TimothyTiah.com

How not to invest in the stock market…

Posted on January 31, 2016 admin

I was having a discussion with a group of my friends recently. They were talking about the stock market and what kind of stocks to buy. One of us in the group chipped in and said we should buy Facebook stock, even after its stock price has gone up to hit a new historical high with its latest earnings report.

When we asked why? She said it’s because she can see her husband is addicted to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp every single day. Immediately this sparked a whole discussion.

Now let me add a disclaimer that I myself invested and own some Facebook stock and I’m still holding on to them right now. I think that Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba and all these companies are great companies and very dominant in their respective industries. Their business benefit from huge economies of scale and almost never in our history have we seen such dominant companies with such scale. Does that mean we should go and buy all these stocks?

The answer to that depends on the answer you have in buying anything. How much is it? It’s all a matter of price.

Think about it. A Bentley is a good car right? If I sell it to you in Malaysia for RM100,000 when the retail price is RM1 million. That’s a good buy. If I sell it to you for RM10,000,000 then it’s not a good buy.

So it’s a matter of price!

Netflix, Amazon, Google and a lot of these major tech companies in the US have hit their all time highs in the past year. Today if you had invested in Netflix or Tesla at their high, you would have lost some 30% of your money today. If you had invested in Amazon at its high 1you would have lost 15%. If you had invested in Alibaba at its high, you would have lost almost 50%.

Yet these are all very successful companies that are dominant in their industry with no close competitor in sight.

Now once we establish that it is about price. The next thing is to know is that the fundamentals of a business don’t necessarily carry a share price.

It’s investor sentiment that is shaped by the media.

Right now the media is saying lots of positive things about Facebook as a company and so everyone’s very positive about it. Slightly more than a year ago the media was saying lots of negative stuff about Netflix. About how content costs was going to destroy its bottom-line and make its business not scale-able so it’s stock was on a decline. Then suddenly the media changed it’s mind. They started painting Netflix very positively and it’s stock price shot up. Why the media changed their mind? Well maybe it’s because they saw something they like? Or maybe there’s just some greater force that’s pulling at the strings behind the scenes.

As the everyday person, we can’t control these things and the sooner we understand it the better we’ll be.

Let me share my own personal experience with you.

In 2014 I made some good money in the stock market. I felt really good about myself, that perhaps I was a master investor. 2014 happened to be a year that almost everybody made money in the stock market. So it wasn’t really because of my skill but because of me just being carried by the wave.

Then 2015 saw a terrible stock market decline and I lost everything I made in 2014 and possibly more.

The thing is I thought I was smart about these things. Back in December 2014, I read an article about shale oil and deduced that oil price was going to go down all the way. So I decided to bet that oil will go down without actually shorting oil itself. How do I do that?

I sold all my oil & gas related stocks. This turned out to be a good decision.

The second decision I made wasn’t a good one. I thought about which companies would benefit the most from a decline in oil prices and I figured airlines. Fuel costs were their biggest costs. So I looked at a few airlines and invested in Air Asia. Today I’ve lost about 50% of my money on Air Asia, and at one point was losing up to 70%. Air Asia was suffering from some short seller attack but beyond that a lot of other airlines were down.

Then there were stocks like banks that I thought were safe investments for dividend stocks. Those came down a lot too. HSBC dropped 20% in the past 6 months.

But what if you’re really sure that the company will do well each time it announces results?

What I’ve learned is that smashing expectations don’t always result in a surge in share price. I bought Apple stock about a year ago expecting that it would beat expectations in its earnings announcements. I was right. It smashed expectations but puzzling enough the share price went down instead.

It continued to smash expectations the next one or two quarters and the share price still continued to decline. Today it’s 30% down from its high.

The thing about the stock market is that it’s very hard to make money. People have professional jobs focused on trying to make money off the stock market and even then some of them don’t succeed. What more about people like us… who work in other industries but use the stock market as a passive investment vehicle.

I’ve learned that the best way for me to make money is to focus on my own business. Bet on myself because that’s how I made whatever I have today in the first place. By non-diversifying and betting on myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m telling you all about the stocks I lost money in but there were some that I made money in too but that’s not the point of this article. The point is just really to share my own personal experience with you guys so you don’t make the same mistake. This is not professional advice and I am in no way a professional investor.

One thing I’ve learned is that money is hard to earn. Whether it’s from the stock market or not.

