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Going for a century ride? Here’s what you need to prepare.

Posted on February 2, 2015 admin

I just finished my very first 160KM century ride. It was super fun. I think in terms of timing I did pretty poorly taking almost 6 and a half hours of total time (in comparison the first person to cross the finish line did it at 4 hours plus) but I had lots of fun.

Part of the fun was also in the build up to the century ride. I was going with a group of 5 friends and we all were talking about what we need to prepare for it a week before. So I decided to put together this thread to share whatever I learned from some of the more seasoned riders about how to prepare for a century ride.

1) The training a week before

People seemed to tell me different things about how to train the week before. Some say I should ride more, some say I should ride less. Some say I shouldn’t even ride at all a few days before.

I’ve read a lot of different articles online about how much to train in the week leading up to the ride and they all differ in some ways. One useful article I read was this one.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the discipline to follow through with that regime which is probably why I took 6 hours to finish it.

2) Nutrition

Eating is a really important part of cycling long distance. You need to be able to pump back carbs into your system so that you have more energy to keep you going.

What the seasoned riders I know told me was that you have to consume one power gel every 45 minutes to an hour. So estimate how many you need to bring based on how many hours you think you’d take.

Also bring energy bars and bananas too but careful not to overeat. If you eat too much too quickly then you’ll feel bloated and that will work against you being able to ride.

3) Salt Pills

This is super important. On long rides especially rides with lots of climbs you tend to get cramps. Nothing worse than having cramps when you have another 50 KM to go. So my friends recommended that we take salt pills (which you can buy from cycling shops and from different brands). The pills are taken one every hour or once every 2 hours depending on the brand.

At the end of the race all of us felt like the pills made a difference. We were all feeling some cramps building up but it never came. We attributed it all to the salt pills.

4) Carb loading

The night before or actually the few days before, we’re all supposed to carb load. There are lots of articles online about how to do this effectively but in short, just eat lots of carbs. We gotta pick our carbs though. Rice and noodles don’t necessarily make the best carbs compared to slow release carbs like pasta or wholemeal bread with peanut butter and jam.

The night before my century ride I had pasta and a bowl of roasted potatoes. In the morning I had wholemeal bread with peanut butter.

5) Sleep conditioning

Having enough sleep before a long ride is crucial. Because most long rides happen really early in the morning, it helps to condition yourself to sleep early and wake up early the week before the ride.

6) Go early and get as far in front of the starting line as possible

This is a newbie mistake I often make. I often take my time and not bother to push all the way to the front of the starting line. If you’re a relatively decent rider, you’ll wanna start as far in front as possible because then you can follow as many pelotons (groups of riders to block the wind resistance) as possible. If you can’t keep up with the very first one, then drop back to the second, and the third and subsequent ones.

But if you start at the back, then you don’t have as many to drop back to. This matters a lot. There’s nothing worse than being caught without a peloton and having to pull yourself through all the wind resistance which was what happened to me somewhere in the last quarter of the ride.

To give you an idea, my average speed in the first half of the ride was something like 32-40KM/H (mostly on the flats). By the last 30KM of the ride when I was riding alone or in very small groups it 15-20KM/H. Both fatigue and not having a peloton to follow had something to do with it.

So that’s it guys. That’s what I’ve learned from my cycling friends this far. I might have missed out some things or you may have a different way of preparing for a ride. If you do feel free to share. I’d love to learn.

An Amazing Moment Captured In the Netccentric office this week

Posted on January 30, 2015 admin

I’ve been really busy this whole week. It’s one of those weeks that just fly by and at the end of each day I’m laying down at home with my mind so exhausted I just can’t think. Sometimes Shorty asks me questions or just to talk and for that moment I can’t. I just tell her I need a minute … it’s like my brain needs some time to reboot before I can continue the rest of my day.

While I’ve been really busy I’ve also been so motivated. We’re working on so many exciting things in the company and every day is so fulfilling because I feel like we’re closer and closer to achieve our goals. The one thing that helps is my colleagues. No matter how exhausted I am, it helps that I see them working passionately in their own ways too. I draw my strength from them sometimes.

Then sometimes… every now and then we get to see amazing moments that just happen in the office. This week’s one was caught on video by one of my colleagues.

