Financial analysts

I wonder... since a financial or investment analyst performs analysis on financial data of companies in order to recommend investing decisions (to their employer), does it follow then, that he/she would also be a good personal investor? (given that they're good financial analysts) How far would they be able to use the tools and resources available on their job to make a personal investing decisions?

Jagung dan pisang

Resipi yang mudah untuk dicuba: Puding Kastad Jagung (terima kasih Mak ajar resipi ni).

1 tin jagung krim (cream of corn)
1 tin susu sejat
6 sudu besar gula
3/4 tin* tepung kastad atau 150g
1/2 tin* (jagung) air

* sama ada tin jagung/susu

Larutkan tepung kastad dengan air sikit-sikit dalam periuk, jangan biar berketul-ketul.
Campur semua bahan-bahan lain dalam periuk, letak atas api perlahan.
Kacau (supaya tak berketul-ketul atau lekat kat lantai periuk) sampai mendidih (ada air pockets naik ke permukaan) – lebih kurang 5 ke 10 minit.
Tuang dalam bekas acuan. Bila dah sejuk ke suhu bilik, boleh letak dlm peti sejuk.

Nota: Jumlah tepung kastad yang dicadangkan dalam resepi ni cukup untuk melikatkan puding sehingga boleh dipotong dan dipegang dengan tangan atau dijual 3 potong seringgit. Kalau nak lebih lembik dan makan pakai sudu, bolehlah dikurangkan sedikit tepung kastad.


Kalau nak cuba buat minuman yang lain sedikit daripada biasa pula, boleh cuba tambah esen pisang dalam jus oren Sunquick (terima kasih Achik memperkenalkan minuman ni). Untuk menambahkan lagi kelainan, boleh tambah sedikit pewarna hijau epal (optional). Boleh tambah sedikit (setengah hingga satu sudu teh) esen pisang ke dalam jag oren yang telah dibancuh. Atau, kalau rajin, boleh ambil masa dalam 20 minit untuk buat ‘ibu sirap’. Rebus lebih kurang sekilo gula dengan 3 liter air, dan tambahkan satu botol kecil jus oren Sunquick (setengah liter kalau tak silap), satu botol kecil esen pisang, dan satu botol kecil pewarna hijau epal (optional). Simpan dalam botol, bila nak bancuh cuma tambah air (sebab dah ada gula). Bagaimana rasanya? Kami (keluarga saya yang cuba) sependapat rasanya macam air tin F&N warna hijau cuma tanpa gas.

What if...

… a waste management system is implemented as such that, the more waste we dispose of, the more ‘service fees’ we have to bear? This is a bit far from how we currently manage domestic waste. If I’m not mistaken, some people (especially those in taman perumahan or managed residences like apartments, but also those who engage garbagae disposal company individually) do pay a certain amount of rubbish collection fees, which depends on the frequency of collection rather than the amount. Some other people go and throw their own rubbish at the nearest local garbage bin (which will then be cleared by the local authority) or at other places, including to bury or burn the rubbish themselves. The fee imposed don’t have to be big. It could be 5 sen per kilo for example. But it’s probably enough to incentify people to reduce domestic waste. Afterall, there is real and tangible cost to managing waste and currently it's probably borne by the government via the local municipal. Still, this is still hypothetical of course. As I mentioned earlier, our system (and moreso our mindset) is still far from there.

Now why would I think of something as random as waste management?

Hmm…

OK, now I remember. It must be the movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” I watched last night. I hope what follows is not a spoiler to those who haven’t watched the movie yet (and this is supposed to serve as a warning), but in the movie, there’s excess amount of food because a food-making machine had caused all sorts of food to fall from the sky. These obscene amount of wasted food were piled behind a dam, and the pile got bigger, until one day the dam gave way. And that is not the most disastrous consequence of having the food-making machine, by the way, but this is not a review of the movie I’m afraid.

See, it’s not random afterall.

