I was watching a documentary on Amazon recently. The documentary talked about Amazon had grown from a small online bookstore out of a garage to the mega retailer it is today that has disrupted lots of traditional businesses. Traditional bookstores or publishers for example now face a lot of competitive pressure from Amazon.

Part of that documentary had this interview of the Billionaire Founder Jeff Bezos.

The most thought-provoking part of this interview for me was the last bit. When Jeff Bezos said that businesses have a short life-span and that one day some other company will come along and disrupt Amazon. His job though was to delay that inevitable day.. and his hope was that it would come only after he was gone.

That gave me a whole new perspective of businesses or the companies we work for. He’s right. How many companies or brands that have been around for a 100 years still exist today in its original shape and form. Some have evolved, some have merged to form much bigger entities… and some have altogether just died no matter how big they were in their prime.

So all companies are dying… it’s just up to the CEO to delay that as much as we can.

Now that was the take-away I had but then something else occurred to me. More often than not companies or businesses outlive people. So if businesses are dying, then what about people? Are we all in a similar situation?

From the day we are born, a clock starts ticking. We all have a limited amount of time on this Earth. Some of us have more than others and some less. We will all inevitably die and leave this Earth for a better place.

So all the things we do to take care of life… eating healthy, exercising, not taking risks that could get ourselves hurt (like jumping out of a plane with a parachute)… all those things are just delaying the inevitable.

Now it makes sense for companies to delay the inevitable because companies have one objective and only one. That is to survive.

Does it make sense though for people?

What do we want out of life? To live the most years… or to live the fullest years? Because these two objectives are sometimes conflicting. Because if you want to live the most years then eat healthy and don’t take risks. But if you want to live the fullest years which means acquiring the most possible experiences then jump out of a plane with a parachute or go diving or… whatever that makes you happy in spite of the risk.

This weekend I find myself asking myself this question. Do I want to live the longest life… or do I want to live the fullest life?

A few years ago I would’ve said that I wanted to live the fullest life. But now that I have people to take care of in my life (Shorty, Fighter, my parents)…. I’m not so sure anymore.

How would you live your life?

Yesterday I came across this news article that was being shared about how the grown-up kids of this old lady tried to starve her to death. It bothered me that people could do that to their own mother who had done in my opinion one of the hardest jobs in the world.

You see… I’ve only been a father for 9 months. In this 9 months I’ve experienced both the joy of having a baby and the sacrifice a mother (my dear wife) has had to make.

Here’s why I think mothers have the hardest jobs in the world.

1) It’s a job too many people teach you how to do

From Day 1 of being a new mother, you start hearing advice from all over on how you should raise your kid. Should you breastfeed your baby for a year or 6 months, should you sleep train your baby? Should you pick up your baby each time he cries?

Everyone from your mother-in-law to friends or people online tell you all sorts of things. While it wouldn’t be too much of an issue if everyone had one common piece of advice on everything… but the truth is everyone has their different ways. So mothers have to figure out who to listen to and make a decision. Which brings me to the second part….

2) Making decisions for someone who can’t decide for himself

In life we have to make a lot of hard decisions. The one comforting fact that we sometimes take for granted is that most decisions we make are for ourselves. So if I make a bad decision… most of the time the consequences are mine alone to bear.

Having a baby gave me a very different feeling. For the first time in my life, both Shorty and me had to make decisions for him and if they were wrong decisions then he would bear the consequences. Not me. Everything from the smallest things like circumcise or not to which jabs to take to what to feed him… to big things like when Shorty had pre-eclampsia and we were trying to decide whether it was best to deliver him or keep him in.

While I share the burden and the responsibility of making decisions our son, I feel Shorty takes it upon herself to be extra cautious when it comes to these decisions. Because she’s Fighter’s mother.

3) The Outside Pressure

There’s a lot of pressure from being a mother. I’ve heard of mothers who want to breastfeed but just can’t seem to do it no matter how hard they try. Feeding formula to your newborn to some is a big no no. So they keep trying and then eventually fall into depression.