You see some of the Nuffies (my colleagues) were sitting in the conference room doing some work right after they finished a meeting. Suddenly a new Nuffie came in and introduced himself. Everyone learned that he was a guitar teacher. So they pulled out a guitar (I have no idea why my office has a guitar but it just does). And they started singing something.

Everyone just sang their heart out. No expectations, nobody to impress. Just singing in the middle of the workday.

Here’s the awesome video.

Thanks Adele for taking the video and Rachel for sharing it.

5 Excuses We Give Ourselves To Not Pursue our Dreams

Posted on January 26, 2015 admin

This awesome topic is sponsored by AmBank TRUE Lab

When I look at my 18 month old son today I see innocence in his eyes and a big curiosity for the world. He wants to explore every place, touch and taste everything. That reminds me of how I was as a kid. My mind saw the things around me and I immediately formulated dreams.

Dreams of things I knew I wanted to do at some point in my life. Some of us want to travel for a year, some want to own a bar… my dream is to own a steamboat restaurant of my own (I can go on to a whole new article about why I want to do a steamboat restaurant but I’ll save that for another day).

The sad thing is that as we grow older in life we face more responsibilities. Students have tougher and tougher exams to sit for. Young working adults have to battle the struggles of the working world and parents have family commitments.

It’s because of this that we often put aside our dreams and eventually never pursue them. Thinking back today… I have my dreams too and I’ve never pursued them. In writing this article I wondered why and then I realized… it’s because of the following excuses we tell ourselves every now and then.

1) I don’t have the time

This is a common reason we give ourselves and is certainly the most common I give myself on why I still don’t own a steamboat restaurant today. I tell myself I’m already so busy with my current business, and with family commitments… man how do I even start?

But deep inside I know that if I wanted to bad enough, I could find the time for it. It’s just a matter of when and how.

2) I don’t have the skills necessary

Sometimes we worry we don’t have the skills we need to pursue that dream. For this though let me tell you an inspiring story.

I have a friend whom I had known since I was in college. His name is Bryan.

Bryan is a really smart guy. He graduated from an Ivy League College. When I met him, he was really really sold into the dream of China. He believed that China was going to be the new economic superpower of the world (back then it wasn’t yet the 2^nd largest economy in the world). And he believed in the opportunities that existed there.

He wanted to start a life there right after graduation. There was one problem though. He didn’t speak a word of Chinese. The same reason that held back a lot of my other friends who too believed in the same China dream.

Bryan was different. He didn’t care. Shortly after he finished college he booked a plane ticket to Shanghai and never looked back since. Today he owns a business there, married a Chinese wife and speaks fluent Chinese.

3) I have commitments

This is another struggle we often face once we’re out in the working world. We have commitments. We have bills to pay, a lifestyle to maintain and so our dreams will have to wait.

For this I have another story, one that belongs to someone I met briefly once. Lets name him Jack.

Jack had always wanted to travel the world but he was tied down with commitments. He hadn’t had a family yet but he had bills to pay. Yet he knew that if he didn’t go on his trip around the world he would never be able to do it once he had started a family. So for years he worked his bank job and saved up as much money as he could. Then one day he quit.

He had parked aside enough money to pay all his bills and travel on a shoestring budget around the world for a year. He went backpacking everywhere. From Europe to Africa, South America and more. At the end of it he collected a passport with enough stamps to make a travel blogger proud. He came back and found another job. He was ready to go back to his usual routine life… because he had already lived his dream.

4) What if I fail?

Failure is a chain that holds us back. Because we fear failure, we fear even trying and if we don’t try, we don’t stand even a 1% chance of succeeding in living or achieving a dream.

History is full of presidents, entrepreneurs, inventors and great scientists that have failed many times before. Not being afraid of failure is tough. I know because I still have that fear. Know that fear is there, but don’t let it hold you down.

5) I don’t have the money

Of all the excuses we often tell ourselves, the biggest of them all is this: Money. You need money to do things. You need money to travel, you need money to start a steamboat restaurant, you need money to pursue a career as an artist. You need money.

