One for the weekend

It has been a rather eventful week. Much accomplished, with still so much more to be done.

Yesterday was interesting. I ended the day with a few drinks at “The T” over in Bangsar with a few friends (boys), and the conversation took a very businesslike overtone; and I decided to make myself scarce. I headed over to Friendsters (corny!) and met another friend (girl) and obviously this time it had the needed ingredients of a nice evening out. Chatting away about nothing, sharing why men sucks, and why women sucks even more as the entrée, and moving along to bitching about some common friends I feel relaxed already. Although, I don’t get to talk much, I do enjoy the listening. And it also gives me something to blog about, so what the heck!

I spent the week shuttling about town looking for a suitable location to house our team, finishing the necessary documentations that are often required to start a business, and sandwiched a few client meetings in between these times. All in all, a lot of good fun. The undulating feeling between, euphoria and freaking out, is something that I have begun to get used to. It is just the way it is. Some days will be good, others bad, or perhaps if I am lucky - mediocre.

One of the irritating manias I have to go through nowadays is listening to the thousand advices that people are so eager to give to a newbee entrepreneur wannabe.

Everyone! From the Mak Cik Nasi Lemak all the way to the MD of a few listed companies and MNCs. Hey! Don’t get me wrong, this boy appreciates all the help he can get (ie money, purchase orders, or large contracts even). But to spend an hour listening to all the lingering stories about how difficult it was for you back in the days; like listening to a war veteran talking about a war they wished they had, and making up the rest to stretch a ten minutes story into a more fulfilling hour – I’m sorry, this boy have heard it all before. In fact I could tell it for you and save you the trouble. Note to Self: Advice Overload Alert.

If I do listen to all the stories, I may end up either so freaked out that I would do nothing or so overconfident that I would most definitely make a stupid unforced error. So best to keep to myself, smile, listen politely just like mom said, and try to excuse myself as soon as I see an opening. Mom would be proud. What a good boy she raised.

So here we are, on a Friday looking at a weekend.

I am thinking of playing golf. I think Golf Addix is in town. Will give him a call, and shall be looking for Zuhri too. Need one more ball.

As for tonight?

Will be fun. I have plans for Luna Bar, and after that just hopping around depending where the friends are, and I am actually already thinking of the Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa. The place stinks to high heaven, but has heavenly food. Will “tapau”.

So here’s Zed checking out for the week. Be good boys and girls okay - don’t drink and drive.

Cheers.

Picture from Postsecret

Peek-a-boo!

Just got back from a 40 minutes run. 5 minutes warm-up with a 30 minutes interval-jog and a 5 minutes warm-down. An interval-jog is when you alternate between jogging and a brisk walk. A 2 minutes jog, and a minute brisk walk in between and so forth. As the week progress, then you will want to increase the duration of the jog, and the rest period in between too.

An ideal point would be a 5 minutes jog alternated with 2 minutes of brisk walk over a 40 minutes workout period, which would bring the entire workout to about 50 minutes with the warm ups and downs included. All in all, a good hour. To make it really work, you’ll need three of these sessions in a week. Then watch the waist disappear, and the scales tipping with a smile. Track progress for 12 weeks, and you can thank me later.

10 minutes later, here I am hooked on the web like a junkie with his favorite shot.

Browsed a couple of blogs, and checked out the comments on mine (Zed’s Note: I will reply soon ladies and gents…). I have been reviewed by the self-proclaimed blog critic and he scored me well. It is a novel idea, and one that would catch up well I am sure. He basically reviews blogs, but only the one that is requested by the blog owner themselves. So if you don’t like what he has to say, then “You asked for it!” Now he also has a couple of apprentice and I am sure business is just booming over there. The following is a complete copy of the review he made on M.i.N.d.B.l.o.G. I found his site when I was browsing on Ah Pek’s site. Hello Ah Pek, long time no see.

M.I.N.D.B.L.O.G.

There's a Lat cartoon on the top of this blog. I love Lat so this puts me in a good mood immediately. I scrolled all the way to the bottom and found a Calvin and Hobbes strip - another favourite of mine. I like this blog already!

Zed's profile is pretty long but refreshingly honest. As he puts it: "Some (posts) probably makes sense and others may be trash - such is a blog." Well said.It's a basic Blogspot template but for some reason the layout is wider than usual. I had to scroll to read the column on the right. Perhaps it's the cartoon that threw the layout out of whack?

Zed is not a daily blogger but when he does blog, it's something worthwhile. I like reading the posts, they're well written and insightful, and the English is flawless.

Nice use of pictures and he credits the source which is pretty ethical of him. I only have problems with the width of the page.

My rating: 8/10

By the Blog Critic

Well, we have all the New Years out of the way. Gregorian, Chinese, and Islamic. In case you don’t know the Awal Muharram holidays celebrates the Islamic New Year, and Muharram is the first month on the Islamic Calendar.

So no more excuses. Gotta get up and going.