Then there’s pressure from smaller things. Like when you’re in a quiet restaurant and your baby stops crying and you try hard but can’t seem to get him to calm down. Some people will look over and smile… some will look over annoyed and you can’t help it either way.

4) The feeling of Helplessness

Solving a problem at work is often quite manageable. It’s often a matter of talking to people and putting the problem through a process.

Problems parents face aren’t easily solved. I’ve seen Shorty really stressed out when Fighter wouldn’t eat or sleep no matter what she did. At the end of it I will see her holding our crying child with a look of helplessness in her face. Nothing is more heartbreaking to a husband than looking at his wife feeling helpless at any situation she needs to solve so when that happens I normally try to take over Fighter.

Sometimes I don’t do any better in getting Fighter to eat or sleep. But at the times that I do….. Shorty looks at me like I’ve just cured cancer.

5) Mothers are some of the busiest people I know

Much of Shorty’s day is spent bathing Fighter, changing his diaper, feeding him and trying to coax him to sleep. The last one being one of the most tricky and time-consuming ones. She actually has to put him on her chest and rock him to sleep. One slightest sound that wakes him up and she starts from scratch again.

Yes if we sleep trained Fighter that would help but we admittedly have never had the discipline to do it well.

Even when Fighter is awake he expects to be carried almost all the time. At most he can stay quiet on his own for about 20 minutes or so before he starts kicking a fuss and cry until someone carries him.

Watching Shorty trying to get ready to go out is like watching The Amazing Race. She would rush in for a quick shower, then rush out again to carry Fighter for a while, then distract him and then rush to change. Then back to carry him again… then put her eyeliner on and back and … well you get the drift.

I understand now why it’s a tough expectation for mothers to continue to look or dress up every singe day as well as they did in their pre-mother days.

——-

When sharing our experiences as newbie parents, Shorty said one thing to me that day “If we find it so hard now, how do you think it’ll be like when Fighter is a rebellious teenager and says hurtful things to us?”.

If I only knew then what I knew now….

Last weekend I followed my uncle to the Mercedes show room at Hap Seng Star. He was checking out the new S class and wanted to place an order for it. When he got there he insisted that he placed a booking with one particular salesman named Kee. When I asked him why he told me this story:

A short while ago one of my uncle’s friends went to the same showroom to order the new Mercedes S-Class.

He walked into the showroom dressed in shorts and his simplest outfit. All the sales people around him ignored him. So he showed himself around and walked around the car on display.

He was ready to place a booking even without test driving the car… but there wasn’t anyone who wanted to approach him to take his booking. So finally he walked over to the other end of the showroom where the lower end Mercedes C-class were all on display.

Immediately a salesperson approached him and introduced himself as Kee. He then walked my uncle through the C-class  and all its features. Kee wasn’t the smoothest of car salesman. By the way he spoke English you could tell English probably wasn’t his first language but he knew his facts and seemed honest in his recommendations.

When Kee was done with his run down of the C-Class, my uncle’s friend finally told him that he wanted to book the higher end flagship S-Class right there and then.

Kee looked a little disappointed and said “I”m sorry Sir I can’t sell you the S-Class. For that I need to pass you on to my colleague”.

He then later went on to explain why. My uncle can’t remember exactly why but perhaps it was something to do with Kee being a junior sales person so he wasn’t allowed to sell the higher end cars.

My uncle’s friend didn’t give up. He thought why should he give the sale and the commission then to a so-called higher ranking sales person who didn’t seem to give a damn about him when he walked in.

So he asked to see Kee’s manager. When his manager came by he said

“I want to buy the S-Class right now but I only want to buy it from Kee.  So if you don’t want to let him sell it to me, I’ll buy it from another distributor”.

Immediately the manager gave Kee the sale.

My uncle’s friend went back and told the same story to all his friends… one of them being my uncle himself who was interested to buy the car. So my uncle decided to buy it from Kee.

I loved this story because it’s a story where the underdog wins and  it’s also on an experience that we all face too often: Being looked down upon based on what we wear into a designer store.

Now of course who knows… maybe the more senior sales people didn’t bother talking to my uncle’s friend not because they looked down on my uncle’s friend based on what he wore but maybe because they were lazy. Though I’m not sure if that’s a much better excuse.

