Pension Funds

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I live in a region and in a country where we skew towards young demographic. With that reason, conversations around dinner table or lunch break are rarely about how or when are you going to retire.

If we see the West, whether US or EU, they have a huge pool of retirement funds which are also being invested in innovations through VCs.A little bit out of topic but despite SEA is still in an early phase of tech startups, it would be even better if we have more pension funds invest in startups indirectly rather than only family offices or conglomerates.

In Singapore, (please CMIIW) CPF is 30% of salary this helps you to not only save for your retirement but also to buy your government subsidized apartment. Pooled fund is also invested in a very transparent way if you see Temasek and VC funds created by them.

While in Indonesia, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan only requires 1% from the employee and 2% from employer to cover this. This is definitely far from enough. Which is going to prolong sandwich generation where people only rely on their kids to live after they retire.

 

COVID19

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Disclosure: I’m not an expert in health or in COVID19, take below information with caution and please research deeply before making your own decision/thought. Below are simply my own personal thought and serve as a personal reminder.

We are around 20 to 21 weeks in since the first impact of COVID in Jakarta and we are definitely not slowing down any time soon. I just feel tweeting about this can’t fit in 140 characters so here goes:

  • Testing: we are nowhere near enough, despite Jakarta governor saying that we are fulfilling WHO demand. This created an illusion as if COVID isn’t growing as fast as in the US or EU. If we are testing 100k people a day, then we can compare.
  • Mask: Despite all the campaigns and also the decreasing of prices of disposable mask and creating of reusable mask — wearing mask is not 100% yet in the streets. People are still wearing it half heartedly just covering mouth, or even wearing it on their neck
  • Health facilities: Jakarta, or in this case, Indonesia – doesn’t have nearly enough beds or ICU if this gets to US or even India level of daily cases

Prediction on 6-12 months ahead?

  • New Normal is going to be the normal We will have to live with COVID and face that fact. Mask and the limitations of people in a small space is going to be the default.
  • Vaccine is going to come, but I personally won’t get it until at least a year after it’s commercially available. I’m more afraid of the side effect vs actually contracting COVID.

 

Christianity

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Christianity is about Jesus’ love for us, not the other way around. I learned this deeply when I listened to Joseph Prince’ sermon in Hillsong Conference 2017. He showed how He loved John so much vs how Peter kept trying to show his love for Jesus.

This serves as a reminder for us because:

  • We are sinners = if we kept showing that we are sinless and showing people that we are Christians by donating or doing good in the name of Jesus – one day people might caught us while we do a simple sin – and people might think that Oh, why Christians sin or do that mistake?
  • We need to show and witness how Jesus love us more than showing people how we love Jesus. I looked back when I got baptized in 2009 and I got the name Joshua and I’ve never looked back. Every single year is always better than the one before.
  • When I rely on my strength to show people I love Him, I get weary, because I am human. Jesus never ever got tired and He will always show that His plan is the best plan.

Amen

Inward

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Are you more of an Inward or Outward person? I know for sure that I’m an Inward person.

How do you know this? I realized that I talked to myself a lot, I ponder about a lot of things, I can go very deep in thought, I’m usually harder on myself vs waiting on my peers to give pressure to me.

Most of the time, I don’t care about what people think, I care about what I think about myself.

There’s a question that sounds like this: “Do you prefer: to look handsome/pretty when people see you but when you see yourself in the mirror you look like an ugly person OR people see you as an ugly person but when you look in the mirror you’re handsome”

I think I’m the latter. I don’t confirm to people’s expectation or standard, I usually try to build my own. Two sides of coin for this type/personality is you are very sure on what you’re doing but it’s very hard for you to take people’s advices at times.

Ignorance is Bliss

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This post will sound like a humble brag or even plain bragging so please skip if you might get offended.

The more you know, the more you have the potential to suffer. What this means is that as you have more education, you know that there are potential out there. As you get more informations, you know that there’s a chance of success out there that you can make.

On the other side, it can be something more personal indulgence. Like, if you’ve been eating street side food and suddenly you get a chance to enjoy a steak. Now, you’ll start to compare and miss eating those tender meat.