7 Things my 2 year old toddler has taught me

Posted on January 26, 2016 admin

I first became a parent a little more than two years ago. Fighter was born into this world and my life changed. The expectations of a father dawned on me. That I now am no longer a son and a husband, I am now a father and as a father I have to bring up my son well. To teach him the rights from the wrongs in life so he would grow up to be a good man.

It recently dawned on me that over the past two years, my son has taught me as much as I have taught him about life. Here’s the key things that I feel he has taught me:

1) He taught me that an experience is only as good as the company you experience it with.

Fighter loves going to the childrens’ playground. He loves swinging on a swing, going up and down a slide and riding the see-saw. What I notice is that as much as he loves doing all those things, he only likes it when we are experiencing it with him.

Once we left him to play on a slide with us watching from a short distance away and he came around and insisted we join him. When we were by his side again, he screamed, squealed and laughed in excitement to the full experience he had of the playground.

2) He taught me how to find joy in the simplest things in life.

In adult life we constantly seek out the highs we get from buying something new or getting instant gratification when someone comments and likes your picture on Facebook. These things make us happy and gives us a high at least for a while, before we find the need to find something else again to excite us.

Fighter finds constant excitement in the smallest things. He loves cups and he loves just holding them and pretending to drink from them. He has loved them constantly for 6 months or so now and he still shows no signs of slowing down.

It’s not just cups. Sometimes Fighter gets excited by the smallest things. Like when he notices a car that looks like the car his grandfather drives or when he sees a new type of snack he hasn’t tried before.

Fighter loves the smallest things and he finds happiness in the things we take for granted.

3) He taught me that time (not money) is the most valuable thing you can give somebody.

Every day when I leave Fighter to go to work he clings on to me and he cries. He doesn’t want me to go no matter how many times I explain to him that that’s life. That daddy needs to go to work so he can earn money and support him.

To Fighter money doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the people who he loves are around him.

4) He taught me that there is no Chinese boy, Indian boy or Malay boy. There is only one type of boy.

Fighter doesn’t know racism. He can tell a difference when someone has darker skin when another, but he never associates that with a person being “different”.

Whether you’re Malay, Chinese, Indian, Nepalese or Bangladesh even. Fighter doesn’t treat you any different. If he likes you, he wants you to carry him. If he doesn’t then it doesn’t matter what your skin colour is, he just doesn’t want you to carry him.

5) He taught me to love things that you truly like, not what people tell you that you should or should not like.

Fighter loves Hello Kitty and he loves carrying womens’ handbags. At first we started telling that handbags are for ladies but he never really cared. Then it hit me.

In life we are constantly battling our personal preferences with what society expects us to like. Boys like action figurines, girls like dolls. Girls like One Direction, guys like U2. If you think about it, that doesn’t make sense. Why must we be told what we like. We like what we like and that’s what makes us individuals.

So today I no longer tell Fighter what to like. I just let him embrace what he does like.

6) He taught me to question everything and to never stop learning.

Fighter just learned to ask questions and he won’t stop asking them. Every day he looks at something and asks us “Mommy… what’s this?”.

Or sometimes he seems affirmation “Mommy… is it a phone?”.

Then he sees another phone and he asks the same question again and again to make sure he gets it right.

7) He taught me that if at first you don’t make it. Try again.

The first time Fighter tried walking. He fell. But he tried again and again. It’s not just walking too.

Every time he sees us eating spicy food he insists on having a try. We tell him that it’s spicy but he whines until we give him a try. Once he has a taste of it he cries until we extinguish the fire in his mouth with water. Immediately after, he asks for it again and again until the whole process repeats itself.

At first I was wondering why our son liked hurting himself then it occurred to me that maybe he just wanted to keep trying until he can understand why is it that even though it’s so painful to eat, we like to eat it all the time.

The Understated Perks of Wearing a Smartwatch

Posted on January 22, 2016 admin

This article is in collaboration with Huawei on the new Huawei Watch

I first toyed around with a smartwatch some one to two years ago. It didn’t last though. I ended up having some battery problems after a while so I chucked it away.

Then recently Huawei loaned me their latest smartwatch: The Huawei Watch (I like how they kept the name simple instead of coming up with a serial number or some techy title).

This is not a review of a Huawei Watch. If you want a review you can read a comprehensive one here, although I will share some of my thoughts on the Huawei Watch at the end of this article.

This article instead is about the little understated perks of wearing a smartwatch. What do I mean by “understated”?