Bohong dan gila

The other day I listened to a segment in the radio where an ustaz from the Middle East (not sure which country) gave a short talk in Arabic, translated into Malay by a local ustaz. The actual topic was ‘Dunia Ladang Akhirat’ but towards the end he diverted from the topic a bit (with permission from the moderator) to give an advice to married couples. The following is roughly what he said (as translated):

Menjadi lumrah bagi isteri menyangka suaminya pembohong, dan menjadi kewajipan bagi suami untuk membetulkan persepsi isterinya.
Menjadi lumrah bagi suami menyangka isterinya gila, dan menjadi kewajipan bagi si isteri untuk membetulkan tanggapan suaminya.

I went “Whhaaaatt???”

And then he went on to elaborate (as translated):

Tuhan menjadikan wanita begitu sensitif hingga dia mengetahui apa yang sebenarnya suaminya mahu. Dan jika suaminya berkata yang lain, maka dia menuduh suaminya berbohong.
Dan lelaki pula tidak tahu mengapa isterinya pada satu saat begitu gembira, tetapi tiba-tiba menjadi sangat dukacita, hingga dia berkata isterinya sudah gila.

I had to laugh. That’s just so ‘weird’! I don’t know if this is the case of meanings lost in translation, or cultural idiosyncrasy or what, but I wouldn’t have used the words ‘bohong’ and ‘gila’ (which really were the words used) in any case, they’re too ‘strong’.

Free ebook - What Matters Now

Seth Godin coordinated an awesome project - compiling one-page thoughts/messages of 70 top authors, bloggers and thinkers etc (see below), into a pdf ebook titled ‘What Matters Now’ with the theme ‘Big Thoughts, Small Actions’. Thanks AidaNasreen for the heads up.

Download the ebook here!

Below are two samples of the content, to give you a flavour.

In the meantime, Selamat Menyambut Awal Muharram 1431, and while I’m at it, Happy New Year 2010 too! :)

Strengths by Marti Barletta

Forget about working on your weaknesses —> Focus on supporting your strengths. I worked on my weaknesses for 40 years to little avail. Still “needs improvement,” as they say. Why? Easy. We hate doing things we’re not good at, so we avoid them. No practice makes perfect hard to attain.

But my strengths – ah, I love my strengths. I’ll work on them till the purple cows come home. When we love what we do, we do more and more, and pretty soon we’re pretty good at it.
The beautiful thing about being on a team is that, believe it or not, lots of people love doing the things you hate. And hate doing the things you love. So quit diligently developing your weaknesses. Instead, partner with someone very UNlike you, share the work and share the wealth and everyone’s happy.

Relatedly, women are rather UNlike men and often approach problems and opportunities with a different outlook. Yet books and coaches often encourage us to adopt male strengths and, lacking understanding, to relinquish our own. The irony is, studies show that more women in leadership translates unequivocally into better business results.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for both men and women to appreciate each other’s strengths so we all work on what comes naturally?


Gumption by J.C. Hutchins

Most of us settle in, and settle for what we have. Rather than pursue, we accept. Our lives become unwitting celebrations of passivity: we undervalue our work and perceive ourselves as wage slaves (and so we phone it in at the day gig), we consume compulsively (but not create), we pine for better lives (but live vicariously through our televisions).

These corners we paint ourselves into, it’s no way to live.
There’s no adventure here, no passion, no hunger for change. Remember that relentless optimism you once had? The goals you wished to achieve, before settling in?
They’re still there. You need a nudge to find them; a little gumption.

You can start that business. You can lose that weight.
You can quit smoking, and learn to garden, and write that book, and be a better parent, and be all the things you want to be ... the thing this world needs you to be. It requires courage and faith, both of which you can muster. It requires effort — but this effortless life isn’t as satisfying as it seems, is it?

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you’re over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry — hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap ‘em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.

Where do you get your ideas?

Interesting! I came across this essay by Neil Gaiman via Sharon Bakar’s Bibliobibuli. Oh ho, he is so right about “The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.”

Where do you get your ideas?
The question authors fear most ... Neil tackles it here.

Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession that must be and then people change the subject fast. And writers are asked where we get our ideas from.

In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: 'From the Idea-of-the-Month Club,' I'd say, or 'From a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis,' 'From a dusty old book full of ideas in my basement,' or even 'From Pete Atkins.' (The last is slightly esoteric, and may need a little explanation. Pete Atkins is a screenwriter and novelist friend of mine, and we decided a while ago that when asked, I would say that I got them from him, and he'd say he got them from me. It seemed to make sense at the time.)