Now here’s the second part of my story.

Before I went with my uncle to the showroom I had visited the showroom a few days before. My uncle was telling me about the new S-Class and how it’s really nice and I should go and see. So since I was passing by a few days earlier, I went to see it with no intention to buy one. I walked in with jeans and casual clothes and with Shorty.

Now Shorty and I as a couple hardly look like we can afford anything expensive let alone a Mercedes. Often we wear simplest outfits with little or no designer wear and we look like a couple of kids. Heck we even got snubbed at Thomas Sabo in Pavilion once (which is why today we maintain that we will NEVER buy anything from Thomas Sabo).

So if a relatively cheap store like Thomas Sabo could snub us… I wouldn’t blame Mercedes if they did. But Kee saw us walk in and gave us the tour like we were real customers.

Look at what Shorty wore to view the car. Even her handbag was some free cloth bag she got from buying something. I wasn’t dressed much better myself. But Kee didn’t seem to notice or care.

We left that day without buying a car from Kee but he was polite and showed us all the way to the door.

When I found out that the person my uncle’s friend was talking about was Kee… I was impressed. It wasn’t a one time thing that Kee did with my uncle’s friend. He was consistent throughout… even with me and Shorty. He doesn’t care about how you look. The minute you walk in the door you are a potential customer and he treats you like one.

This is a lesson I will continue to remind myself and my salespeople. Yes in a business point of view I understand if high-end companies focus on customers they think have a higher chance of buying. But this is a car showroom with the sales people standing around with nothing better to do anyway. I don’t really see a harm in talking to anyone who walks in the door.

So if you want to buy a Mercedes…. please look for Kee at Hap Seng Star.

Update: After posting this entry a few hours ago I decided to let Kee know that he inspired me to blog about him. So I sent him a text and this was his reply.

Pretty Cool.

I blanked out his number because I thought that maybe that second number was his personal number. The number on his name card though is the one I’ve been texting. So for the benefit of anyone who wants to buy a Mercedes from Kee, his number is +6019 383 1823.\

Update 2: This blog entry seems to have gone far more viral than I ever thought. Yesterday alone my blog saw over a 100K views and 9.2K shares. I happen to speak with Kee again since this last text and here’s what’s been going on at his side. He’s been getting tons of calls for people looking to buy cars from him and he’s really thankful for that. One thing he did me to clarify was that the first story that my uncle told me about his friend actually happened a long time ago. Like 5 years ago. In any case my uncle remembered this story and ended up buying a car from Kee anyway. Anyway Kee is grateful for all the support and nice comments you guys have given him 🙂

It was the day after my birthday. I was sitting in my bedroom thinking about work. Then my mom walked in. My mom is one of the few people in the world who can have one look at my face and know that something is on my mind. So she asked me what was going on…. I said I was just thinking of work stuff, and the following conversation took place:

Mom: So you’re 30. Are you happy with what you have achieved by age 30?

Me: Yeah I guess I am. Just every now and then got stress from work.

Mom: Of course you have stress from work. You chose to be an entrepreneur. Everyone has stress but an entrepreneur’s stress is different from that of a professional. But you have so much to be thankful for so don’t worry about having to deal with whatever stress you have.

Me: Yeah I guess.

Mom: You know you’re really lucky to have what you have today. You have a good business, a great family and good health. What more can you ask for in life?

Me: Maybe to be a billionaire someday?

Mom: No… don’t think like that.

Me: Why not? Isn’t it good to be ambitious?

Mom: Society expects us to be ambitious and never stop trying to get bigger and bigger from whatever we have achieved this far. But that’s wrong… there must be a limit somewhere. There is an optimum amount of ambition needed in each of us. Anything beyond that is bad because then you will never be happy no matter what you achieve. You will always keep trying to do more and more and when you can’t, you get disappointed in yourself. Why do we have to always be ambitious? Why can’t we just be happy?

As I sat on my bed that night I pondered upon the wisdom my mom had parted unto me. That yes it’s good to be ambitious but being ambitious means never being satisfied of where you are and always looking to achieve more. If we’re always ambitious… then will we never be satisfied? And if we will never be satisfied … then will we never be happy?

