Social Lock down

Social Lock down

The year is 2020, in the beginning of the year, anticipations of a fabulous year ahead was so positive. But then as news broke out that there is a possible Global Pandemic in January, most of us does not pay much attention to it. As most human beings have this, it will not happen to me attitude. As the virus called Covid-19, started to spread at an alarming rate globally, world’s leaders called for a major lockdown or a Restricted Movement Control (RMC) starting in March 2020. In Malaysia, our RMC started from 18^th March, expected to last till 28^th April.

What does this means? Everyone will need to stay at home, no social gatherings, dinning out are not permitted, non-essential businesses are ordered to close, schools closed and only limited movement within a certain radius are allowed to buy necessities. Violators were slapped with hefty fines, roadblocks and closure of certain roads were enforced.

With all these happenings, many thoughts arises:-

·         How to cope with daily life during this period

·         What businesses will draw the last breath or thrive

·         What is our social responsibilities

·         What will happen after this crisis

Let’s dive into coping with the daily life during this period, various people will have their own challenges, I am going to isolate it to my own frame work.

I am already in my late fifties, I switched career 7 years ago from a contractor and re-educated myself to become a Personal Trainer in health and fitness and an event manager as well. This complete changed of lifestyle and activities, landed me with an entirely different group of friends and clienteles, which needs to be socially and physically active in a positive manner.  

With this lockdown order, all activities stopped and everyone were so reliant on technology like, group chat, group meeting, virtual classes and social media. These open up a whole new outlook of how people going to carry out with their activities, especially the elderly or senior age group.

Despite having all these technological help, the social interaction is still a very crucial part of our life. As we trek along with the virtual meeting, I observed that most participants were quite reluctant to voice out and action are unable to communicate properly. This brings about a non-impactful meeting/training, but as the saying goes, something is better than nothing.

 And on the home front, there are a lot of adjustments needed to make,

• Stocking up on groceries, we in Kuala Lumpur are so fortunate, we have supermarkets within our doorsteps. In the past we just buy stuffs whenever it is running low, and does not have the habit of stocking up
• Eating out was the norm, now we are having home cooked meals every day, from these we can comprehend the plights of full time housewives, where they need to cook and plan for the meals every day.
• Putting up with your family members 24/7 can be challenging, as we are not use to spend so much time confine in the house, and as time goes along everyone just became quiet, and glued to the TV, mobiles and computer. As I hypothesized, some couples may ended up in divorce or grew deeper in love or just speechless.
• Catching up on back logs, finish the books that you always wanted to read, updated homework, tidying the house and updating the blogs.
• Missing your friends and social gatherings, outdoor activities, outdoor exercises and sports.

On the other hand, we learned

• ·         Groceries planning, do not buy unnecessary and food rationing
• ·         Be thrifty, careful on the spending, as some may lost some incomes during this period
• ·         Have empathy with your family members, non-demanding
• ·         Learn to live in isolation or limited mobility
• ·         Ways to fill your time
• ·         Learning up new knowledge

Let us pray that this pandemic be over soon, and once we come out of this event, our outlook of life will be different. Viruses do not discriminate, whether you are rich, poor, powerful, different races or powerless. These are invisible enemies where the whole world is fighting on different grounds. But then on the positive note, the earth have a chance to rest during this pandemic, pollution reducing, rivers run clearer and the forest is getting a rest.

There are still a lot of uncertainties after this event, why stress oneself on these uncertainties, just take it as it comes along.

I am BACK!!!

Hi folks, its been 13 years since I last visited my blog, where else my partner Andrew is much hard working than myself. He's been contributing to my blog recently, and because of the Stay At Home order, it is time to do some housekeeping.....stay close and new thoughts will surface.

TO QUARANTINE OR NOT TO QUARANTINE

It's a difficult decision to make for the leader of any country.  Right now, Indonesia's leader is facing this very difficult decision.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/06/avoiding-quarantine-will-inflict-greater-economic-harm-survey.html

Quarantine means stopping almost all economic activities and that will bring great losses and hardship for the citizens.  On the other hand, the continuous spread of disease is most likely to bring even greater losses.

What happened to the Spanish flu?  How did it end?

Leaders of countries may be hoping for a similar end to the current coronavirus.  The Spanish flu which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide or about 3% of the population at that time, started in January 1818 and ended three years later in December 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#End_of_the_pandemic

However, by the end of 1918, cases had dropped sharply to almost zero.  The leaders of every country are now hoping for that to happen to the current coronavirus, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#End_of_the_pandemic

IT'S DANGEROUS TO DISTURB YOUR NEIGHBOURS DURING LOCKDOWN

Some people are on the verge of mental breakdown due to depression caused by lockdowns.  Don't disturb them.  They may shoot die you.

https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2020/04/581538/man-under-lockdown-shoots-five-people-death-talking-loudly

US FINALLY DECIDES TO WEAR MASKS

China forced everyone to wear mask to fight against the coronavirus.  But strangely, the Americans and the Europeans (under the advice of WHO which is controlled by the Americans) said that masks were not important.  Only sick people should wear them, not healthy people.

But it doesn't make sense to the layman, right?  Why practice social distancing when masks are not important?

Some people speculate that the reason is simply because America does not have enough masks for everyone.  It is a democratic, human-rights type of country where democracy doesn't really work for emergency situations like pandemic.  There, everyone has guns, and if the President tells them that masks are important the consequences would be really serious.  More people may die from gunshots than from the coronavirus.

Now, after many weeks, they probably manufactured enough masks for everyone.  The President and WHO today says masks are important to prevent the spreading of the virus.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3078437/mask-or-not-mask-who-makes-u-turn-while-us

1Malaysia? Sure or not....