Well you see when we’re sold the purpose of smartwatches we’re sold the features of it. I can track my heart rate and steps like a fitness band, I can see notifications, I can ask it for the nearest restaurant and Google would reply me. But how does that really fit into our lifestyle?

Here’s what I found the most useful about a smartwatch.

1) When you’re driving…

You know how when we’re driving and someone calls or messages you. We have this reflex to want to pick up your phone and check who’s calling and sometimes we do succumb to that only to remember that it’s a very dangerous thing to do while driving.

Well with the smartwatch all I gotta do is glance at my watch like I’m looking at the time and I know instantly who’s calling and whether or not it’s urgent for me to stop by the side of the road to answer it.

This is particularly useful at meetings or at the dinner table too. There’s a bit of a social stigma against looking at your phone while you’re at meetings or at dinner with friends. With a smartwatch though you can just take one glance at your wrist and you’ll know why your phone was buzzing.

It also helps that your watch vibrates when you get notifications because now my phone is silent almost all the time so I tend to miss my calls because I don’t feel the vibration in my pocket.

On my wrist though you almost always feel it.

This point of notifications has made a difference for me in my everyday lifestyle.

2) When you’re bored of having the same watch…

The thing about smartwatches especially Android Wear ones is that you can within a matter of a few seconds change your watch face to any of the thousands that you can find online. When you do that, you instantly get the sensation (or joy) or having a new watch.

I’ve had all sorts of different watch faces. Some days I opt for the more sporty looks, some days for the more complicated watch faces but some days I go for the simple ones. Click here for a whole list of watch faces you can get on Android Wear.

If you have the Huawei Watch like I do though, it comes built in with 40 different interchangeable watch faces. All you have to do is just long press the face and you can swap left and right for the different faces. I normally use the classic style faces rather than the too high-tech types. I find it goes with my dressing a little bit better.

3) When you lose your phone…

This happens countless countless times to me. I always lose my phone. Not lose it for an eternity but I leave it somewhere in my home and I forgot where. Was it in my kitchen? My living room? My bedroom?

Shouting normally ensues with me asking everybody in the house including the pet tortoise if they’ve seen my phone.

It doesn’t help that this always happens at the most inconvenient time like just before I’m rushing out to work or to meet someone. I’ve longed for a solution to this beyond just calling my phone because my phone is on silent almost all the time (I keep it on silent so that it doesn’t wake my kids up if they’re sleeping).

Finally Android Wear has one such solution. It’s an app called “Find my phone” where I can just with the push of a button on my watch it will trigger my phone to flash and ring even if it’s on silent.

I can’t begin to tell you how much time this has saved for me.

So far I’m really enjoying having a smartwatch again. If you’re thinking of getting one I think the Huawei Watch is a good candidate. What I like about it is the look and feel.

It doesn’t look like a toy watch or an electronic watch. It looks like a proper watch that you would wear every day. The one I have is awesome because it comes with a silver bracelet so it fits in to your dressing style without looking geeky or sticking out like a sore thumb.

I recently met with Abe from the Philippines who owns the tech blog Yugatech. I noticed that he was wearing a Huawei watch too and when I asked him about it he was raving about it. Raving about how he loves it and how he can’t wear any other watch now.

Compared to my first Android Wear experience one to two years back, I feel that Android Wear has really developed. Sure it still has a long way to go but good user experience isn’t just a software game but a hardware game too. If you get a phone or a watch with crappy hardware then you’re probably gonna get a bad Android experience.

When it comes to watches so far, I feel that the Huawei Watch’s hardware carries Android Wear really well.

5 Things Us Advertising Folks Get Wrong

Posted on January 17, 2016 admin

I’ve been exposed to the advertising and media world ever since we started Netccentric some 9 years ago now. I started with a blank slate. I didn’t know anybody let alone anything about the industry. I didn’t even know what the difference was between a creative or media agency is.

Over the years though I’ve learned more and more about the global multi-billion dollar advertising industry that giants like Google or Facebook build their fortunes on. The one thing I’ve found myself to really enjoy is pitching campaign ideas to clients. Something most if not all advertising folks do at one point or another of their lives.

With guidance from the more senior people in the industry, I’ve learned quite a number of things. Some mistakes I used to make myself.

Pitching the use of a new medium is NOT a campaign idea.

We live in a world where technology constantly gives advertisers new ways to reach an audience. For the longest time we’ve only had TV, radio, print and outdoor. This went on for decades.

In the past decade alone we’ve seen MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and now Snapchat, Periscope, Dayre… the list goes on.

