European Banking Congress

I came back recently from a trip to London and Germany, staffing my boss who was invited to speak at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt. Along the way, I was also lucky enough to meet up with my cousins in London, which was pretty cool too! This was my first trip out of the country on work and it was pretty exciting stuff! As she was a speaker, we also got VIP treatment with a car service that came right onto the airport runway, and tickets to probably the most extravagant black tie dinner I will attend in the foreseeable future. Perhaps the more amazing thing was being able to meet with all these important people and even have breakfast across from Sir Callum McCarthy, Chairman of the FSA in London! That was probably the single most mind-blowing thing for me over the course of the 3 days overseas...

If you're interested, the speech which I helped to draft can be found here.

Mormons Get Owned

Starlight Star Bright

As cheesy as the poster looks, and as flaky as the title sounds, this is actually a pretty good movie. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who has given it a bad review. Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman (the Sandman dude), Stardust is about this guy who unwittingly crosses from the real world into a fantasy realm when he promises to retrieve a fallen start for this girl he wants to marry. For those of you who are familiar with the Xanth series (which I read in Primary school), the idea is quite similar to the Mundania-Xanth divide. And unlike the last awesome film I watched (300), girls will enjoy this movie too!

Anyhow, long story short, go watch this film :)

Vlad the Impaler

Haven't put anything up in a while partly due to a faulty computer, and partly due to laziness. However, I could not resist putting this up. My mom decided to give my brother's stuff toys a bath, after which she proceeded to unleash the Spanish Inquisition on them. Alas, we live in terrifying times, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth...

Dinner & Dance 2007

The culmination of my first year at MAS as a Trainee Officer, the annual Dinner and Dance is the trial by fire (i.e. sai gang) that most newbies have to help organize, and by the grace of God, we survived :)

United 300

Nokia N93

A video my brother made...

The Game: Casino Royale

Last weekend, I participated in a treasure hunt/wild goose chase that stretched from 5pm on Saturday to 12 noon on Sunday. That was the longest stretch of consciousness I've experienced since my days in green :P

The game basically starts with a mighty difficult puzzle which you solve for a location in Singapore where (surprise!) you get to pick up another mighty difficult puzzle, and so on.... This game originated in the Bay area and was thoughtfully organized by a bunch of crazy Stanford folk who are trying to spread the gospel here.

You can try your hand at some of the puzzles from the Stanford game by clicking here.

God and the Stock Market

While this may sound somewhat sacrilegious, I think the stock market is a pretty good analogy for one's walk with God. Let us take the Sraits Times Index (STI) as our case in point and assume that how well our life is going is equivalent to the closing price of the STI each day.

For anyone just starting out at trading equities, or the more risky warrants, you know that emotions play a big part in determining where prices will be each day. Stock market guidebooks and gurus often talk about the 2 biggest hurdles that every investor needs to keep in check, namely fear and greed. But often times one cannot help but feel the pinch when a one-day correction wipes out over 5% of your investment (as on 28 Feb 2007).

In the same way, we occasionally face obstacles in life that appear so big that we just feel like throwing in the towel. Whether it's our relationships, or our work, or our spiritual walk, we get coaxed into thinking that all is lost. So we give up, cut our losses and swear never to use our hard-earned money to buy the STI ETF ever again.

However, had we taken a longer term view of the STI over the past 5 years, we see that the upward trend is undeniable, and Feb 07 was just a drop in the ocean. That's comforting for long-term investors, though not very useful info for the short-term punters. But our relationship with God is not meant to be a hit and run. When we said the Sinner's Prayer, we were signing up for the long-term.

The problem is that we don't have the benefit of nice on-line charts to remind us of God's plan for our lives. And that's where journalling comes in. I will be the first to admit that it requires quite a bit of discipline to do, but the benefits are well worth it. As you recall the times when you thought all was lost, we see the hand of God reaching down and plucking you out from the depths of despair.

So we derive our confidence in God from past experience (historical trends) as well as good fundamental knowledge. Looking at the chart below, the STI looks a lot less friendly if we take a super long-term view. So it's ok to sell, but we need to do so for the right reasons.


