Another new house ready!!

As I approach half a century of existence this year, I am preparing for my next half century. Retirement age in Malaysia is officially 55 at this time. The company I work for has set the retirement age at 60. So I still have at least a decade to go before I will be forced to retire.

Since a decade ago, I have been planning my retirement. I have been using part of my provident fund (EPF) to invest in mutual funds. Returns has been better than EPF. I withdrew about 200K and manage to return 300K back into my EPF account with another 150K still invested. This was over a period of 10 years with investments made every 3 to 4 months as is allowable by the provisions of EPF rules. I always tell my other investors that long term investments should be done with long term funds. I am probably my own best customer as I am also a Unit Trust Agent/ Consultant. Others who invest through me provides me good pocket money.

In addition, I have also been buying properties in order to get a regular stream of income from rentals. I am currently staying in a double story corner link with a garden (total land area of 3300 sq ft). Still owe the bank on this one - but this is the property against which all my other real estate investments has been made. An apartment in nearby Taman Connaught is rented out to students studying in UCSI. Another apartment in Malacca is on a 3 + 2 year lease to a holiday resort.

And today, the keys to my fourth property was handed over. Certificate of Fitness has been issued and theoretically, the house is almost habitable. I just need to add security grills, lighting and fans. And I will put it on the rental market. This is another landed property located in Denai Alam within the Bukit Jelutong township that was developed by Guthrie (now Sime Darby). With a land area of 1400 sq ft, it is large enough for a small family with 2 to 3 kids.

When I compare this with the first landed property that I purchased when I was 21 years old, what a difference in terms of workmanship, finishing and planning. The first house I purchased was 18 ft by 70 ft (land area), a double storey link house, low ceiling (you can actually touch the fan when you stretch out your arm!!) and cost me RM43.5K (about US$18K at that time). Today's house cost me about US97K, is 20 ft by 70 ft double storey link. Allowing for inflation and the depreciation of the Malaysian Ringgit, the cost is still reasonable.

But what impressed me was that the developer put in most of the things that new owners would want to add when they get the keys to the new house. Well.... not the actual stuff, but the preparations for adding those stuff. They had
- the wiring installed for an autogate so that owners do not need to hack the floors if they want to install this. (autogate is still not common in Malaysia)
- 3 phase wirings so that if you want to install airconds in every room and the living and dining rooms, there is sufficient power for all that and more. My current house that I am staying in has only single phase and if i wanted to air conditioned the whole house (4 bedrooms, living room and dining, I would need to switch to 3 phase wiring).
- Junction box for the phone lines. This may seem like a simple thing to do, but most developers do NOT put this in. The phone lines have also been wired to the living rooms in both upstairs and downstairs.
- water heater points in both the upstairs bathroom.
just to name a few.
Workmanship was above average - only one broken tile was noted in the defects report. I will need to wait for water to be connected to test the flooring for water levelling , leaks and so on. A visit shall also be made after a heavy downpour to check if there are any roof/ ceiling leakages.

Other than that I am almost tempted to relocate there - except that it would be very far from my current social circle.

Anyone need to rent a house???

India visit Feb2008

This update is in addition to the previous writeup on Gurgaon.

With double digit growth, much of India's infrastructures and economy is undergoing changes. 10 years ago, I was in Noida and saw a narrow 4 storey general provision shop which we would have called a mini-market in Malaysia. This shop had the billboard stating - HYPERMARKET!!.

Around the same time in Bangalore, there was a local superstore called Kemp. It was about half the size of our Globe Silk Store housed in 2 levels.

Today, many shopping malls are coming up around Gurgaon. Ambience Mall, which is located just after the toll gate from Delhi to Gurgaon boasts of 1km of shopping per floor!!

Chinese restaurant (of the Hakka variety) are sprouting up like mushrooms everywhere. But truth be told, their menu is more Thai than Chinese. I think Indians are still not able to differentiate between Thai and Chinese. . Chinese styled outlets are the rage at the moment. Here is one of an outlet I saw all over Delhi - Yo! China

Delhi airport even has a McD outlet. On the menu..... Veggie burger WITH cheese!! (prices in Indian Rupees)

20 years ago, I saw full page ads of guys looking for horoscope compatible partners and likewise with the gals. Hardly see that anymore in the papers these days.

Delhi airport seems to be undergoing a long renovation. It was in a similar state one year ago. While waiting for my plane to take off, I had to amuse myself looking at the only bright spot in the departure lounge - the aquarium. They even have a starfish with colors of the pootu!! Nemo was having fun crawling amongst the anemone. There is one anemone which made me think it has halitosis (bad breath lah). Compare that with a regular anemone.

I'll be back in a month's time!!

Gurgaon - site of the new Global Support Desk operations

Finally........ concrete steps are being taken to initiate the team for the new Global Support Desk which I have to start up from scratch. After posting the vacancies for 3 weeks, we have enough candidates to warrant a face to face interview in Gurgaon, India.