I admit that I am in a bit of cheeky mood, and am feeling that I shall be up to no good anytime soon! So here I am biting by tongue, and am trying my best to stay away from my phone, alas I might be tempted to dial or text a few of my buddies and we’ll end up with a very late night on a Monday. Such a no-no, what with this fresh feeling of celebrating New Years and all. So I am doomed to watch more frivolous tee-vee. Oh I did buy a new book today. It’s called Jarheads, and it’s a chronicle from one of the Marines deployed during Desert Storm. The other book I just finished was Every Man A Tiger, one by Tom Clancy in collaboration with an Air Force General, also during the same war. So since, I have had a bird’s eye view of the war, I am inclined to find out what the grunts have to say.

Am keeping myself busy minding my own business (Zed’s Note: I have always wanted to say that! LOL), and am feeling like singing. Anyone for karaoke?

Cheers.

What I have always wanted to say about the GLC's

I was reading Kadir Jasin in Malaysian Business, and I have to admit that I have a love-hate opinion about his column. He recently remarked about how the GLC’s and PLC’s (Party Linked Companies) was being treated by these professional managers that seems to have forgotten about the legacy and heritage of the companies, and especially the sacrifice that the past politicians and businessmen have taken to ensure we are where we are today.

First something about the PLC acronym. What’s next?

Crony Linked Companies – CLC
Minister Linked Companies – MLC
Minister’s Son Linked Companies – MSLC
Minister’s Wife Brother In-Law Linked Companies – MWBILC
The Guy the Minister owes a Favor Linked Company – TGTMOAFLC

Seriously folks, we have to stop this. A company is exactly that, just a company. It should not be tarnished with such acronyms that bring to notion that we are less then willing to be transparent and measure ourselves from the returns the companies make. A company is profit rather then losses, and assets against liabilities. That is it, not a Ringgit more. When a company decides to rationalize its assets, whether selling a building or selling a subsidiary; then that is what a company is doing - rationalizing. It is attempting to return to its stakeholder’s profits and dividends that keep people employed. Employed citizens in turn help to keep the same loud politicians that are meddling into the company’s decision in office.

We hire CEO’s and put them on a stage, and have juries run verdicts on them not unlike a reality show, soon we might even have SMS’ sent in judging their performance. Let’s get real. Do these forty-something boys carry a magic wand that will make all the woes in these giants we call GLC’s go away? No. They are simply professionals, making a living incidentally in the limelight offered to them albeit involuntarily by the media, and when the time comes, have their performance report plastered in business journals commending or crucifying their decisions. I wonder sometimes if it is worth it?

I wonder too where is our Jack Welch, Lou Gertsner, or Michael Eisner? True professionals that have led their companies through the vigor of what the market have thrown at them over the years. They led, managed, and preached their way through and in the end, grew the size of each of their companies by a hundred fold.

We live in a sensationalized economy. Scandals and failures attract us. A quiet steady-Eddie running a company, one small decision at a time is to us a nonchalant knight, doomed to fail as he or she is unable to please our notion that extravagant news is good news. Reorganize, restructure, and re-brand that gets our attention. Not sell more cars, sign more joint ventures or perhaps even make a tad more profit. These are par for the course, you as a CEO-elect has to perform these activities anyway, but as you do so you cannot retrench, sell a building that has “sentimental” values, and by the way the next time you feel like buying a painting, please do give us a tinkle and we will let the Cabinet decide if its worth its weight in oil and canvas.

Am I in defense of these new kids on the block? Well, yes and no.

Yes, I think they should be given the leeway they need to do their job. No they should not be allowed to sell the shop away. There are enough matrices to measure their performance, the quarterly and annual financial reports would suffice.

Yes, I would like to see our telecommunications company venture into growing economies the world over, and return a healthy profit as it does so. I would also like to see us making new cars, instead of churning the old clunkers and force the public into buying them, and perhaps while we are at it maybe the airline company could also introduce new routes and establish an attractive mileage program that would entice me to fly them, and an upgrade to Business Class once in a while wouldn’t hurt either. I would be a more loyal customer I am sure.

Yes, we would like to sit and watch these newbees get their job done in the next two years, or even a year down the road as some of them are forced to pledge – but the reality of it is that took Welch a decade to come close to achieving his initial goals with GM, and Gertsner had to spend the first five years just reorganizing IBM to change its culture. Eisner on the other hand watched Disney move from a theme park into the blitz of the media business, and had his fair share of competition from the Japanese.

No, it will be a few more years before we breed our own Welch, Gertsner and Eisner. Looking on the bright side though, the boys are young and I see a lot of talent in Abdul Wahid, Idris Jala and Syed Zainal Abidin.

Yes, I would like to think that given a chance; maybe just maybe we will have our own CEO-supreme. A CEO that will be around a tad longer then his three years contract, and spend a decade or so growing his company to a size that would compete in this ever shrinking borderless economy.

Yes, and please stop calling them GLC’s – just TM, MAS and Proton would do I am sure.