The truth is there are many ways to get the money to fund your dreams. Whether it’s raising money from an investor for a business or saving money for a round-the-world trip.. but yes none of it is easy. That’s why we often give up on our dreams.

The purpose of this article is to tell you one other way and that’s in the crowd-sourcing platform called TRUE Lab by AmBank. It’s created for young professionals to get on there, voice their opinions, share their ideas and connect with other like-minded young people.

Financial solutions form the backbone of nearly every endeavor so naturally, TRUE Lab also hopes to listen to the upcoming generation about what would constitute their ideal banking and financial solution.

The TRUE Blog page will feature weekly tips and advice on life, realizing your potential and even success stories and tips from an individual who has ‘made it’ in their field.

But that’s just one part of it. TRUE Lab is asking us (well you guys, the young sparks with unlimited potential) to share own your ideas. It could be anything – a business idea, a secret dream you hope to fulfill someday, a hobby/passion that’s a huge part of your life. Each idea submitted will then be judged based on the number votes by fellow TRUE Lab users and a panel of judges.

Share your idea now and you could win the exciting grand prize of RM50,000 to make that idea come true!

You can read more about it here.

Sign up and share your ideas before 15^th February 2015 and you stand a chance to win a pair of movie tickets to any movie of your choice for every original idea submitted! All you need to do is include the link to your idea and your email address in the comment box below.

PS: Tell you what. Once you share your idea leave a comment on my blog to tell me which one is yours. I’ll personally pick the best one and I’ll use my blog and/or maybe Dayre/Twitter to help promote your idea ok?

5 New Things in My Life in January

Posted on January 24, 2015 admin

I seem to really like writing lists lately. Not so much because of its click-baiting nature or anything like that but because it very easily establishes a structure of my blog entry for me. So today I’m gonna try something different. I’m gonna apply that lists format to my personal life.

Here’s 5 things new in my life in January.

1) Went for our company trip in Bali

Company trip this year was in Bali. I wasn’t particularly excited about Bali at first because I went there once with Shorty and family and we didn’t enjoy it. Traffic was really bad, there were a lot of mosquitoes everywhere and we didn’t particularly like the food there. We spent most of the time in a villa we rented.

This company trip though helped me see a different side of Bali. While we did visit temples and all, the 80 Nuffies or so who made it to the company trip liked partying. So we spent two nights in a row going out and exploring the clubs and bars in Bali. It was a different Bali experience and it was fun… but I was so glad to come home to my Shorty and my Fighter at the end of it. Missed them loads.

2) I’ve been cycling intensively

Early next month I have a cycling race that I signed up for. It’s 160KM. So the bunch of us are training really hard for it. I’ve done just a little over 100KM before but never 160KM. So I don’t know what it’s going to be like.

Just this morning I rode 90KM to a town called Titi. Had to climb mountains on my bicycle just to get there. Definitely one of the hardest rides I’ve ever had to do. Hope my next update will say I completed the 160KM race successfully.

3) I’ve began an addiction to coffee

I’m careful to try not to drink coffee in the morning because I don’t want to be something I need just to feel fully awake. So I normally have coffee in the afternoon and guess what. Now I’m addicted to coffee after lunch. If not I feel sleepy.

I’m hardly a coffee purist or anything. I drink ice-coffee most of the time. This month I also had a chance to visit my friend’s company called Coffex Coffee. They’re a coffee roasters and distributor in Malaysia, Australia , Singapore, China and some other countries I think. It was interesting learning all about coffee.

Did you know that coffee is one of the fastest growing commodities in the world in terms of demand. More and more people are drinking more and more coffee each year.

4) Shorty started baking

January 2015 is the month that Shorty officially started baking. I don’t know what triggered it. She told me one day she found a bunch of bananas at home that nobody was eating so she decided to make banana muffins. I loved it… so since then she’s been making more and more muffins and moving on to other stuff.

She’s also been shopping for more cooking stuff too. For her birthday present this year, she doesn’t want any bags or fashion accessories anymore. She wants cooking stuff which I’m happy to buy her because I get to eat more 🙂

I’m seeing a very different part of my wife now that she’s cooking and I love it. I guess it’s true when they say that the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I totally feel that.