Arrived on 24th Feb night - to utter chaos in the Indira Gandhi International airport. At the immigration checkpoint, people were stacked up on the stairways leading to the immigration desks. Took me a little over an hour to get past the immigration checks and get my bags.

Monday started with a meeting with HR to clarify the parameters for my interviews and agreements on uncertainties like

- would I consider lowering the levels of freshers from ICB to ICA (yes I would)

- Specifying operational shift times beyond the regular shift times practiced currently

- can an ICB intermediate career level be a people manager (unusual but YES), etc..

All the activities were carried out in the Gurgaon, IRIS site. Looks like they have some unusual part-timers!! :)

In previous hiring situations, I worked alone and only got HR involved after I had interviewed and made up my mind for hiring. This time around, the Gurgaon HR assigned 3 people to work with me to get the hiring and interviews completed. WOW!! Both the Rashmitas took turns to accompany me during the 3 days of interviewing 15 people. They were certainly helpful to clarify the local perspectives, policies and practices with the candidates. At the end of the long 3 days, I settled on 6 of the candidates to be hired. I am still unable to get a suitable candidate for the crucial team leader role. We shall reword the scope and role of the team leader and reopen the posting.

Cristina Knebl was kind enough to loan one of her project managers to help me through with setting up the team and operation from scratch!!. Since I was remote in Malaysia, he was certainly a much needed ally for all things local.Param has been absolutely helpful. I had the plan all in my mind and in discussing with Param my plans, he was able to help place my thoughts on paper - repositioned as a project.

I also took the opportunity to meet up with people with whom I had dealt with. Pranavi Singh - I thought she was a guy until I met up with her face to face!!

Hridya!! I am seeing a lot of "modern" Singhs in the India of today.

In fact the India today is seeing a lot of changes. Compared to as recent as 1 year ago, there are a lot more "luxurious" cars on the roads in New Delhi. I saw many Toyota Innovas on the roads and half as many Toyota Camrys. I was told that the Innovas are used to ferry workers to work, especially in Gurgaon where many BPOs operate. The BPOs are essentially call centers setup by corporations in USA and Europe. That was where a majority of my candidates came from.

Slums which were common all over India are much less now. I remember that about a decade ago, when I was staying in the Hyatt Regency (same as during this visit), I could look out of the hotel windows and look upon a nearby park with many cardboard tents where the poor and destitute lived. Today, I still see those slums but they are a lot less.

I'll be back in a month to welcome the pilot batch of 6 support agents.

Malaysia- the 12th Election is upon us

This Sunday, 24th Feb is designated as nomination day for the whole of Malaysia, except for the State assembly of Sarawak. That is when all parties, government and opposition officially put their candidates up for nominations so that the people can vote and elect their legislative representative.

I shall also be flying off to New Delhi the same evening and miss out one week of electioneering campaigning. This time around, I personally feel that the opposition has a realistic chance of denying the current ruling party their 2/3 majority and even has a slim chance of coming to power with a simple majority. The 4 years of abdullah badawi's rule has caused a lot of of the socio economic structure to deteriorate - very much like the structures built to house them, e.g. Parliament leaks, New Judiciary buildings leak, structures collapsing before building has been completed.

Crime is rampant and statistically has increased significantly over the past 4 years. While the official inflation rate says that inflation has been low, the reality is that cost of living has gone up significantly. We even had a run on cooking oil. Can you imagine - a palm oil producing country like Malaysia running short of cooking oil?

Islam hadhari?? To me those are the body snatching, force religion up your ass religious zealots. The talibanization of Malaysia has started and must be stopped with this election.

There are numerous emails making their rounds to remind many of us of the follies of this current government. A sleeping flip flop PM with a power crazy son-in-law lording over everything and grabbing every and anything he can lay his hands on.

I have no idea how many of you who reads this blog are Malaysians and even if you were, did you register as a voter and would you be voting? All I want to say is that come 8th Mar - vote wisely. As one former PM says - you get the government you deserve.

I know I will be voting for the opposition (who may just turn out to be the government in waiting). Even if that opposition is PAS or PKR or DAP .

Vote for CHANGE!!

Hiring - a difficult choice

This Sunday, I'll be flying to India to (hopefully) interview enough people to fill 6 positions for my new team. The past 2 weeks has been really difficult to be motivated at work. Candidates were plentiful, but candidates applying for those positions were either too inexperienced or totally out of scope. Most are not what I have in mind.

If I have to make a decision based solely on what they have submitted as their resume - possibly only 2 candidates will get past my scrutiny. What am I to do?? My self imposed milestones are:
- Interview by end of Feb
- offer the job beginning of Mar
- Have physical warm bodies in by early Apr
- Training during the whole month of April
- Basic operations by beginning of May

That is already 1/2 year too late for some countries!!

Added to that are complications on routing calls into the call center in India. Only confirmed HOW that will be done as of yesterday. Cowabunga!!!