The mistake we sometimes make in this industry is when pitching a new campaign idea to a client we go
“Lets use Periscope for this. No brand has used Periscope yet in Malaysia”.

It’s great to be at the forefront of new technology but make no mistake about it. Using Periscope or any new app isn’t a campaign idea. It’s a medium. (And no… augmented reality is not a campaign idea or a big idea).

So what is a campaign idea? This brings me to my second point.

2) Campaign ideas come from delivering a simple message.

My inspiration of this is the TV series Mad Men. It’s a series about a fictional advertising agency in the 1960s, a time where there was no internet, no mobile phones. Just TV, Print and Radio. That’s all they had to reach the customers of their clients.

With all those distractions of other mediums out of the way the advertising people there sold their ideas on one thing and one thing alone. A simple message that people can associate with a brand.

Think about it. What are the most successful brand campaigns you remember today? In Malaysia it’s the DiGi Yellow Man that had one simple message “I will follow you”.

Globally my favorite is “The man your man could smell like” (Old Spice) or Dove (the Campaign for Real Beauty).

Simple messages work because people can remember them, especially so if that simple message resonates with them somehow. Years ago T-Mobile did a really successful flash mob as an ad campaign. Their team and message “Life is for sharing”. About people at that flash mob taking videos with their phones and sharing it with their friends.

Right after that brands all over the world did their own flash mobs but few of them if any tied the flash mobs to any brand message.

Ask any consumer if they remember the flashmob. Chances are you might get a yes. Ask them if they remember which brand did it and what that brand was trying to say. I’m sure you’ll get a NO.

On the other hand, if you’re in Malaysia, say the words “I will follow you” to 10 people and a good number of them will on their own accord associate it with “DiGi”.

3. Noisy slides in Presentations

Another inspiration I got from Mad Men was how simple their slides was. To make a point it was just one picture and then storytelling. And then another picture and then storytelling.

In a world where we often send powerpoint slides as proposals, we forget that they both have really different purposes. Slides for presentations need to be simple so that the audience is focused on listening to the presenter. Slides for proposals though need to pack in all the details.

The trouble of course is that most advertising folks are constrained when it comes to time so we often combine the presentation slide and the proposal slide. In an ideal world though, the presentation slide really doesn’t need to be that complicated.

Look at how Don Draper presents here in Mad Men. Simple slides. Powerful storytelling.

4. Over-fluffing it

Now that we’re a listed company a lot of my work now involves dealing with lawyers, bankers and people from various different industries. I gotta say advertising folks tell a story best and tend to have the nicest slides too.

The one thing advertising people do a little too much sometimes though is fluffing things up. Yes some fluff is accepted to make a story or an idea more exciting but I’ve seen presentations with so much fluff you’d think this pet here was bald.

Clients and brand managers are more educated in recent years too when it comes to technology so fluffing digital ideas backfire. Heck there are some clients you can’t bullshit whether it’s digital or not.

One such person I’ve known during my time is a lady named Su Lin. Everybody knows not to fluff her and not to bullshit her because she will see right through it and shoot you down faster than a Japanese Zero in the Battle of the Philippines Sea.

5. Getting lost in all the other success metrics when really the main purpose of a brand advertising is….

SALES. Not likes. Not followers. Not views. Not comments. None of that. Just sales.

Sure it’s hard to track these things when you’re doing one tactical campaign and you’re one cog in the entire machinery that influences sales in a company but in any idea we do… don’t forget that the end long term goal (maybe not the immediate) is often sales or revenue.

My Wife’s YouTube videos

Posted on January 13, 2016 admin

One of my favorite Youtube videos to watch now are those belonging to Fourfeetnine aka my wife.

It’s amazing. She just decided one day to start vlogging for someone with no knowledge of how to edit videos. So she picked everything up from online tutorials and in this short span of time (I think it’s been a month), her videos are now really amazing.

Plus it also helps that the cast in the video is also my kids. Haha… so I get to watch them and relive the moments that I missed out on. Her video views have been increasing steadily too and she’s really been getting a lot of encouragement from her readers.

So here’s some encouragement from her husband. Shorty, I love your YouTube videos. Keep going!

And everyone if you’re looking to watch one, here’s her latest video. This one is of the day I sent Fighter to school and how he was so sad he had to go. Oh and a very Happy Mochi… possibly because when Koko is at school she gets all the attention at home.

You can click on her channel and subscribe.

