k_tectonic … k_hongkong
See also
Trigger 1 — SG^HK .. this blogpost is triggered by the SG^HK tale of two cities. Keyword is “overtaking”, where the content is nothing new. So I don’t want to spend too much time.
Trigger 2 — immersion .. sitting in the library for another immersion, I recalled my post-NUS self-improvement years.
eg: Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Scandinavian countries used to be the envy of Singapore government and Singaporeans. From the turn of the century to 2020, Singapore quietly overtook Hong Kong and Scandinavian countries in GDP. Singapore overtook Switzerland in PPP-adjusted GDP. I feel Singapore has become stronger, smarter, more competitive on many fronts, due to decades of steadfast focus on the fundamentals (内力).
eg: NUS and NTU overtook many competitors .
eg: Millennium Capital — gradually and quietly overtook many competitors. I think it’s because of consistency
Over the same period, I feel I also overtook many of my (unnamed) peers in my cohort, not only those in financial or IT domains.
- — The heavy-hitter list, focused on “overtaking”
- wellness — 5 workouts a week; satisfactory intimacy.. see BGC:pull`ahead @the pack: personal (!!leadership) effectiveness
- career longevity .. dev-till70 in the harbor of WSC .. See passport2 WSC_harbor@the SWE continent
- cash flow high ground in terms of brbr, FullerWealth, debt, bare-bones ffree, nonwork income
- retirement planning (a global concern across rich countries including SG and welfare states). I have adequate planning with medical cost “Cushions”, CPF-life, low-maintenance HDB rental yield.
- prestigious credentials in UChicago, Wall St, NYSE, hedge fund
Now some obvious, familiar or minor advantages I have created
- beautiful kids
- U.S. and SG “dual homes”
- carefree since 2018
- UChicago .. insider advantage
Those are the things we want. There are also things we don’t want . It’s so easy to forget that I am free of the unwanted “things” below that each afflict a portion of the population in my cohort:
- no bulging belly — rather rare
- no chronic condition (except borderline cholesterol) — sleep; toothache; neck pain; hypertension;
- no marriage instability
- no major sexual difficulties yet
— my effort, choices,,,, or dump luck? See post on locus@control
— mellow?
— detach?
— how do I pass on my success to my kids?
— with some exceptions, virtually all of these “overtaking” successes stem from personal effectiveness, rather than inter-personal effectiveness
exception: marriage required a lot of team work
exception: I could do my professional job reasonably well in 10+ teams.
— Q: Are there some areas where some peers overtook me in stealth?
- personal investments in US stocks or property (A.Lin)
- brank? Not my game.
- ^^ I feel none of these examples are worthwhile. Nothing to learn.
- More diversified investment portfolio
- more healthy lifestyle.
- more patience with parenting
— Raffles Place reflection .. at raffles place I see lots of young, well-dressed (mostly financial) professionals in their 20s and 30s.
I feel many are spoilt kids. But I think others come from poorer backgrounds perhaps in 3rd-world countries. Many are ambitious and hungry in the rat race. In contrast, when I was their age I was on the sideline, as a manufacturing engineer and later blue-collar programmer. I had excellent burn rate control (unaware), competitive on theoretical domains (unaware) but stuck in the less lucrative domains.
- life chances .. The higher income has indeed provided more life chances to finance chaps, to me and my kids.
- adaptation .. I have gone a long way in my adaptation for and within my fin-IT domain. I have figured out how to survive the competition and churn, how to gain an unfair advantage…
- 4def .. At that earlier age, I was mostly driven by successC, but now I have reached a well-off carefree ezlife, and have shifted focus to successE anad successZ
- deathbed .. successE beats successC
- stealth overtake .. I caught up with the finance professionals in my cohort. I guess, without evidence, that for majority of them, their domains and roles are no more lucrative than Fin-IT. Even the traders and fund managers.
— library immersion .. From my early 20s till early 30’s, probably after NUS, I often felt inferior to some in my cohort — techno-preneurs, the OC-effective young managers, the young MBAs, CFAs, the finance professionals on the street of Raffles Place, sales/trading professionals in rEstate or Prudential,,,, In SG, the blue-collar engineer has a low status compared to in the U.S. I felt like an ugly duckling, esp. in the dating game. None of the role models in the media or in the community was a blue-collar programmer.
In NUS (more so in China universities), library immersion is a long tradition, but after we leave the campus, how many and who would keep the habit? Remember Alina.Zhao .. In the national library, I would read tech books all day long, and those young men don’t need to read that much. They would read business or magazines, even newspapers. Some of them read about rEstate or stocks, as they have an early start on personal finance. I could only watch on the sideline. (Now I am ahead of my cohort on personal finance.)
I think my 5-10 years of self-study in the library was slowly charging my batteries, or building my infrastructure like China did, or building the system like SG did.
Since then, technology industry, esp. software dev profession has grown more important, more valuable in the national economies not only of the U.S. but notably in China. U.S. tech profession offers excellent market depth, better than many of those professions listed earlier, esp. the sales profession.
* I underestimated the $value of my QQ capacity, absorbency, continuous/inquisitive/integrative learning,,, the qualities of the growing swan. These qualities were once associated with the ugly duckling.
* I overestimated tech churn, out-sourcing. (I didn’t underestimate the younger competitors.)
* I overestimated the $value of their professional qualifications, experience and people skills.
Q: When did I quietly overtake the bulk of “them” in terms of pff + career longevity prospect? (Clearly, some are still ahead but at my age I don’t strive to close the gap.)
A: perhaps during q3sg
Library immersion provides a defining example of FOLB. In my 2021 assessment I still follow the same rat-race criteria, the same midlife timetable . In this blogpost, I have not mellowed up or grown wiser.
During NUS years, one valuable harbor was the fast-food restaurants in shopping malls such as Ginza plaza. I used to stay until mall closing time. For many years after NUS, my #1 favorite harbor was the library. I also used fast-food restaurants and MRT trains. I always brought study material + other reading materials.
Nowadays I worry less about opening hours because I could sit in bus interchange with A/C + free wifi. I fee lucky to have the library, the free wifi in various locations, the laptop, git-blogg infrastructure. Adaptation (see the blogpost) and resilience. Nowadays I mostly use therapeutic blogging to recover, restore, calm down, regain focus.
Maybe I should start using more study materials for zqbx, for burn. Get on the offensive?