Loss of patience

It is the worst timing to rain early in the morning, on a working day especially. There will be traffic congestion on the roads and many will be late for school or work. The school going kids will most likely soak in the rains and with wet uniforms it would be certainly very uncomfortable for them.

Passing through small town Labu on my way to work this morning, there were many parents sending their kids to school on motorcycles and these poor kids although wearing rain coats, were wet, but kids being kids, never complained that how come some of their school mates going to school sitting comfortably in their parents’ cars while they must endure ill-timed rains on a bicycle or motorcycle. Even though wet, some were still putting up a smiley face as they were whispering good bye to their parents.

I recalled when I was young, my mom would be cycling my younger brother and me to school and my father would be fetching us back after his work. My late mother was a rather fat lady then, cycling an old bicycle, two of us sitting right at the back hugging her so tightly, so worried that we might fall as our mother was not so good in cycling and with her fatty body, it could be so clumsy at times. So, day in day out, that was how I went to school until I was old enough to cycle on my own.

Those days we never complained why did we had to go to school that way, neither did our mother complained why must she cycle a few kilometers to send her kids to school that way, enduring the heat of the sun and occasional rains. Those days there were very few cars on the roads and not many people could really afford to own one, having a motorcycle at home was already a luxury.

When I was old enough, I asked my parents to buy me a bicycle. What I was having in mind then was a BMX, the mountain bicycle which was so popular among teenagers during the seventies, a sport-car-type of bicycle so to speak but alas my father bought me an ordinary one similar to that used by those old aunties going to wet market for their daily routine shopping. Still it was better than none; I was not complaining although a little bit disappointed, a not so fancy bicycle was better than walking. So since then, bicycle was my mode of transportation until I was old enough to think that maybe bicycle would get me too far, but at that time the so called “far” was Kangar, about 20 km away from my home town Arau. I needed to go there for tuitions.

Come to think about it, I guess our patience gets exhausted with ages. As we got older, we become so easily irritated for nothing. People drive too slowly, we got irritated, honking and cursing and sometimes even putting up centre finger for releasing the unnecessary distress. My wife was saying the other day that I could be inflicted by chronic anger as I tend to get irritated for no apparent reasons. She could be right. But come to think about it again, could the availability of all these modern day advancements such as car make us more impatience? Everyone want to be faster than the rest of the people and in the way forgetting those olden days when everyone cycled slowly, and cheerfully whispering to friends or even strangers along the road.

Getting old

A few days ago, a friend posted on his facebook that he had the tendency to look at the obituary on the newspaper, somehow realizing that his age was catching up. Aging is a normal process but somehow, it is a bitter pill to swallow. But when you’re feeling a bit dizzy just because a night before you slept a bit less or your heart beating faster than normal when you are climbing on the stairs. Then perhaps it is time to get use to the fact that your body is not as fit as 10 years or 20 years ago.

In my early forties, one thing I learn about aging is that if I sleep less than 6 hours a night, then it will be extremely difficult to have good concentrations the following morning. But when I was in my twenties, I could stay awake the whole night getting ready for examinations, having a cup of black coffee then attending the examination without feeling sleepy and in the evening still could go for a game of tennis. Of course burning a midnight candle would not give you a good result but that was what an average student so used of doing. Physical strength and mental concentration aside, poor memory also comes with aging.

Last Friday’s night when I was in TESCO Seremban for shopping I bumped up with a lady with a very familiar face that I couldn’t recall who she was when she was greeting me. The face was so familiar but alas, the identity of this lady didn’t seem to be able to come out from my mind. I spent a few days trying to recall who she was but simply unable to recall her name. The face was so familiar and I could even recall the tone of her voice but didn’t have a clue as to who she is. You see how bad a poor memory can be. Whatever it is, I take consolation in capable of memorizing my 11-digit bank account number.

England riots

I have been cracking head trying to figure out what actually caused the rioting in England for the past few days but there is still no answer to it. Was it purely a senseless violence or senseless criminality as their prime minister put it? Or is it a social problems evolving form the polarization of the rich and poor?

In a BBC interview to one of the rioting youngsters, he responded: “Why are you going to miss the opportunity to get free stuff that’s worth a lot of money? How many people have the police arrested? I’m not really bothered. I will keep doing this until I get caught.” If the youngsters are having such mentality, thinking of taking the opportunity of public unrest to get expensive stuff for free until they get caught, then the rioting would not stop, as the young people are not respecting laws anymore.