Then I got tired of the not very funny answers, and these days I tell people the truth:

'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'

People don't like this answer. I don't know why not. They look unhappy, as if I'm trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there's a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I'm not telling them how it's done.

And of course I'm not. Firstly, I don't know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

Every published writer has had it - the people who come up to you and tell you that they've Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It's such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The proposal is always the same - they'll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.

I'm reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.

The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.

But still, it's the question people want to know. In my case, they also want to know if I get them from my dreams. (Answer: no. Dream logic isn't story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you'll see. Or better yet, tell someone an important dream - 'Well, I was in this house that was also my old school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but there was a leaf and I couldn't look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would happen...' - and watch their eyes glaze over.) And I don't give straight answers. Until recently.

My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic ('The children have all been making their own books recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And lots of little stories. They like the stories.') and in I came.

They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me. 'When I was your age, people told me not to make things up,' I told them. 'These days, they give me money for it.' For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.

And eventually one of them asked it.

'Where do you get your ideas?'

And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren't old enough to know any better. And it's a perfectly reasonable question, if you aren't asked it weekly.

This is what I told them:

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?

(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)

Another important question is, If only...

(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...

Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.

An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.

Sometimes an idea is a person ('There's a boy who wants to know about magic'). Sometimes it's a place ('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...'). Sometimes it's an image ('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')

Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before. ('If a person bitten by a werewolf turns into a wolf what would happen if a goldfish was bitten by a werewolf? What would happen if a chair was bitten by a werewolf?')

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

And when you've an idea - which is, after all, merely something to hold on to as you begin - what then?

Well, then you write. You put one word after another until it's finished - whatever it is.

Sometimes it won't work, or not in the way you first imagined. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes you throw it out and start again.

I remember, some years ago, coming up with a perfect idea for a Sandman story. It was about a succubus who gave writers and artists and songwriters ideas in exchange for some of their lives. I called it Sex and Violets.

It seemed a straightforward story, and it was only when I came to write it I discovered it was like trying to hold fine sand: every time I thought I'd got hold of it, it would trickle through my fingers and vanish.

I wrote at the time:

I've started this story twice, now, and got about half-way through it each time, only to watch it die on the screen.

Sandman is, occasionally, a horror comic. But nothing I've written for it has ever gotten under my skin like this story I'm now going to have to wind up abandoning (with the deadline already a thing of the past). Probably because it cuts so close to home. It's the ideas - and the ability to put them down on paper, and turn them into stories - that make me a writer. That mean I don't have to get up early in the morning and sit on a train with people I don't know, going to a job I despise.

My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told before.

Staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Forever.

I wrote my way out of it, though. I got desperate (that's another flip and true answer I give to the where-do-you-get-your-ideas question. 'Desperation.' It's up there with 'Boredom' and 'Deadlines'. All these answers are true to a point.) and took my own terror, and the core idea, and crafted a story called Calliope, which explains, I think pretty definitively, where writers get their ideas from. It's in a book called DREAM COUNTRY. You can read it if you like. And, somewhere in the writing of that story, I stopped being scared of the ideas going away.

Where do I get my ideas from?

I make them up.

Out of my head.

Khusyuk solat dan anak

Menunaikan solat dan menjaga anak kecil (yang tidak occupied dengan aktiviti lain waktu itu) pada masa yang sama memang mencabar. Memang satu skil saya kira, untuk mengkhusyukkan diri tika si anak (atau anak-anak) menangis, bergaduh, panjat-memanjat (janganlah dia jatuh!), menarik-narik telekung (janganlah nampak rambut!), masuk dalam telekung, beritahu nak kencing (janganlah dia terkencing dulu!) dan sebagainya. Kalaulah orang di sekeliling ‘menyelamatkan’ si ibu/bapa dengan cara membantu melayani si anak-anak tadi supaya tidak mengganggu si ibu/bapa yang sedang solat, tentulah besar pahala mereka! Tapi ada pula yang bila ditanya “Ummi mana?” lantas menjawab “Ummi tengah sembahyang dalam bilik tu, pergilah!” Aduh!