Today on the 6th of June 2014, I finally turn 30. I’ve dreaded this day… not just because it’s the end of my twenties and not just because I’m getting older. I’ve already been feeling that. Before whenever I attend meetings, I used to be the youngest person in the room. Now I no longer am. I won’t say I’m the oldest, but I’m somewhere in between.

I dread turning 30 because I realize a lot of things are different at age 30 as opposed to me being age 20. So I actually sat down today on my birthday and made a list of things that are different when I’m 30 … as opposed to when I was 20. Here is that list.

1) I feel a lot more vulnerable with health

I felt invincible when I was 20. I didn’t think any sickness will come of me and I wasn’t afraid to go out late at night and wake up early the next morning to go to class. My body would be able to take it.

At age 30 though I feel the difference. If I stay out late one night and wake up early the next morning I will feel the burden on my body. I also feel a lot more vulnerable when it comes to health issues. I fear that the possibility of things like cancer or any other disease really isn’t as far away as it was before. I’m sure this vulnerability will only increase with each decade to come but for the first time, I’m very conscious of it.

While I never bothered to go for any health checkups at all before. I now make it a point to go once a year.

2) People depend on me

Before I had no responsibilities to my name. In fact I was my parents’ responsibility. They were responsible for bringing me up, taking care of me and even providing me with the good education I had. I didn’t have to really take care of anyone.

Today my wife and my son depend on me. Not just financially but also in being there for them when they need me. For the first time I start thinking if I have saved up enough for them if I died all of a sudden.

The sense of responsibility doesn’t just end with my wife and son. It extends to my parents, that sooner or later as they grow older… they will need me more than ever. I still pray and hope that my parents have really good health for as many years as possible, but I know everyone has a time.. and each year as I get closer to that time, so do my parents.

3) Money

I didn’t have much money when I was 20. Well I was blessed that my parents provided me with whatever I needed but I didn’t have much money to my name. If I wanted to buy a new phone or a computer, I had to ask my parents. Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t work part-time as a student to learn to save up money to buy these things to myself.

Now at age 30 I feel that I have more money to my name. I’m not super wealthy or anything but I think I have enough to buy that new mobile phone when I crave for it. Or that new bicycle. Having money also brings us one other thing… and that is …

4) Freedom

With money comes some freedom to some extent. You can go for the holidays you want to go for, you can eat out when you feel like eating out. But freedom at age 30 extends beyond that.

Because I am no longer stay under the roof of my parents, I can live my own life. I can go out whenever I feel like it, sleep late, eat out.. whatever I wanted. The irony is that now that I have the freedom to do whatever I want, I find myself living less of the crazy life I imagined I would live if I had freedom, and more of the life my parents wanted me to live.

I don’t stay out late at night, I don’t eat out as much… and things like that. I remember those days when even the amount of time I spend in front of the computer or phone would come under some lecturing from my parents. Today I can talk on the phone or be on the computer as much as I want any nobody would say anything. But I don’t do that anymore. If I were to be on the phone for long it’s mostly because of work calls.

5) Guy friends and girl friends

At age 20 I had so many girl friends that I hung out with. Going out clubbing or to a bar isn’t the same with a bunch of guys as it is with a mixed bunch of guys and girls.

Today I hardly have any girl friends that I hang out with and almost all my friends are guys. The people I play golf with, go cycling with or even go out drinking with… all guys. Very rarely is there a girl among us and if there is, it’s probably one of the wives.

I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because at age 30 when most of us are married or in serious relationships we don’t care for meeting more girls. We just learn to value guy to guy conversations a lot more. My guy friends aren’t my wingmen anymore at age 30, they’re the pillars of support that we talk and laugh about with when it comes to the struggles of life.

6) Taste in Cars

When I was 20, I was like most 20 year olds. Ask me what was my dream car and I would say the F word (Ferrari that is.. not the other F word).