It is such a shame that a senseless rioting can evolve into such a worrying scale that spreading fast to major cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. Shops were looted and cars were set fire and even police stations were thrown with firebombs. Three youngsters which were standing again the rioters and looters in protecting their neighborhood were reportedly killed when they were hit by a car of the rioters. If such things happen in the third nations nobody will give a damn, but England, a country of “Ladies and Gentlemen”? It goes to show how complicated a social problem can be.

The question is with such a big scale of rioting, how many people the police need to arrest to restore peace and order, hundred, thousand or more? Now that the police is considering using the plastic bullets which had never before used to deal with riot in England, it goes to show that the police may be running out of idea and resources to restore order quickly. What I hope is that they would not deploy army to handle the riots or else it will be such a shame for a developed country such as England.

Fertilizers and Oil Palm

A plantation owner talked to me a few weeks ago that it was slow to make money from oil palm business. He is quit new in the business, as a qualified engineer residing and educated in Australia, he was asked by his family to oversee their oil palm business in Sarawak just a few years ago. I told him that the business is sustainable despite of the cyclical trend of crude palm oil and the key of maintaining a good profit is none other than keeping a reasonable cost while trying to realize the maximum site yield potential.

Fertilizer is the most expensive cost which accounts for almost 60 to 70% of the production cost of oil palm but most of the plantation owners or managers are sentiment-driven when come to the application of fertilizers. When the price of CPO is high, everyone will be rushing to increasing the fertilizer input but when the price is low, they will be cutting back on fertilizers to save cost. Such practice is not ideal as when you cut down too much of the fertilizers due to low CPO price, you may potentially encounter a crop decline when the commodity prices recover a year later.

I told him that oil palm is a sustainable business if the cost can be contained within acceptable range and there bound to be up and down of the CPO prices and so the fertilizer regime should be maintained at desirable level so that the crop levels can be satisfactorily sustained through the good and bad time. I told him that he will hit the jackpot once the high crop output coincided with the boom of CPO prices. It rarely happens though, as supply and demand chain is determining the commodity prices and as such, when the production level is high, the price tends to take a dip.

Due to bullish palm oil prices over the past two years, many people incline to put high rates of fertilizers but not realizing that the soils although have the buffering capacity, are not very likely to retain any nutrients applied in excess thus leading to high losses. For example, some estates are applying fertilizers amounting to RM 1500 per hectare to realize a good yield but some others are applying close to RM 2000 per hectare for the same yield level. In other word, a different of RM 500 per hectare if multiply by a big area i.e. 2000 hectare will incur an additional cost of RM 1,000,000 a year and if this is a long term practice over a period of 10 years, than the additional cost incurred will be a whooping RM 10,000,000.00.

I told my friend that if the yield of the estate is limited by other environmental factors such as steep terrain or low palm density or other operational issues such as labour shortage problem, then putting too much fertilizer is not going to bring him a good return and over the long term, will erode the profitability for his estate. He seemed to be convinced by my lengthy explanations but told me that his bosses may not buy this idea and will blame him if he is not able to produce good crop. In that sense, he would rather put more fertilizers despite of the high cost so that there would not be any finger pointing when the crops decline.

In the end, logical explanation is still not good enough to back off sentiment.

Fear Factors

Those invest in share markets will know that volatility is the key of making profit. But it is just like a double-edged sword, potentially giving you the profit and along with it a hidden liability. US stock market suffered it worst day since the 2008 crisis and Dow Jones declined steeply by 513 points in a single day yesterday and wept out almost US 1.9 trillion in the market value over the past two weeks.

What happened in US may not be that of our concern but this morning Bursa Malaysia lost more than 20 points and the 1,500 level seems to be very shaky as the crisis in US doesn’t seem to recover over the short term. I have spoken to many elderly friends who are planter by profession who are also investing in share markets and their advice was always to be resilient, and to be able to do so is by adopting a stingy policy, extra careful on the expenditure so as to weather through the unforeseen tough time.

This is quite a right way of doing things, anything as long as profit and lost is concerned. For example, the plantation companies are all quite bullish over the past one and a half year due to increasing CPO prices and thus would incline to spend extra money to fertilize the palms but when the price of CPO was low a few years ago, many of them were cutting down their expenditure on fertilizers very drastically and not realizing that this may end up in crop decline when the price recover. Just like the share market, the plantation companies are also driven by sentiments. Good sentiments spend more, bad sentiments cut cost.