Why success is really more luck than hard work

Posted on January 9, 2016 admin

We’re all brought up to believe that working hard will equal success. In school we’re taught that if we study harder, we’ll get better grades. In sports if we practice more, we’ll perform better and at work if you work harder, you’ll be more successful.

People confirm that too. Some successful people sometimes share that their success was attributed to their hard work which reinforces the very hypothesis that working hard = success.

I grew up with that belief but over the years I’ve begin to change my mind. When I’m interviewed by journalists they often ask me what’s my secret of success. Was it hard work, was it perseverance, what was it?

I agree that hard work and perseverance is part of the journey to success but it’s more of a requirement than a reason for success.

A lot of people work hard but yet not all of them are successful. How do you explain that if hard work = success?

My wife put this most aptly for me one day when I was whining to her about how tired I was after a long day of work.

She said

“You want to know who works hard? Our Filipino helper who spends 2 years away from her family in a foreign land and in these two years spends almost every waking hour working. That’s someone who works hard”.

That hit me. A lot more people out there work harder than I do. I can’t imagine anyone working harder than my Filipino helper who spends years away from home and literally lives at her workplace. So if hard work equals success why aren’t journalists lining up to interview her and ask her about her success?

The answer boils down to a number of things. Her circumstances that she was born in and the opportunities she was given. All these things are a factor of LUCK. Not hard work. I was born in better circumstances but I did nothing to earn or deserve it. I was just simply lucky.

I was given the opportunity to do business and yes I leaped at it when I saw it but some people don’t have the fortune of acting on an opportunity even if they see it.

Apart from the circumstances that we’re born from, luck plays a huge part in business too. Oil and commodity prices in Malaysia falling are causing the Ringgit to fall. That’s bad for many Malaysians and businesses too but on the other side glove manufacturers are posting stellar results because they sell in USD and their raw material prices have come down. That’s luck. Perhaps one day their luck will change but for now they have that luck and they’re doing well for it.

I certainly don’t speak for every entrepreneur out there but if anyone asks me why I’m successful, my answer is that it’s not because I work harder than anyone else. Yes I work hard… but more importantly, I’ve been lucky.

How this single mother quit her job, started a business and now earns 5 times what she used to

Posted on January 5, 2016 admin

This article is a collaboration with Shopee Malaysia.

What was one of the things you never imagined people sell online in Malaysia? How about tattoo equipment? Yes tattoo equipment meaning things like needles, ink or sterilization solution.

2015-12-21_05-47-09

Everything that you might need in order to paint a tattoo onto someone. The online store that sells it is called Moon Tattoo Supply started by a lady that goes by the name Moon.

Moon first got into the tattoo equipment business when she first started out in the working world. She worked for 5 years in a company that sells tattoo equipment and learned the ropes. At the age of 23, she became a mom to a baby girl.

With the added family responsibilities of being a single mom, Moon decided that she had to make more money. So after she left her job of 5 years she decided to venture out on her own as an entrepreneur.

She started her own tattoo equipment supply company that sold tattoo equipment online. Her initial online business traction prompted her to expand her business to also sell a personal passion of hers: Handcrafted jewelry like this piece.

Sales grew really well so she has now expanded her inventory to include other ready made jewelry that she thinks look great.

Today she has a small business that employs 3 full-time employees. She also makes 5 times of what she used to make as a salary person with her earnings and sales growing.

Moon testifies that one thing that is driving her sales for her handcrafted jewelry business is a new ecommerce platform that she just got on to recently called Shopee. Shopee isn’t the first ecommerce platform that had approached her to set up shop. Far from it really. Moon tried many different apps but they all struggled with different issues. Some didn’t have a payment gateway, some had a delivery system that left much to be desired or no chatting applications or even that the app would take a long time to upload a product. Shopee on the other hand handled all these things really well.

In the past in order to sell handmade jewelry she would have to take up a spot at a bazaar. Bazaars worked for her but there were issues.

The main issue being time. Moon would go to bazaars every day and spend the entire day there, leaving very little time to spend with her daughter. Today with Shopee she connects with her clients via the mobile phone and no longer needs to be at a bazaar to sell to them. Similarly her customers no longer have to get into a car just to buy her stuff. So she saves time and can focus on selling what matters to her.

It’s amazing how technology has built businesses like Moon’s and how they have evolved. How a business that used to be conducted physically moved to the web and now from the web to mobile. Today’s technology didn’t just help Moon achieve financial independence but it also gave her the time she needed as a single mother.