Today at age 30 I admire Ferraris for being beautiful cars but when it comes to cars I really want… I want a 5-seater car with four doors and plenty of space for me to put a baby chair. i used to think cars like the Toyota Camry are the ugliest cars in the world. It’s just big and fat and tall. Today I look at the new Camry and even though it still isn’t a beautiful car to me I think to myself “Hey… this car quite spacious hor… can put baby chair, stroller and gold bag all”.

7) Time no longer belongs to me

At age 20, time belonged to me. I chose when I wanted to study, how much I wanted to study or how I wanted to play.

At age 30, time doesn’t belong to me. 1/3 of time belongs to my family. That I have to spend with them no matter what.

1/3 of time belongs to work. That I spend in the office working to earn a living.

And the last 1/3… that’s all I have left for myself. For cycling, for golf.. that’s it. Now some of us spend 80% of our time working and 20% for family with almost none for ourselves. That happens to most of us… but for me I try… and I struggle to keep with that 1/3 for family, personal and work. because I think that’s the perfect balance.

8) Friends

As I grow older I realize that I have fewer and fewer friends. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of people I know and a lot of people I occasionally hang out with that I call friends. But if you talk about friends as in the people who spend a regular and significant amount of time with every week… I have much less of those today than I did in my 20s.

Why? That goes down to time. Having a girlfriend/wife takes up time… having a kid takes up more time. Also as my parents get older and more vulnerable I find myself having to need to spend more time with them too. So I have even less time to invest with more and more friends. So today I have a lot of friends that I meet up with once in a while… but very few regular friends. The thing is most of them too experience the same thing with family commitments and all… so we all drift apart… but the good news is that we still sometimes find a way to keep in touch.

—–

Yes today I turn 30 and there are so many things that are different than 10 years ago. The truth is that I don’t think it’s different bad or different good. I just think it’s… different different.

Perhaps that’s what life is about… that sometimes we need to grow older and move into new phases of life with new challenges or we just get bored.

I hope I will live through a good 30s as I did in my 20s and for anyone turning 30 this year, I hope you do too.

In my previous post I got the following comment:

Hello Tim, I really liked this post. I’m going to graduate from uni soon and these things aren’t really taught in school but it’s so useful to know these things. I would really appreciate it if you could give some tips on getting a job, ace-ing an interview, and blending into the work culture of the company you eventually work in (from a boss point of view).

When I thought about answering this question I remembered the many good articles out there that cover this. Like this one on How to Ace 10 Common Interview Questions.

The literature for these things are already out there. When I first started Netccentric, my interview process was really just I meet a person, ask some questions and then decide based on a gut feel whether I want to hire a person or not.

Today in the Netccentric group we hire about 150-160 employees around the region. Our interview process has grown too. There is the first interview, and then a test. The test will be dependent on what kind of role you’re applying for in the company. Say if you’re a programmer, you’ll be tested on your programming knowledge, if you’re sales you would be asked to do a presentation about yourself and things like that.

However while I don’t really make a lot of the hiring decisions today, when I do I don’t pay attention so much to tests and stuff like that. I generally meet a person and go with my gut feel. Sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m right. So today I tried to break up what I really look for in my gut feel. What is it that makes me want to hire a person and I came up with the following.

1) Positive Energy

I generally like positive people working on my team. You can tell a positive person the minute you see him or her. By the way he smiles, the way he talks about things and his facial expressions. You can also tell it by the way he talks about his life or about his previous jobs. For example if someone has a tendency to complain a lot about life or things then maybe this person isn’t a very positive person.

2) What he/she says about his previous bosses/colleagues and how he/she works in teams

I’ve met a candidate before that would complain and say a lot of nasty things about her ex-employer. Then I asked her about why she left her previous job and I found that for every job she left she had something bad to say about the ex-employer. It was always the fault of her ex-employer or ex-colleagues. Now the school of thought is if a person has a problem with one employer then the problem could be with that employer. But if he/she has a problem with every employer then there’s a good chance the problem might be him/her. It shows this person probably doesn’t work well in teams.

On the other hand, I’ve met candidates that spoke praises of their ex-colleagues or ex-bosses. I know no employer is perfect and they probably had their problems too but the fact that they choose to say the best things just goes into this positivity thing for me (back to my first point).