5) Fighter has a new bed

With Bump coming along we decided Fighter might have to give up his cot for Bump to sleep in when she’s born. So Shorty bought Fighter a new bed. Not a cot anymore but a proper bed. He hasn’t really slept on it yet because when I first tried a few days ago he struggled with discomfort with it. I think it’s because the pillow was too high.

So tonight we’re going to try again. Wish us luck!

So that’s it for January!

6 Things Having Kids Teaches You

Posted on January 21, 2015 admin

Since I was a teenager, people always told me that my life would change when I became a parent. So when I had Fighter I went in with the expectation that my life wold change. The change I experienced far exceeded my expectations. Not just that… being a parent taught me many things too and here’s a list.

1) There is much more to life than money or career.

We are always chasing one main goal all our life until we become parents. As students we were chasing the best possible grades we could get at exams and enter the best universities. In our early working years we’re chasing money and promotions and career success.

When you become a parent though things change. Chances are most of us haven’t reached what we consider career success yet when we first become parents. Yet at the same time, we have another goal in life. Which is to take care of the cute little baby we have in our arms. To provide for him and to raise him (or her) to be the best possible person ever. That’s a long-term goal and a struggle in itself… but it’s something that take so much focus.

For the first time… we no longer have one important thing to chase in life. We have two… or three.. or however many kids we have

2) Time becomes a lot more expensive.

Time is something we all have in common. Whatever our job, whatever our status in society, however much money we have in our wallets… we have the same number of hours each day: 24. Not a minute less. Not a minute more.

As young working adults we balance time between work, spending some time with family and your own personal time be it with friends or in your own hobbies or fitness.

Then comes along your first child. Suddenly you have something that you want to commit more time to every day. Something that makes you dread leaving in the morning and makes you look forward to coming home after work. In fact once you’re home, you sometimes don’t even feel like going out to meet your usual friends anymore because you want to maximise with your little one.

Time becomes a lot more precious to you because you have a lot more demands for it each day but still the same amount of supply as you’ve always had. Time becomes more expensive to you.

3) You can survive with a lot less sleep than you thought.

One of the war stories new parents would tell me was the sleepless nights they would have. When I first became a parent I experienced that full on. Of course it gets better when your child gets older and can sleep more on his own… although he still kicks me in the middle of the night sometimes and wakes me up.

The funny thing is that I always imagined myself being this groggy parent that got around my working day like a zombie. But the surprise is that we somehow… get used to waking up 3-4 times in the night and sleeping less.

My wife used to sleep in late on weekends and told me that if she didn’t she would feel really sleepy by the end of the day. Now she wakes up early and she’s fine all day.

4) Sometimes you just have to make the hard decision and say NO. Or it’ll come back and bite you.

In life we often shy away from saying no. Perhaps it’s a culture thing where Asians are a little less confrontational.

When it comes to kids though saying NO has never been more important. Each day your child will test a new limit to see what he can or cannot do. Each time you say NO he knows his boundaries but when you don’t, he expands it. It comes to a point where you know the cost of not saying NO when it’s appropriate will be paid later down the line.

5) Life goes on even after you’re not around.

The one thing that having a family made me really think about is how they all depend on me. Whether you play the mom or the dad, your contribution to the family is huge. It’s a little morbid but it made me think that if anything happened to me, life goes on. My family still has to find a way to survive without me. So it’s my responsibility to provide them with succession or estate planning and financially provide for them best as I can if I’m not around.

Shorty was telling me that she read about this story on Dayre. Of how the dad of the writer died when she was really young but had planned everything for them so they could manage everything after his death whether financially or emotionally.

Of course we hope these bad things never happen and that we’ll all live to old age to see our kids grow to independent adults. But life is uncertain.. and just in case… we need to prepare ourselves.

6) There’s a lot of advice out there. You just need to find what suits you.

In life we get a lot of advice on all sorts of matters. But nothing will have us receive more advice ever than having kids. Everyone has a different way of having kids. Some say let kids play in the mud to build their resistance, some say don’t. Some say let the baby cry it out, some say don’t because that will make the baby feel insecure. Everyone has a point of view and it can be really confusing.

So when being bombarded with this overwhelming flow of information… we gotta decide then. What do you think is best?