When I asked Moon about what she did so that she was able to make it, she said “Keep going no matter what, understand what your clients’ need and keep up with the trends”.

Today Moon is one of the many entrepreneurs on Shopee, a platform with over 200,000 users in Malaysia. Her store on Shopee lists 1,452 products for sale and has 85% positive reviews which sounds like she has really high customer satisfaction.

So if you want to start a business and sell something or just go shopping from your phone, check out Shopee on the App Store and Google Play.

With my collaboration with Shopee I’ve got a promo code you can use when you sign up.

Use TIMOTHYTIAH when you sign up and you’ll get an RM20 discount with a minimum spend of RM50. It’s only valid for the first 200 users, first time users and one time use only. Not valid for tickets, vouchers, mobile top-ups and bill payments. The code expires on the 10th of January 2016, 11.59PM.

A small group of American Soldiers in the Vietnam War were murdering and raping Vietnamese villagers until this man intervened

Posted on January 3, 2016 admin

I’ve been doing a lot of holiday reading and I came across the story of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. I want to share it because I find the actions of this one individual refueled my faith in humanity.

Mankind’s brutal history has seen us responsible for massacres like The Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking (along with more recent ones in Africa and Syria) and very often we don’t hear stories about someone standing up for innocent people being killed.

This is one of the few times where someone did stand up.

I’m going to cut and paste the key points from the Wikipedia article and summarize them since I think Wikipedia tells the story best.

For a full account you can read here and here.

How it all started

The My Lai massacre took place in on 16 March 1968.
Before engagement, Colonel (COL) Oran K. Henderson, the 11th Brigade commander, urged his officers to “go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good”.^[20] In turn, LTC Barker reportedly ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy food supplies, and destroy the wells.^[21]
On the eve of the attack, at the Charlie Company briefing, Captain (CPT) Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would be NLF or NLF sympathizers.^[22] He was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children.
The villagers, who were getting ready for a market day, at first did not panic or run away, and they were herded into the hamlet’s commons. Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from the Charlie Company, said during the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division’s (CID) inquiry that the killings started without warning. He first observed a member of the 1st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet. Then, the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well. Further, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense. They were praying and crying. They were all killed by shots in the head.^[32]
When PFC Michael Bernhardt entered the subhamlet of Xom Lang, the massacre was underway:I walked up and saw these guys doing strange things…Setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them…going into the hootches and shooting them up…gathering people in groups and shooting them… As I walked in you could see piles of people all through the village… all over. They were gathered up into large groups. I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village – old papa-sans, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive.^[39]6. One group of 20-50 villagers was walked to the south of Xom Lang and killed on a dirt road. According to Ronald Haeberle’s eyewitness account of the massacre, in one instance,There were some South Vietnamese people, maybe fifteen of them, women and children included, walking on a dirt road maybe 100 yards [90 m] away. All of a sudden the GIs just opened up with M16s. Beside the M16 fire, they were shooting at the people with M79 grenade launchers… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.^[40]

The killings went on until Warrant Officer One Hugh Thompson Jr intervened.

Thompson and his crew, who at first thought the artillery bombardment caused all the civilian deaths on the ground, became aware that Americans were murdering the Vietnamese villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu (chín Tẩu), was murdered right in front of them by Captain Ernest Medina, the commanding officer of the operation. According to Larry Colburn,

“Then we saw a young girl about twenty years old lying on the grass. We could see that she was unarmed and wounded in the chest. We marked her with smoke because we saw a squad not too far away. The smoke was green, meaning it’s safe to approach. Red would have meant the opposite. We were hovering six feet off the ground not more than twenty feet away when Captain Medina came over, kicked her, stepped back, and finished her off. He did it right in front of us. When we saw Medina do that, it clicked. It was our guys doing the killing.”^[8]

2. Immediately after the execution, Thompson discovered the irrigation ditch full of Calley’s victims. Thompson then radioed a message to accompanying gunships and Task Force Barker headquarters, “It looks to me like there’s an awful lot of unnecessary killing going on down there. Something ain’t right about this. There’s bodies everywhere. There’s a ditch full of bodies that we saw. There’s something wrong here.”^[2]^:75 Thompson spotted movement in the irrigation ditch, indicating that there were civilians alive in it. He immediately landed to assist the victims. William Calley approached Thompson and the two exchanged an uneasy conversation.^[2]^:77

Thompson: What’s going on here, Lieutenant?

Calley: This is my business.

Thompson: What is this? Who are these people?

Calley: Just following orders.