The PM had recently appointed another full minister even though the general election is just around the corner, expanding his cabinet to 39 full ministers. Does a small country like Malaysia need that many ministers? One thing for sure is that those politicians which were made into ministers or other important portfolios will be exhausting the taxpayers’ money in building a big fortune for themselves.

Sadly, as politicians become richer, more and more people are suffering to cope with the pressure of inflation and other persistent problems such as increasing house prices and so on. When the gap between the rich and poor becomes bigger and the government which is run by the “rich people” are still reluctant to look into the problem of those underprivileged, sooner or later a hidden liability of poor governance will explode just like what happened in the middle east.

Boss, mau naik harga larr

Having my haircut yesterday evening after work and my regular barber was murmuring on increasing his rate from RM 8 to RM 10 per hair cut. He had been saying such thing to me over the past few months but I always told him not to do so as he may lose customers. So the Indian barber, in his early thirties was in a dilemma now, to raise or not to raise. I jokingly told him off that if he raised his rate I would look for some other barber nearby. But our friend cheekily told me that I may not get someone as good as him. True enough, I simply could not find a better barber that could shave a neat crew cut on my fast growing straight hair and like it or not, I need to come to him twice a month to maintain a neat and tidy crew cut or otherwise, my entire head will be out of shape.

I called this young Indian barber “tamby” and I have known him long enough to have listened so much stories of how he had grown up in an rubber estate near Nilai, how as a school dropout he started learning doing haircuts from his master and later started up his present barber shop and started to train up a few protégés which had “come and go” in the process. And I have known him long enough that from a bachelor, his wife which is a school teacher had given birth to a boy which is already 2 years old.

Somehow, this young Indian is a hard working chap that although he didn’t get good education as a teenager but managed to learn a skill that allow him to earn a decent living. Everyone needs a haircut isn’t, so at least as a school dropout, he had picked a right path that despite of his lack of paper qualifications, still allow him to made a decent living that is not bad comparing to those struggling unemployed graduates or those school dropouts involved themselves in vice activities.

Coming back to his intention of raising his rate of haircut, I jokingly told him off that he shouldn’t take the opportunity of the recent hike in electric tariff to increase his rate. I then joked with him that I would report to the Consumers Association (CAP) if he insisted of increasing his rate. Then again I joked with him that he should take the consolation that the Prime Minister was giving so much of attention to the Indian community in this country so much so that the President of MIC was recently made a full minister despite of not being a member of parliament and MIC which only won two seats in the past general election had now two full minister, a whooping 100% achievement.

“Pui” was his reaction. He spat and angrily refuted that the appointment was only meant to pinch the votes but doing noting good to the Indian community as a whole. He then cursed that all these so called leaders, which were corrupted and not contributing to the community will lose everything come the next general election.

My haircut remained at RM 8 for the moment. But I guess this guy will be again talking about the price hike when I come to him 2 weeks from now.

Happiness in a long house

I was on my way to Batu Niah from Miri last Friday with a friend in his chauffeur-driven Toyota Fortunar early in the morning. As we travelled along the coastal highway, he took the opportunity to show me some big bungalows built next to each others not too far away from the beach a few kilometers away from Miri. You could hardly see so many big mansions next to each other in East Malaysia, but in Miri, big bungalows which are all about the size of the one belong to the former Mentri Besar of Selangor, are common, it goes to show how rich are the people in Miri, which are mostly accumulating their wealth from timber. I told him that these must be big families therefore building such a big mansion but my friend shook his head and told me that the big houses were mostly occupied by not more than 2 or 3 people.

How come? He explained that these houses belong to rich people in Miri of which their children are mostly residing overseas, leaving behind the parents at the place where they spent their whole life time building up their wealth in order to send their children studying overseas and ended up their children are more attracted to the lives on a greener pasture and decided not to come back. Such situation is quite common in West Malaysia as most of the people that I know; especially those involved in plantation business are somehow or rather having this sort of experience of sending their children overseas and ended up lonely during their golden age as their children are mostly becoming citizens abroad.

My friend than joked with me that perhaps we should not be working so hard for the children but enjoying every bit of the hard earned money as either way, with or without children, the parents may end up guarding their own house in loneliness when their children all spreading wings and landing somewhere far away. As we were approaching Batu Niah, there were a few modern long houses along the road and I pointed to these seemingly congested long houses and told my friend that perhaps these long house people are living in a more fulfilling live in their small and congested long house as they have all their children and close relatives around them even though they don’t have a luxury bungalow. Neither do they have a lot of money, but they have the luxury of their loved ones around them through thick and thin.