3) Personality

There isn’t a hard and fast rule for personality. There are however different personality types that are better suited for different jobs. Sure when you think personality, you think someone must be very bubbly and cheerful and funny but the truth is not everyone is like that and not every job needs you to be like that. I’ve hired some people who are introverts but like doing jobs that don’t require a lot of interaction… and they’re very very good at it compared to their more sociable counter-parts. Then there are jobs that require more outgoing people that can build relationships like sales. So it really depends.

4) Hunger

When I interview fresh grads it’s really hard to determine how suitable a candidate is because you can’t get referrals from a previous employer or anything like that. Yes there are referrals from teachers but that’s hardly the same.

So what I look for is if they had worked even part-time during their studying life. There are many of these candidates out there who work part-time in their student days to pay for their fees or even support their families. This is a huge plus for me… maybe it’s because I’ve never worked part-time in my student days before but it shows me a sense of responsibility that person was given at a young age.

These people tend to have a lot more hunger.

Then there are people who work and during the night do night courses or language courses to improve themselves… I look out for and love these things because it really shows a hunger for self-improvement.

5) Is this person a job hopper?

About the only thing I really look for in a CV is how long a person has been in their previous jobs. If I see an average of 1 year per job I normally don’t hire the person no matter how good he is. That being said I’ve been wrong too. I hired a job hopper once and he stayed for 4 years. So I guess there are exceptions to the rule.. but generally this is one of the things I avoid.

On the other hand if I see someone who has stayed in a job for 3-4 years each time, that’s a very big plus for me.

So these are just my thoughts on what I consider when I hire people based on my gut feel. Again it’s no hard and fast rule. I’ve made some really good hires (and I think there was luck involved there) and I’ve also made some really bad hires in the past. I think it’s not about making these hard rules and ruling out anyone who doesn’t meet any of these 5 rules but really it’s about a weighting system. If someone has 4 out of 5 of these things… and you really like him/her then go ahead.

I hope this helps you anon.

If you’re looking for a job now, good luck with the interview.

You can also apply for Netccentric here. I’m not sure which positions we have open now but we’re always looking for talented people.

Conventional wisdom is that property is a great investment. Property is finite. Nobody can make more land so it can only go up in value over the years. Many rich people have made money from property all over the world. Li Ka-Shing, Robert Kuok etc etc…

My father though had a different experience when it comes to investing money. He never believed much in investing in property. Instead he believed in the stock market. Just like it’s important to make the right picks in whichever property you buy, it’s even more important so for the stock market.

I asked my father why? Why the stock market and not property? There are clear advantages of investing in property. That it’s not as volatile, that you can actually live there and is useful for those who don’t have a home who are already paying rent… and of course the fact that you can leverage to buy property. Whereas borrowing money to invest in the stock market can be deemed really risky.

It’s only when I started investing in my own property that I began to see the reasons. There are downsides to investing in property, and some of them aren’t so obvious.

1) Transaction costs

The transaction costs involved in buying a property is significant. There is lawyer fees for the Sale and Purchase agreement AND then again for the loan agreement once you take a loan from the bank. Then there is stamp duties too… and other disbursements. The absolute amount of these costs can be significant.

2) It isn’t easy to find a tenant to rent out your property

This is true especially in Malaysia. In KL in particular while property prices have been going up in general, there is a weak rental market. Most property agents would concede that of all the apartments in Mont Kiara, only 50% of them are occupied. The rest are empty. Most properties take months before you can find a good tenant.

This however isn’t true for some other property markets. For example I have a property in London that was rented out within a couple of months from completion.

3) Finding a tenant is hard enough. Finding a good tenant even harder.

There are some tenants you don’t really want to rent to. They can mess up the place, they can avoid you and not pay rent, they can use your property for illegal things. I’ve never experienced this before (thankfully) but I have friends who have and they tell me it’s a nightmare.

4) Maintenance is a bitch.

Sometimes in the homes we live in, things get broken but we know about them because we’re living there. So we can fix them. When you have a property that isn’t lived in or rented out yet, things sometimes go wrong without you really knowing about it. When you do find out then it can be a mess to clean up… and expensive too. This can be really stressful.