Thompson: Orders? Whose orders?

Calley: Just following…

Thompson: But, these are human beings, unarmed civilians, sir.

Calley: Look Thompson, this is my show. I’m in charge here. It ain’t your concern.

Thompson: Yeah, great job.

Calley: You better get back in that chopper and mind your own business.

Thompson: You ain’t heard the last of this!

3. As Thompson was speaking to Calley, Calley’s subordinate, Sergeant David Mitchell, fired into the irrigation ditch, killing any civilians still moving.^[2]^:78Thompson and his crew, in disbelief and shock, returned to their helicopter and began searching for civilians they could save. They spotted a group of women, children, and old men in the northeast corner of the village fleeing from advancing soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Company C. Immediately realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese civilians, Thompson landed his helicopter between the advancing ground unit and the villagers.^[2]^:79 He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and told them he would shoot the men in the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians.^[2]^:81 While Colburn and Andreotta focused their guns on the 2nd Platoon, Thompson located as many civilians as he could, persuaded them to follow him to safer location, and ensured their evacuation with the help of two UH-1 Huey pilots he was friends with.^[4]^:138-139

4. Low on fuel, Thompson was forced to return to a supply airstrip miles outside the village. Before they departed the village, Andreotta spotted movement in the irrigation ditch full of bodies. According to Trent Angers in The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story (2014),

“The helicopter looped around then set down quickly near the edge of the ditch. Andreotta had maintained visual contact with the spot where he saw the movement, and he darted out of the aircraft as soon as it touched the ground. Thompson got out and guarded one side of the chopper and Colburn guarded the other. Andreotta had to walk on several badly mangled bodies to get where he was going. He lifted a corpse with several bullet holes in the torso and there, lying under it, was a child, age five or six, covered in blood and obviously in a state of shock.”

The child, Do Ba, was pulled from the irrigation ditch and after failing to find any more survivors, Thompson’s crew transported the child to a hospital inQuang Ngai.^[2]^:215

After transporting the child to the hospital, Thompson flew to the Task Force Barker headquarters (Landing Zone Dottie), and angrily reported the massacre to his superiors.^[4]^:176-179 His report quickly reached Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the operation’s overall commander. Barker immediately radioed ground forces to cease the “killings”. After the helicopter was refueled, Thompson’s crew returned to the village to ensure that no more civilians were being murdered and that the wounded were evacuated.^[2]^:89

After the incident, Hugh Thompson Jr filed an official report.

Thompson made an official report of the killings and was interviewed by Colonel Oran Henderson, the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade (the parent organization of the 20th Infantry).^[10] Concerned, senior Americal Division officers cancelled similar planned operations by Task Force Barker against other villages (My Lai 5, My Lai 1, etc.) in Quang Ngai Province, possibly preventing the additional massacre of further hundreds, if not thousands, of Vietnamese civilians.^[2]^:219-220

US Commanders tried and almost succeeded in covering up the massacre.

Initially, commanders throughout the American chain of command were successful in covering up the My Lai massacre. Thompson quickly received theDistinguished Flying Cross for his actions at My Lai. The citation for the award fabricated events, for example praising Thompson for taking to a hospital a Vietnamese child “…caught in intense crossfire”. It also stated that his “…sound judgment had greatly enhanced Vietnamese–American relations in the operational area.” Thompson threw away the citation.^[4]^:204-205

When news of the incident broke, Hugh Thompson started receiving death threats, hate mail and mutilated animals on his doorstep.

In late-1969, Thompson was summoned to Washington, DC to appear before a special closed hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. There, he was sharply criticized by congressmen, in particular Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.), who were anxious to play down allegations of a massacre by American troops.^[4]^:290-291 Rivers publicly stated that he felt Thompson was the only soldier at My Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and unsuccessfully attempted to have him court-martialed.^[3] As word of his actions became publicly known, Thompson started receiving hate mail, death threats, and mutilated animals on his doorstep.^[5]

30 years after the incident though, Hugh Thompson found recognition in his actions.

In 1998, exactly 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier’s Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. “It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did,” then-Major General Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three “set the standard for all soldiers to follow.” Additionally on March 10, 1998, Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) entered a tribute to Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta into the record of the U.S. Senate. Cleland said the three men were “true examples of American patriotism at its finest.”^[22]

In the end, an estimated 347-504 civilians were killed in this massacre and that number would’ve been much more if it wasn’t for Hugh Thompson Jr’s actions. It must’ve taken tremendous courage for him to do what he did.