So I was cycling today…

Posted on January 18, 2015 admin

I was cycling this morning with a group of riders in a huge peloton. For the non-cyclists, a peloton is when a group of riders ride close together so that we all take turns to block the wind from the front. That helps us conserve energy and makes it easier to ride long distance faster.

Let me google up a picture of a peloton.

Here this is what it looks like.

So I was riding in a group of maybe 50 riders today. Of the 50 of us we don’t all know each other. In fact we mostly don’t but everyone is generally friendly. Everyone seems to call each other “Bro”. In fact since I started cycling for some reason I have the habit of calling everyone Bro too. We call each other Bro at all sorts of times. Even when I got scolded (well okay not really scolded) for doing something wrong while riding in a peloton , the guy said “Bro… next time right…”.

Anyway because we’re all riding so close together, the whole time we’re all focused on the guy in front of you. Either looking at his rear bicycle wheel or his butt.

I was following this guy and keeping a close watch of his butt when I suddenly notice his bicycle tights have two small holes in the middle of his butt. If you look closely through those holes you can see his ass (we don’t wear underwear with bicycle shorts).

At first I thought maybe it’s a new design for shorts.. but as I looked closely I realized it was tearing around the seams. I rode right up next to him and then went

Me: Bro…. I think your pants is tearing bro!

Him: Huh? Really??

Me: Ya bro.. can see your ass eh.

Him: WHAT?!?!

Me: A bit bro.. a bit only.. Can only see a bit of ass.

Him: WHAT?!?!

Me: Don’t worry bro… it’s a good ass.

And next thing I knew he dropped out. I think he stopped to check out the tear and then maybe consider turning back before it got worse.

6 Things to Look for in a Business Partner

Posted on January 15, 2015 admin

When I first started Netccentric and Nuffnang, I never put much thought into business partners. Ming and I were newly made friends that had the same interest and passion to do something together. So that’s what we did. No shareholder agreement, nothing. Just a verbal agreement between me and him.

In the past 8 years we’ve grown a partnership that just started with 2 of us to a company that has close to 200 employees around the region now. We have gone through lots of ups and downs as partners and I’ve learned that a business partnership is like a marriage. It takes a careful evaluation before going into it and when you’re in it, it takes a lot of work.

I got lucky. I got Ming who I think is the best business partner I or anyone could have. I ask myself, what if I wasn’t so lucky?
So today I sat down to list out the things that I think are important in a business partner and here they are.

1) Integrity

This is the most basic thing that everyone tells you. That you must have a partner you can trust. A partner who won’t cheat you by taking money out of the company for his own personal benefit without your knowledge. It’s a very valid concern because this often happens in so many partnerships. Partners cheating partners.
Ming and I have a belief that as businessmen and entrepreneurs we want to make money but never at the expense of each other or at any of our partners or staff.

The mistake I feel that some people make though is that they consider this the most important reason in the consideration of a business partner. I personally disagree with that. I think the following points are equally as important.

2) Complementing skill sets

The ideal partner is someone who has skills that you don’t or is good in areas that you aren’t in. This doesn’t just apply to particular professional skill sets but also personality.

Ming for example is a big picture person and going into the little details of things isn’t necessarily his strong point but for that part he has me. I am a small picture person so I rely on Ming to see business problems before we face them and I take the role of making sure his vision is well executed.

We cover each others’ weaknesses with our respective strengths.

3) Belief

Belief in your business partner is important. In the good times you gotta have the belief that he contributed as much as you did to the success and deserves the rewards. In bad times, you gotta believe that he isn’t the reason for the failure.

All businesses go through good times and bad times. It’s cyclical. When a business faces a tough time, business partners tend to fight because the stress of the business challenges lead people to doubt each other and point blame.

If you don’t have belief in someone who is about to become your business partner then look somewhere else.

4) Generosity

Generosity among business partners is something we all often overlook. When a company does well, reward everyone generously. Sure perhaps it could be true that someone contributed to the success more than another but a business or company’s success is a sum of all the successes each partner has achieved. So reward generously. Don’t count pennies on who should be paid more, who should get a bigger bonus or who deserves more stock options.
Ming and I have similar compensation schemes but he has some benefits I don’t have and I have some big benefits that he doesn’t have either. We don’t count the pennies among each other. We’re just happy that we’re both well rewarded for our work.