5) Property gains tax

We now have property gains tax for Malaysia. So if you sell a property at a profit in which you bought it for, you have to pay tax for the profit you made. In the stock market if you sell a stock in which you made money from, there isn’t yet a tax on that profit.

6) You can’t convert your property into cash quickly.

Again this is probably not the case for all property markets in the world but in Malaysia it kinda is. It’s not easy to find a buyer for your property when you want to sell AND at the PRICE you want to sell. It depends on how desperate you are. The more desperate you are the lower you can drop your price and the quicker you will then sell. But then you will get your money quicker but at the expense of a lower price.

Plus when you do find a buyer the whole process takes at least 3 months before you see your money.

7) You don’t always make money from property.

There is this development at Damansara Heights called Twins. It’s a really high end condo from a credible developer and it’s in a great location. Not just that, there is a huge development developing around that area that will form a mall and there’s even an MRT station being built there. It’s like it has the entire story.

Yet when you drive past at night you will see that only 30% of the windows at the Twins are lit up. Half of the remaining dark windows you’ll notice don’t even have curtains on them. So they aren’t even lived in.

When I talked to a property agent who handles that property he said when the project launched years ago lots of people bought it up but they’ve mostly been unable to rent it and have been trying to sell it but they can’t find a buyer at the price they want.

In the agent’s words he said “The owners already know they will lose money by selling… it’s just a matter of how much”. When I asked why lose money when the price of the condo today isn’t different from years ago when they first bought it (not lower for sure)… and he said when you incorporate holding costs, interest costs and transaction fees it was a bad investment. They are losing money.

Now of course who knows, if they hold for another 10 years the price of the property might go up. But would your money be better invested somewhere else? It’s about opportunity cost.

8) Property agents make money when you buy a property… regardless of whether you make money or not.

That’s something we all often forget. We think a property agent is on our side giving us the best recommendations to make the most money from property. Yes I think good property agents who care about you only want you to invest in properties they believe in… but have you ever met a property agent that told you “This is not a good time to buy a property… not now… wait for another year”.  Why not ? Since property markets do go up and down too. They’re cyclical, so it can’t always be a good time to buy property.

But even when the property market is weak, agents normally say “Yes market is weak but this area is good”. Or something along those lines. Why? Because property agents need to make money too. It’s a full time job for all of them and they can’t only be making a living from years that the property market is good. They need to pay their bills so you can’t really blame them for pushing a sale. You just have to understand the mechanics of this and evaluate each purchase yourself.

I bought a house in KL that when the property agent sold to me he said it was a good price and easy to rent out. That I could fetch rentals as high as RM12K. That turned out to be not true. I waited 5 months and I had lots of viewings but the agent who promised to find me a tenant wasn’t able to.

In the end I blogged about it and found my own tenant from one of my readers. Not just that the agent couldn’t get me a tenant but the rental I ended up renting it out for was a lot less than what the agent told me I could fetch.

I don’t blame the agent really. I believe he tried his best. In cases like that we can only blame ourselves for our investments and the homework we do behind them.

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Note that I’m writing this mostly from a point of view of investing in property that you don’t live in. Heck if you live in a rented home then sure owning your own home could be a great investment to start with so your monthly payments go to paying your mortgage rather than someone else’s. But even then you really need to consider the points above and what you’re buying into.

The point of this article also isn’t to say everyone should invest in the stock market instead of property. Investing in the stock market is tricky too.. Personally I think I haven’t made much money from my stock investments in the past.

The point of this article is to share things I didn’t know about property investment until I bought my own property. That it’s a bit more complicated and stressful than I imagined it to be.

This afternoon my Entrepreneur Organization forum decided to go for Dialogue in The Dark. It’s an exhibition at Petrosains in KLCC where they put you into a series of pitch black rooms where you are completely without sight and have you do tasks… to simulate how it’s like being blind.

Here’s what we were tasked to do in the total darkness:

1) We made sculptures out of playdoh. Only using our sense of touch to be able to feel what we were making.

2) We wrote a poem on a piece of paper in total darkness. Something so difficult to do we’re sure we wrote completely all over the place on a single piece of paper.

