truly happening place with lots of wonderful landmarks. Our journey started from Los Angeles and as we were trying to be American for a while, we rented an american car called Dodge ;).

Beverly Hills.....

Alcatraz

San Francisco Bridge

Downtown SF

Las Vegas Boulevard

Caesars Palace

Hoover Dam

The Dam

Going back to LA!

Well, the journey from LA to SF took around 8 hours and LA to Vegas around 4 hours drive. The scenery to SF is not that bad as compared to Vegas. I love driving around while travelling as you got to know more about the places. It's not just visiting the city, I love the experiences observing local people a little bit, the culture and many more. Will share more in this blog on my other trips around the world :).

SAP Contractor (MDV)

Another contract job for me. This time, the client is Malaysia Debt Ventures Berhad (MDV - http://www.mdv.com.my). MDV is financier for emerging technologies companies in ICT & Biotechnology sector. The office is located at Bank Pembangunan, along Jalan Sultan Ismail.

My assignment is more or less the same as before, the automation of loan management approval process via SAP Workflow. I noticed the SAP Banking module is getting more popular these days. When I was in Australia last 3 weeks, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (the largest bank in Australia based on market capitalization) has just completed the implementation of SAP banking replacing the legacy system. It’s a bold move by the Bank itself as not many banks are bold enough to replace their stable system already in place. The cost of the project is gigantic AUS1 Billion and the partner is Accenture. The project is deemed as a success and now it would pave the way for other banks in the world to implement the same. In general, most banks are relying on mainframe architecture to support their core banking processes. The problem with this, it’s not a real time solution. The cost of adding new feature is huge and from maintenance perspective, it’s not feasible. But they wouldn’t upgrade to real time business software such as SAP as it would take massive efforts to do so especially dealing with people money. If they would do so, the rate of error must be 0% and this is the risk that many banks wouldn’t take the chance. So, it’s enlightening to see some would take this risk.

Back to my job assignment, I wouldn’t say MDV takes this huge risk as they are not consumer banking first of all. As a financier specifically to two industries, their customers based are manageable and thus implementing the SAP solution is not deemed as huge risk-taking. I’m just happy I have this opportunity to assist them in implementing the SAP solution.

Trip to Down Under

I always wanted to bring my wife and son to Adelaide and my wish was granted. Our journey started from Melbourne and it took 700km to reach Adelaide. With our modest car, we made it and it was beautiful as always. While I was greeted by one fella ‘what the hell you doing in Adelaide?’ indicating the remoteness of the place and nothing much to offer in terms of tourist destinations, but this place will always be special in my heart. But heck, it is 8^th most livable city in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_most_livable_cities. 
Tennis Fan!

Melbourne thru Yarra River

Victoria State Library 

On the way to Adelaide

On the way back to Melbourne

Mt Lofty Adelaide

University of Adelaide

Glenelg, Adelaide

Lunch Stop at Hofsham otw to Adelaide

Adelaide city skyline

Will be there again hopefully in the future.....