5) Values

Just as similar values are important in a marriage. So are they in a business partnership. There will be many times in the course of business where decisions we make will be very dependent on the values we hold. In doing what we think is right… and not doing what we think is wrong. Fortunately for Ming and I we both were brought up by our parents with a similar set of values. In fact we become each other’s moral compass whenever either of us are temporarily misaligned.

If you don’t have the same values as your partner, then chances are you will have conflicts in decision making.

For example, one of the things we both believe in is giving back to the people who have helped us along the way or the people in need. There were cases in the past where bloggers we knew had health problems which then led to financial problems. We then quietly helped them out. Unfortunately one of those bloggers succumbed to his sickness but I’m glad we helped.

When it comes to charity, there has never been a time when I approach Ming with a cause (or he approaches me) and he said no. Even when we were a startup and didn’t make much money, we found a way to give back some money to charity. This is made easier… because we both share the same values.

6) Loyalty

Again just like a marriage, your business partner is someone that you know must always have your back. It doesn’t matter what people say or what people do, the loyalty of your business partner must be to you. This is important because we live in a very competitive and harsh business world. To the outside world, all business partners and drivers of the business must be united. For any lack of unity among the key drivers of a business will signal a fall of even the greatest companies.

How a 14 year old boy is fighting for his limbs

Posted on January 13, 2015 admin

I’m away in Bali for our annual Netccentric company trip now. You can read about it on my Dayre here.

The one thing I want to bring your attention to today though is a story I read on Dayre. About a 14 year old boy who is suffering from a disease that may force him to go through amputation of his limbs. This story really got to me and really made me tear. It reminded me of how trivial most of our problems are and how this 14 year old boy is fighting a fight bigger than I have ever faced.

Please go read his story on his sister’s Dayre and if you can, give him a little word of support.

When doctors say your problem is because of “too much stress”, does that really make sense?

Posted on January 11, 2015 admin

My father had a bit of a health scare today. For the past 12 hours or so he was suffering from breathlessness and he had trouble sleeping last night as a result of it. We were terrified of course. Worried about what was wrong. Was it a mild heart attack? Was it something else? What is it?

So he went to see a doctor today and did all sorts of tests. The good news is that the test results all came out positive. There was nothing wrong with him.

He still has more tests tomorrow but in the mean time the doctor said it could be due to stress.

Stress. That seems to be a common word a lot of doctors are using these days.

Online you’ll see a lot of literature or studies that link stress to cancer or health in general. But I’m personally skeptical of these things. Why? It’s because of the following story.

When my sister was a teenager she had developed some kind of rash on one side of her face. It was bright red and took up one whole side of her face almost like a bright red carpet with bumps. So my parents brought her to a well-known skin specialist in Penang (we were living in Penang).

The skin specialist took a look at it and then said it was eczema and gave her medicine and said it would subside in a week or so. She applied it diligently only to see a week later it hadn’t gotten better. In fact it had gotten worse.

She went back to see the doctor and he recommended a different dose. And then he said that this was stress related and her facing stress was making this worse.

My mom was very worried. She kept asking what my sister was stressed about but my sister said nothing but the usual school/exams stress. Well.. and the rash. That was the one thing that was really stressing her out at that point because going to school with that rash on her face was really affecting her self-esteem.

Then my mom decided to seek a second opinion. She brought my sister to see another skin specialist who immediately diagnosed the problem. It wasn’t stress. In fact it wasn’t related to stress at all. It was some kind of fungus or something. Turns out the previous doctor didn’t diagnose this right and instead of saying that he didn’t know what it was… he just blamed it on stress. In fact we found out that the medicine he gave in the second visit wasn’t to solve the fungal infection but really to cover it up.

My mom was angry and we never went back to that skin specialist again. I don’t want to name and shame this skin specialist because it was really a long time ago and that’s not the purpose of this entry anyway.

The purpose of this entry is to share this story and why it had led to my personal belief that I don’t believe it at all when doctors say your problem is because of stress. Why? Because it’s so hard to argue against that and most people just take it literally.