I learned something from my trip to Kuching, Sarawak, yesterday.  I'm not sure whether Sarawak is Malay-sure or not.

I was one of the speakers for Popular Bookstore's new branch opening in Kuching.  The Tun Jugah branch, recently renovated with 12,000 sq ft of shopping space, is the largest bookstore in East Malaysia.

Upon reaching Kuching yesterday I had to queue up at the Imigresen counter, all the time wondering had I left the country.  Which country am I in right now?  They took my I/C, checked and then passed back to me together with an "Immigration slip" stating that I am allowed to stay in Sarawak for only 90 days.

I did my talk show at Popular and was soon on my way back to KL.  Upon reaching the airport, I had to look for the departure hall.  This is what I saw at first.

In case you can't read, the sign says "Pelepasan Domestik (dalam negeri Sarawak).  Now do you think I should go in there?  Obviously not, right?  I would only be travelling to other parts of the big state of Sarawak.

This is what I saw next...

The sign says "Pelepasan Antarabangsa".  Now do you think I should go for this?  I don't think so.  I'm not leaving Malaysia for another country, why should I?

Shit! I'm stranded.  How the f am I supposed to go back to KL when you can't go in by both these doors?  OK, before you start cursing, look a bit further, and you see this...

Wow!  "Pelepasan Domestik (Luar Negeri Sarawak).  Ah!  That sounds more like it.  Phew, safe at last.  Or so I thought.  I went to that door and after looking at my boarding pass the jaga fella pointed me to the Immigration queue at the Pelepasan Antarabangsa counter!  Now why do they have two doors which lead to the same counter?  That is what we call "take off your trousers in order to fart".

At least I made it back to KL, safely in one piece, but not after one last round of scaration.  The officer at the Immigration counter asked me back for my Immigration slip (the one which stated that I'm not supposed to stay more than 90 days).  I had thrown that slip into the waste paper basket at the hotel earlier!  But, it turned out that he only asked for fun.  When I said I didn't have it, he waved me in anyway.  Say so earlier mah, scare until people small heart bob bob jump.  Niamahai!

And some idiots are still trying to sell 1Malaysia... damn cunfusing.

Update on Euro Crisis

What is the latest status of the Europe Crisis?  Is the market going to crash?  These are the questions on a lot of traders and investors' minds.

We have read a lot of stuff on the situation there from a lot of people.  Most people are confused, including Soros, but Soros seems to have written quite a bit on the topic and I'm trying to summarise his thoughts here.

Firstly, the Crisis, as we know, came about because Europe (and of course, US as well) has spent beyond their means, resulting in a lot of debts.  Some countries in the EU are weaker and some are stronger.  Some owe more debt and some less.  Of late, a few of those weaker countries are in for reckoning for the amounts they owed, Greece for example.  The fact that there is the EU means that they sink or swim together, giving rise to the fear that if Greece (or any of the PIIGS countries) go down, they may bring down the rest of the guys.

The Crisis came to a boil as all eyes are on Greece to see what would happen if they really default of their sovereign debts.  Almost everyone came to the conclusion (eventually) that the results would be catastrophic.  The next question is, how do they save Greece?  Soros' solution would be to set up a central credit body to bail out Greece.  This would mean all the EU countries would have to cooperate to set up this body to bail out Greece.  The confusion started when Angela Merkel, the PM of Germany, which everyone would agree is the strongest country in the EU, finally agreeing to the fact that Greece needs to be bailed out.  However, the rich in Germany (as well as many other richer countries) don't like the fact that their money would be used to bail someone out.  They would rather that someone sink for all they care.

If such an event is allowed to happen, Soros said that the result would be disastrous.  Almost everyone agrees with him.  That was why we saw the Dow and the European markets falling quite sharply over the past 3 months on these fears.

However, over the past week or so, the market suddenly became very optimistic as all the European leaders said that they are aware how critical the situation has become and they have vowed to solve the big problem together.

Now, if they can really sit down and work together as Soros mentioned right from the beginning, then the Crisis in Europe may finally be solved, at least for the next couple of years or so.

The next move right now would determine whether EU would be headed in the right direction in solving the problem.  If they are headed in the wrong direction (regardless of the fact that they are all now rowing the boat together), then the boat would still sink, and quite quickly as the default date nears.

Soros is saying that the next correct move would be for European governments to guarantee their banks (I think he's referring to deposits, loans and bonds) so that the banks in all of Europe will not have the possibility of collapsing.  He says that governments have the power to do that because they have the ultimate power to print.  However, Soros is saying that the EU countries right now are on the verge of making the wrong move of recapitalising the banks first.  The process of recapitalising the banks is crucial because the banks are not financially sound due to under-capitalisation.  However, the process of recapitalising banks is not an overnight one.  It takes time, and time is right now not on their side.  Soros says that countries should immediately issue a guarantee first, then recapitalise later.  These two steps will solve the whole EU Crisis, at least temporarily.  So, in the coming days or weeks, we will need to see this step taken to save the EU.

On a personal side, some of us, including myself, have taken short positions on EU and the US, believing that this Crisis and the accumulated debt problems are too big to be solved. If EU survives this round, it would mean serious damage to our trading account.  Having placed the bet (with or without stop loss), we would now have to just fold our arms and wait for the interesting outcome.

I still believe Europe would not be able to solve its problems, because some guys there may not believe Soros' analyses.  Even if they do, they may still be selfish enough not to help bail out their neighbours.  Our chances of doubling or tripling our money are still there, unless those guys really sit up and do exactly what Uncle Soros prescribed.