If you’ve been staying at budget hotels and you got a chance to enjoy a stay at 5 star hotel, now the stay at budget hotels feels so ‘painful’ and ‘suffocating’

If you’ve been riding economy/coach and doesn’t even dream to ride in a business class, and yes — you get it — found a way to fly in business class. Suddenly flying economy feels so excruciating especially for long haul.

This is why ignorance (not knowing) is bliss and at the same time, crazy how humans can adapt to luxury that fast.

Parent as a Service

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It might sound crazy, in fact, it is crazy to think about this. But, hear me out, 10 years from now, it might even be the norm. Parent as a Service.

Look around us, if you see (pre-COVID) in the restaurants, in the malls, most of the little childrens are in front of screens from their early age. They are used to smartphones and tablets, you’re even not laughing anymore if you saw kids trying to ‘swipe’ a TV.

This shows us that technology, and in it AI, is already affecting children growing up. Why not making it even ‘formal’ or ‘integrated’? As life cost grew, we’ll see more and more parents having to juggle multiple jobs just to survive and we’ve seen a lot of child having to deal with loneliness.

I’d predict that we will have Parent as a Service product as we saw more technology introduced to our life. We are already seeing Amazon with its Alexa being all around your home. Why not have an AI making sure our kids do their homework by disconnecting the WiFi to our childrens phone?

Childhood

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Watching ‘Dark’ on Netflix has been making me think a lot about my own childhood and its impact on my adult life. I did have a beautiful and amazing childhood up until I was 9 or 10? I remembered going on a holiday almost every 6 months whether it’s to Malaysia or Singapore.

Then, it all sort of went downhill from there. My parents fought almost every other day, they eventually got divorced when I was in my first year in junior high (SMP). I grew up during my pre-teens until now with my dad and I guess it affected my relations with woman as well.

I remember in my high school years, my pocket money was only enough for one food and that’s it. Whenever I went to the mall with my friends, they would buy music albums, buy shirts in Giordano, and I was just there sitting with envy.

When you grew up always feeling “not enough” it created an ‘anger’ of trying to prove to everyone that I have it. I guess I was lucky that it turned into a positive fire inside of me to be successful. At the same time though, I’m a super egoistic person, as I always believed that I have to fend for myself and I created my own luck.

I don’t know if I would change anything in the past but it’s just interesting to see how our childhood really shaped us as a person.

Adulting

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I realized (for a while now) that I live in a privileged bubble where I don’t have to pay for rent, electricity, internet, water, and gas. In fact, the term ‘personal finance’ wasn’t in my head until the last few years of my life.

One of the first thing that I did was realizing that I didnt even have saving nevermind investing. I didn’t even have a personal health insurance. I didn’t even track how much I spend each month.

Today though, I’m on my personal health insurance despite being insured by my company. I started to invest in mutual funds and directly to stock markets. I’ve been meticulously tracking my daily spending over the past 18 months.

I guess that’s what Adulting feels like..

Dinner Roulette

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Choosing what to eat for dinner has been first world problem over the last couple of decades. The addition or innovation of food delivery app isn’t solving this instead it gives you even more options to pick from.

I’m quite lucky that I still live with my dad and sister. We are also “subscribing” to a “dinner roulette” aka catering where all we do is cook rice and we’ll have a decent dinner with an element of surprise every day.

 

Faith as Foundation

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As the world gets more polarized and talks about faith aka religion gets even weirder to talk at the dinner table, I’d suggest that it’s even more important now putting faith as your foundation.

In my life at least, I want to be able to say that my principles are rooted in my faith. Therefore, my biggest life events would either be impacted by and for my Christianity.

My personal belief is that I don’t force (I never) people to have a religion or to enter Christianity. Yet, I’d use my life as a platform to reflect God’s glory and grace. Because Christianity isn’t about how much you love God — but how God loves us so much.

When all things around you (your business, your friends, even your family) fail, and they will somehow, you’d want to have a foundation you can bounce back from.