As I read this story, I’m reminded of a really famous quote:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

While I pray that these massacres are never repeated again in future, I do hope that if they do, men like Hugh Thompson Jr will stand up against it.

What I’m grateful for in 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 admin

It’s the last day of 2015 and boy has 2015 been a tough year for me. That aside I decided that I wanted to reflect and note the things that I’m grateful for that happened this year. I’ve linked each one to a relevant blog post to each thing so you can read more about it and see pictures of those moments in the entries.

Penny

The biggest thing for me this year is the birth of my baby girl Penelope Rose Tiah. She’s 9 months old this month and has grown cuter and cuter by the day. Just like her brother she’s had to fight a little at a young age. She had a hernia at just a couple of months old and we had to send her for surgery.

Fortunately the surgery was a success and everything is okay with her now. I’m grateful for her.

2) A Week in London

Right after our IPO this year I took a short break to London with Shorty. Ming was kind enough to let us stay at his beautiful flat there and I feel we had a good time to get rested and explore London as a couple. We did miss our kids a lot though which meant we gave them extra kisses when we got home.

3) Netccentric IPO

This time last year I was busy working on the preparation for our IPO. It’s been a really tough process and a scary one too. In the middle of 2015 we were seeing volatile stock markets around the world and we kept wondering if the markets would get so bad we won’t be able to list the company when the time came. True enough we listed the company on what could be the worst possible day of the year.

The day the market opened after the Greek Referendum. Fortunately though we managed to find the investors we need and still listed the company. I’m grateful for that.

4) Achieving a fitness milestone

This year was the first time I went for a century ride. That means a 160KM cycling ride. Doing that kind of distance was something unthinkable just a year before so finally doing it felt really good. I’m grateful for making it through and not falling into the temptation of giving up halfway.

5) Good Health

This year is the year I discovered that I have not one but two cyst in my pancreas. I’m not sure yet if it is benign or malignant but doctors so far think it’s okay. I have to go back for a test 6 months from now but I’m grateful that it looks okay so far.

It’s also the first year that I’ve been able to break by sugar addiction. I used to take a lot of sugar drinks but now I’ve just about cut them all out.

6) Viral articles

2015 was a year that I saw more and more articles from my blog go viral. Recent ones are my story about the milk company to about KevJumba both which got over 150K shares.

All in all, 2015 was a year I had lots to be grateful for. I’m hoping 2016 will be an even better year.

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas with the little Family

Posted on December 25, 2015 admin

Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s my 31st Christmas and this one has been really different than the past ones. Why? The real reason is the kids.

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You see I’ve never really been the type to celebrate Christmas. I mean I do buy Christmas presents and all but my family doesn’t really celebrate it officially. Christmas also happens to be my parents’ anniversary so most of our Christmas are just spent having an anniversary dinner with my parents.

All this changed when I started living away from my parents (so I can’t always have anniversary dinners with them) and when I have kids. Like now.

The thing about Christmas is that it’s a really magical festive time. Almost like Disneyland. I wanted my kids to be able to experience this magic growing up. Believing that Santa Claus did exist and that they were getting presents for being good.

Last year Fighter was probably too young to appreciate or know anything but this year he’s old enough (Penny’s still too young though).

So we made sure that we put up a nice Christmas tree at home. Decorated it with ornaments and lights and over the past few weeks put more and more presents under the Christmas tree.

Then Christmas day morning we let Fighter open up all his presents one by one. Along with Penny. Yeah we didn’t wait for Boxing Day.

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Fighter had presents from me and Shorty. We decided to buy him really educational toys. Then he also had presents from his aunties and uncles that got him everything from an inflatable remote controlled Minion to a stuffed Peppa Pig. Both of which are his favorite cartoons.

Penny’s presents were really simple. We bought her a teapot (which Fighter hijacked and seemed to like over his presents).

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And we bought her a small round thing that she can chew (something Shorty picked). True enough she didn’t like the teapot that much but she loved that round thing she could chew.

We spent our Christmas doing a few things. We spent it opening presents so he had a sense of receiving. We let him give presents so he had a sense of giving.

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And we had dinner with the family so he knows that Christmas is also about the family getting together. It’s the end of Christmas Day now and Fighter is upstairs getting ready for bed as I write this.

I can safely say though that he enjoyed his day. For Penny… I don’t think she realized what was going on most of the time but she looked like she had fun too.

Oh and she also looked really cute in her Christmas dress.

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Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you guys had a wonderful one.

Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space

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