How do we get insight into the fundamentals? With shares, we look at all the wonderful ratios out there, like P/E, ROE, ROA, P/B, etc. With our spiritual lives, it's all about prayer and reading the Bible, i.e. getting in touch with the most important insider of them all.

Claiming to be a Christian and not praying regularly is kind've like buying a stock and not reading the company's annual report -- you don't really know what's going on and are just hoping for the best. It's no wonder that when 28 Feb 07 hits, you panic and liquidate your holdings, only to regret just 2 months later.

I think some of the ideas may not map very well to the STI analogy, but I hope you get the point :) For avoidance of doubt, this is not an inducement to buy the STI :P

The Economics of Gifts (A Guide for Guys)

A while back, it was brought to my attention that girls may view gifts differently from the guy who's giving the gifts. For guys, our perception of the gifts we give can be presented as follows:

U = A(t1)C1 + A(t2)C2 + ... + A(tn)Cn

Where

• U = utility derived by the girl (i.e. number of brownie points scored by the guy)
• Cn = monetary/time cost of "n-th" gift; Cn <1
• A(tn) is a function (different for every girl) that is dependant on the timing of the "n-th" gift (e.g. Valentines Day, Birthday, Anniversary, random day, etc.)

In reality, the U perceived by the girl may be more:

U = A(t1)(B+0.1C1) + A(t2)(B+0.1C2) + ... + A(tn)(B+0.1Cn),

where B>1.

With reference to the first equation, guys usually think that they can give 01 x gigantic present (high C) to leverage on the A(tn) and get the biggest bang for their buck/time. They also assume that A(tn) is diminishing in n and hence try not to give too many presents due to the diminishing marginal utility.

However, if the second equation is true, then we guys really need to re-work the strategy and skew it more towards quantity since gifts with a high C will not be able to affect U that much in the long run if n is pitifully small.

Apologies for the lack of proper subscripts. I'm having trouble formatting on blogger.

Singapore Boleh!

I spent my Saturday morning at work listening to a talk by Nicky Tan about his lessons learnt during his investigation into the collapse of Barings Bank back in 1995. For those of you who can't remember, Barings Bank was the oldest private bank in England at the time, but it was brought down "single-handedly" by a rogue trader, Nick Leeson, who was based in Singapore. Leeson made an astounding number of bad bets on futures contracts, and in so doing lost $1.4 billion on behalf of the bank, even though he was actually not allowed to do any prop trading. Meanwhile, the bank's management was supposedly oblivious to what was happening and kept on borrowing money to fund Leeson's trades, thinking that the trades were being done on behalf of their clients.

While some of the risk management lessons that Nicky Tan pointed out were certainly pertinent to the work that MAS does, probably my #1 take-home of the day was his advice to us as Singaporeans not to think too lowly of ourselves. At the time, the Bank of England was all out to drag Singapore's name through the mud and place the blame for Barings' collapse entirely on the shoulders of the Singapore regulators. Nicky Tan and his partner, Sundaresh Menon, both who were only in their early thirties at the time, managed to produce a report that was internationally recognised to be of better quality than that produced by the Bank of England's investigators and effectively helped to keep Singapore's reputation intact.

He went on to tell us about how he managed to beat Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse in carrying out a $15b restructuring all on the strength of a team of Singaporeans. While there may be an element of bragging in there, the point still stands that we really have to curb our 妄自菲薄 attitude and start believing in our God-given talents and abilities. We often get intimidated by people who speak better or dress better than us, but by adopting the typical Asian attitude of keeping quiet in class for example, half the battle is already lost.

The Underrated Investment

All working Singaporeans should know that our CPF account is split into "ordinary" and "special". The ordinary accounts (OA) pays 2.5% interest p.a., while the special account (SA) pays 4%. For both accounts, you can only start drawing down on them when you hit 55 years old.

Why does the SA pay you 4%? Because the government is trying to encourage long term savings. While the savings in the OA can be used to buy a home, pay for CPF insurance or for investment and education, the savings in the SA are for old age, contingency purposes and investment in retirement-related financial products. In other words, once you put money in the SA, it's pretty much stuck there till you're 55 (Note that the transfer from OA to SA is irreversible).