3) We walked through mazes and different simulated environments (like KL city or Taman Negara) using our walking sticks and with our hands on each other shoulders.

4) We looked for things in total darkness. Something so difficult to do it took us a full 15 minutes to find 4 bags in a small space.

5) We learned to make tea and eat in total darkness. This one was tricky to me. Can you imagine pouring yourself a hot cup of tea in total darkness. I couldn’t really see what I was doing and I was so worried that I might scald myself with hot water.

The whole experience lasted some 2 and a half hours and this is how it felt. being blind for 2 and a half hours.

1) Lonely.

When there was silence and nobody was talking it felt very very lonely. Like only you were in the world and nobody else. The fortunate thing for us is because we went in a group we were always talking and the company helped the experience feel less lonely.

But when you were alone…. it felt very very lonely.

2) Helpless

I felt completely helpless. One time when making my sculpture with playdoh, I was making a ball out of it. I dropped it and it rolled somewhere I had no idea how to find it. No clue at all.

Sometimes we drop things in our daily life… some coins, a set of keys… anything at all. I’m bad at finding things when I drop them… i can’t imagine finding things without eyesight.

3) Frustrating

When you can’t find something it gets very frustrating too. In fact because you feel so helpless and because it takes so long to get anything done, I felt very very frustrated and impatient.

4) Not Self-Conscious

One thing I realized was that when we all couldn’t see, I didn’t really feel self-conscious and neither did my friends. We were in a big group of people and in the dark everyone was talking really loudly and making lots of jokes. We were even asked to do an impromptu radio ad and we all did it very enthusiastically without being shy of anything.

Then when the lights came on and everyone could see… all of us started being a lot more self-conscious of each other. Less talkative.. less willing to make a fool of ourselves.

5) Sad

I felt sad even doing things like eating. Part of the joy of eating is knowing what you’re eating. You know what you eat by smelling it, tasting, feeling it and seeing it. Taking sight out of the equation just makes the experience much less fulfilling.

Now apply that to everything else we can do. It’s depressing.

At the end of the whole event, the facilitators who were guiding us in the dark for the full two hours introduced themselves and told us their stories one by one.  We thought they were walking around with us with night-vision goggles or something because they seemed to know their way around so well. But it turns out they were all blind or partially blind.

Their stories were heartbreaking to hear. Almost all of them had sight up until a few years ago. One was a student who was in college when she suddenly suffered from an eye disease that got her blind. Another was born blind and had lived all her life without eyesight.

Then the Founder & CEO of Dialogue in the Dark came into the dark room. He introduced himself and told of his story. How he was a consultant before this and was chasing wealth. Then in 2002 when he turned 40, he closed his first multi-million dollar deal. He was made… all his hard work was beginning to pay off.

A few weeks after closing that deal he began to feel pain in his eyes and a headache. He went to see a doctor and found out he had glaucoma. He spent the next 5 years going through 9 different surgeries fighting glaucoma. No longer fighting for wealth but fighting for his eyesight. That 5 years passed… and in 2007… he lost his eyesight. He was completely blind.

He took the first year of being blind very hard. He was angry at everything and blamed his wife and his family for his circumstance. But his family and wife stood by him. Then after a year he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to bring more awareness to eye diseases that could cause blindness which led him to eventually start Dialogue in the Dark.

Dialogue in the Dark is a Social Enterprise that donates all its profits to charity.

I walked away from that experience feeling grateful for what we have. Very often we chase wealth, we chase careers and we complain and fret about stress. The truth is most of us have the one thing we all sometimes forget to value… and that is good health. Sure I have some health problems and so does my wife, but my mom always says that as long as we can live our lives normally, that really isn’t a major health problem.

Thank you God for giving us all good health. I remember when Fighter was prematurely born and put in the incubator, one of the things the Doctor said premature babies risk was losing their eyesight. I remember praying to God throughout all his tests, praying that he would come out healthy.

Today we are blessed with a healthy child and I thank God for the health he has given all of us as a family.

Go check out Dialogue in the Dark at Petrosains KLCC if you have the time. It’s a thought-provoking experience.