Having said this, however, bukanlah sesuatu yang bijak untuk ‘memencilkan diri’ daripada anak setiap kali bersolat (walaupun niat murni untuk menggapai khusyuk). Pertamanya, anak-anak haruslah didedahkan dengan aktiviti bersolat supaya mereka faham pentingnya menunaikan solat setiap waktu, mereka terbiasa dengan perbuatan bersolat, dan lama kelamaan mereka boleh ‘mengikut’ solat bersama (sambil belajar). Yang kedua, anak-anak juga harus dididik supaya “jangan kacau/ganggu orang yang sedang bersolat”. Yang sebaiknya, ada orang lain (contohnya bapa jika si ibu yang bersolat) yang boleh facilitate proses ini. “Cuba ikut Ummi solat. Ha betul Adik sujud macam tu.” Dan tak dilupakan “Jangan tarik telekung Ummi. Kita tak boleh kacau orang tengah solat tau.”

Having said this, however, bukanlah bermakna ibu dan bapa harus solat berasingan kerana terpaksa bergilir sepanjang masa. Elok juga dikerapkan solat berjemaah. Anak-anak, apabila melihat ibu dan bapa solat bersama-sama, mungkin akan lebih teruja untuk mengikut bersama, dan mereka juga dibiasakan dengan konsep solat berjemaah.

Lagi Ummi dan kerja

Di suatu pagi, bersambung cerita dari episod lepas, Munief bertanya lagi soalan “Kenapa Ummi pergi kerja?”. Kali ini saya mencuba sudut lain. “Ummi nak jual minyak pada kilang.” Apa agaknya yang terlintas dalam fikirannya? Mungkin dia terbayang Ummi pandu lori minyak dari kilang ke kilang! Hehe..
“Kenapa Ummi jual minyak pada kilang?” tanya Munief.
“Sebab, mesin nak guna minyak. Baru boleh buat biskut ke, baju ke.” Saya guna contoh barang-barang yang dia biasa.
*
Di suatu petang, kami menonton sebuah dokumentari National Geographic, seekor singa sedang mengejar seekor rusa.
Munief bertanya, “Kenapa singa tu kejar rusa?”
“Sebab singa tu nak makan rusa. Dia lapar. Rusa makanan dia.”
Saya sambung lagi, “Kalau kita nak makan ayam, kita kena kejar ayam ke? Kita tak payah kejar ayam. Kita beli kat kedai. Tapi kita kena ada duit nak bayar.” Saya ambil kesempatan terangkan konsep duit.
*
Di suatu malam, Afiefah cuba menggeledah beg tangan Ummi. Sebagai usaha untuk mengalih perhatiannya, saya mengutip duit syiling yang ada dan beri sama banyak pada Munief dan Afiefah untuk dimasukkan ke dalam tabung. Kebetulan cuma ada dua keping, jadi seorang suma dapat sekeping. Munief kurang puas hati.
“Kenapa Ummi buat kerja sikit?”
Arkkk.. penjelasan dahulu (kerja=dapat duit) sudah backfire!
“Ummi tak ada duit syiling, tapi Ummi ada duit kertas.” (rasa ‘tercabar’ punya pasal alahai) Ummi beri sekeping not seringgit seorang, dan jelaskan “Ni duit kertas, ni duit syiling.”

Sungguh tidak seronok bila kerja hanya dikaitkan dengan duit. Saya cuba juga terangkan konsep ‘pekerjaan’ pada anak saya, terutama sekali yang kami biasa berurusan atau nampak sehari-hari, contohnya doktor, peniaga, dan guru (kalau jurutera atau akauntan, susah sikit nak ‘nampak’). Saya nak dia faham, sebab orang berkerjalah ‘the world goes round’ (ibu di rumah pun bekerja juga). Makanan yang kita makan, kita dapat makan sebab ada yang bekerja - tanam, proses, jual, tangkap ikan, bela ayam, masak, dsb. Kita sakit, ada yang bekerja bantu pulihkan kesihatan – doktor, jururawat, dsb. Masing-masing punya peranan.