Many people view this as a bad thing, especially since many of us use CPF money to purchase property. However, let us consider the following:

1. It is probably not prudent to liquidate all your worldly possessions to pay for a house, hence it is likely that you're gonna have some savings left over even after purchasing a property
   
2. It is a good idea to start saving for retirement as early as possible so that you can experience the power of compound interest
3. Your bank account gives you a pretty crap interest on your savings
4. Stocks will give you 7-8% pa in the long run, but they are not without risks
5. The current yield on Singapore Government Bonds is around 3+% on the top end, but carries significantly lower risk compared to stocks.
   
6. A sensible asset allocation for your investment portfolio would have to involve some diversification across different asset classes, be they equities, bonds, commodities, etc.

So if we think of the CPF SA as a long term government bond with a practically risk-free 4% yield, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. So instead of buying bonds, transfer more funds into your SA! A strong case can be made for starting these transfers early when one looks at the power of compounding in action.

Why we Pray

The question regarding what's the point of prayer was something I struggled with back in my 2nd year of college. That summer, I had embarked on a bid to pen my thoughts down but I kind've got stuck half way and my computer subsequently crashed anyway.

Recently, a friend of mine sent out an e-mail with a couple of questions on prayer and how to approach it. This was my reply, albeit some 2 years in the making...

I think the very basic question we have to tackle first is whether prayer changes the way things play out. For example, if we're planning a picnic, can we somehow ensure that it doesn't rain if we pray and fast for the whole week before that? Several passages in the Bible seem to support this concept that prayer can somehow influence God's decisions. Examples would include Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32), Abraham pleading of for Sodom (Genesis 18:16-33) and the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8). Going along these lines, it would appear that "persistent prayer" would be equivalent to beating God into submission. So events like prayer retreats would be seen as concerted efforts to somehow change God's mind since we somehow know better than Him. To me, this does not paint a picture of a omnipotent and omniscient God. If we expected certain results every time we went through a series of rituals like prayer and fasting, we would be equating God to some kinds of scientific phenomenon where x + y = desired outcome. I believe that God is so much more than that.

Based on my understanding of the Bible, I believe that we can make the following statements about God:

1) God has our best interests at heart
2) God knows our desires and needs before we even utter a word

So how are we to understand prayer in that case? I believe that prayer is meant to change us rather than to change God. When we pray to God, we are essentially seeking to communicate with Him so as to build up our relationship. Why would we want to build up our relationship? So that we can be on the same page as God, discerning where He is at work and joining Him in that work. I believe prayer is more about aligning our interests and our direction with those of God, rather than trying to sway Him to see things our way. Why then do we say that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16b)? Because a righteous man's prayer would be in line with God's purposes and desires, and hence apparently more effective.

What I'm saying is not just "oh, it didn't happen coz God said no", but instead I'm taking it one step further to see prayer not as a vehicle for our desires to be fulfilled, but an opportunity to have them transformed into those of God.

So how does this play out when one is looking for a job or hoping for physical healing? I believe that we shouldn't box God in and expect Him to meet us the way we see fit. If we believe God is sovereign in all circumstances, even in the face of great uncertainty or adversity, then we shouldn't worry about not chalking up that 5 hrs of prayer a day coz God's going to be pissed off and therefore not answer our prayer positively. While we should certainly feel free to voice the desires of our heart, our focus should be on God and not ourselves. Easy to say, but hard to execute. Think about Paul who wrote a bunch of letters encouraging believers while he himself was in prison. If we take Colossians for example, Paul spends the bulk of the letter refuting Colossian heresy and trying to bring the church back on track. It is only at the end where he asks for the church to "pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains." (Colossians 4:3) This is very different from saying "please pray that I get out of prison 'coz I'm having a hard time here."

Hence I believe that in times of adversity, we should seek God's wisdom through prayer, so that we can have the peace that transcends all understanding in the face of trials. If we believe that God is sovereign and good, I see no reason for us to have to do a bunch of somersaults to catch his attention and have Him accede to our requests.

If any of the above is heresy, someone please let me know.