Think about it… which one of us doesn’t face any form of stress? At work we face stress, at home we face stress, heck even among our friends we face stress whenever we have a fight or if someone says something bad about us behind our backs.

Heck even my 17 month old son faces stress. Whenever he’s holding on to any of our phones and I take it away he cries like it’s the worst thing ever to happen to him. To us we wonder why cry over such a trivial thing but to a baby who has never experienced stress in other ways yet, taking something away from him that he wants to play with could very well be the most stressful thing to him yet.

Stress after all… is relative since everyone has different stress thresholds.

Why doctors blaming anything on stress bothers me is because of what happened to my sister. It misled my mom and sent her on a wild goose chase on what the root of the problem was. It made my sister suffer longer than she needed to and after all that… the doctor suffered nothing. Why? Because society accepts that. We accept stress as the argument for a lot of our health problems. Heck many studies show it and sure there could very well be truth in it but it’s a word that I think is used too loosely in the medical profession.

Whenever I hear a doctor tell me about how any of my problems are because of stress I immediately think he’s not a good doctor and run to find a second opinion.

I do believe that this thinking of mine can’t be fully accurate though and perhaps that’s what I want to know from sharing this experience. For anyone reading this or if you’re a doctor, please share your experience on why you think stress really is the cause of our problems or why doctors aren’t “exaggerating” the use of that word.

And if the problem is stress… then what is the solution? It’s impossible to live without stress in this world. Sure you can do things to lower stress but how do you measure that? Isn’t the medical profession supposed to be about science? Where everything is measurable before a claim or diagnosis is made?

Please help enlighten me.

Netccentric now has a CEO

Posted on January 7, 2015 admin

I’m in Bangkok this whole week for the Netccentric Regional Summit. You see every year our company holds a summit in January where the managers from our 7 countries in the region come together. In this one week period we share updates on how each country performed in the past year, share best practices and learnings.

That used to be it. But as each year goes by we learn how to make the summit better and better. This year for example, instead of just sharing updates, the regional team plans out directives on what each country has to achieve in the coming quarters of the year. Everything is planned 2 quarters ahead.

It’s a really exciting time for us.
What’s different this year too is that we finally have a CEO.

Yep. Believe it or not, Netccentric never had a CEO or a managing director or a COO or anything like that. Ming and I never saw the need for such titles. Our name cards really just said Co-Founder and Executive Director.

How we ran the company was like how many equal partners might run a company. I would manage some of the companies and he would manage some. We both exercised our freedom to run each company in our own way.

That worked quite well for the past years but today the company has close to 200 employees or so and offices in 7 different countries. We were no longer a startup. The worst part was that because Ming and I were running half the companies each in our own ways, each country had different processes, goals, and strategies. Best practices weren’t shared too. We were like a boat where everybody was rowing in separate directions as opposed to one direction.

It took us a while, but Ming and I finally came to the realization that we had to consolidate. Netccentric and all its companies under it (Nuffnang, ChurpChurp, Reelity, Ripplewerkz, Dayre) would need to have one leader. One leader that would decide on the vision and strategy of the company.

I put my faith and confidence behind Ming. I asked him to be CEO. We made the announcement at the end of last year. Ming was to be CEO of the company, and me COO. Effectively making Ming my boss.

Before the announcement at the end of last year, Ming and I had already been privately playing those roles. He as CEO and me as COO. So we’ve already had a trial run and I can only say that I have never been happier and never been more confident of the future of the company.

I’m a good executor. I’m good at getting things done but I also tend to be really small picture. When a problem happens I go solve it immediately. Firefighting every day, like I’m a fireman.

Ming handles problems differently. He’s not interested in solving a problem once. He’s interested in finding the root of the problem and building a process to solve it forever. He has the ability to see things before they happen in business. When he knows what we need to do, he has the ability and resolve to really focus on what’s important and block out everything else.That’s the difference and that’s why I think he’ll make a great CEO.

We were blessed. Netccentric recorded really great growth last year and this year we’ve lots to look forward to. I’m really excited too for my change in role and our team and I can’t wait to achieve the things we have planned out this year.

Here’s some positive vibes to everyone in Netccentric, and everyone everywhere. May you all have a great year ahead!

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

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