The Inevitability of a Recession in 2023

Energy prices are going up so fast in the EU that at some point it is no longer possible to pass on these extra cost to the end user……what must be understood is this – the end user does not have infinite amount of money. Neither can they borrow without ever paying back. So what will happen is a break down in the financial supply chain between demand and supply. When this tipping point is reached. An economic recession is impossible to avert.

On Role Models

It’s not good enough to be 50% sure. Neither should you limit your source of knowledge to one or two ‘kosher’ sources. Shop around. Look at it from different vantages. Peer into darkened interiors. Question where possible…especially when all others seem to do is to follow like robots.

That’s especially true in the case of role models in the context of opportunity – as I said, you have every right to worship whoever you believe fits the bill. But what you do not have the right to do is – embellish, bent, confect, elide and above all remain ignorant about the historicism concerning your role models.

This you don’t have a right to do and should you be foolish enough to believe you do – then someone who happens to know more about your role model will come along and state his case and put you into a NTUC plastic bag. Then that door of opportunity will always remain close to you. Look it’s nothing personal. It’s strictly business!

I want to be very clear here!

Consider this! Let’s say you came to me one day and told me – I want to make money like you by farming commercially. After the second curry puff – I would probably ask you….where do you see yourself in ten years? Now bear in mind that’s a loaded question – it’s actually a classic trick question. As what I am really asking of you obliquely is – who is your role model?

Why is that jugular to me? I need to know. As I too have a vision and mission in life. That comes as a default position when one is a landowner – I need to be assured that if you’re going to turn the wheel of life as a commercial farmer. You are in synch with my vision. Ultimately it’s a question that prioritises values, goals and a hundred other things. To put it another way – what defines you as an individual?

As for intelligence, social acuity and diligence that’s secondary.

You know I am not talking about this subject from the cosy insiderism of someone who has a chair in that room called ‘opportunity.’ I want to be clear. I am a outlier. An exile from that place.

But if you ask me today whether I would do anything differently to get into that room called ‘opportunity.’ I would probably say, ‘yes.’ I am not going to give you the standard bs line – I have no regrets. Because I do. If I had the opportunity to do it all again.

I would probably shaddup. Be more humble. Talk less. Listen more. Be less opinionated.

Had I done that maybe I would already have the key to that door.

I don’t believe wealth comes from investing wisely

Because so much of what is defined as wealth creation really just comes right down to luck and very little else. Most people who have made it have a hard time coming to terms with the idea their success has more to do with luck than skill, that’s because they have invested too much of themselves in the form of their ego, mythology and prestige which they equate with the bullshit story of their success. But personally I don’t have that problem coming to terms with the idea luck is king. Because the added advantage of having such a philosophy towards life is that one doesn’t get big headed easily or worse still start believing in the bullshit fairytale of how I made my first million with just twenty bucks! The idea of luck shifts the focus from the me, me and me culture to something random and mysterious and even unfathomable. Most business men have a problem with the unknowable or uncertainty, so they don’t want to talk about luck. But believing in luck injects a certain democracy to the idea of success that I believe is why the Big Sweep is so popular in Singapore. Anyone can be a millionaire! Besides believing in luck makes one less judgemental of others and if you happen to be successful now it doesn’t mean it will be that way forever, so it keeps one very grounded and level headed. Having said that I do believe very strongly in increasing one’s probability of being lucky, but that’s very different from investing wisely.

Increasing one’s probability is definitely one area that I should talk more about.

Never let others game you

To be gamed once is often unavoidable as it was probably unexpected. As we all start off on the assumption… Most act in good faith. But NEVER allow others to game you twice in a row. BC if that ever happens it will probably happen the third and fourth and fifth and probably many more times and if that ever happens you are to blame and not them. BC you always had the option to walk away.

The Free falling £

If there’s a lesson here, it is simply this – while glib tongued politicians might be able to promise the sky and moon to win votes. They can NEVER sell a ridiculous idea like water being able to flow upstream to the experts……… If politicians try to bulldoze that hole in the head idea. They will certainly be punished, humiliated and given a royal dressing down by the markets.

The market has and will always be king! The rest just come and go.

You must be prepared to lose everything to win!

Last week. I shared with my manager that I didn’t really need that plot of land….. It was optional to my survival. But in reality, I need it in the way a fish needs water or birds absolutely need the skies. So why did I mislead my manager? So that he has the right frame of mind to negotiate hard with the other side.

When one needs something real bad, one can only radiate desperation and yearning, but when that which is sought after is no longer the object of desire, then one remains perfectly neutral.

Many of LIFE’S problems…….

Are given birth and nourished on the fear of being alone. When we confront our fear of loneliness and see it for what it actually is – the primal need to belong to a tribe. Only then can we begin to deprogram our minds from the need to be clingy to others. This is the defining difference between the mature and immature mind. The mature mind is perfectly neutral in the nucleas of loneliness. Fear absolutely does not exist. The mature mind is not paralysed by the effects of loneliness. The immature mind however regards loneliness as a terrifying purgatory. It suffers and is eventually broken. When you realise this truth abt humans. This will give YOU remarkable insights into the human mind.

Sonic wonder

Its 40 yrs young and its still chill. Some good things never change.

300,000

Russia has mobilised 300,000 men. Sounds alot. Till you consider from the coast line where the Dneiper ends right up to the north to Belarus, thats a sawtooth front of nearly 1,630 kilometers with at least 36 active fronts, 16 of which require armored and motorised support to annul an Ukrainian counterstrike. From Donbass proper to Odessa, the shoreline runs from East to West that’s at least 900 kilometers with possibly 18 sea landing sites. To just guarantee a reliable supply of water to the Crimea. The Russians need to allocate at least 100,000 men along 16 active fronts out of which 3 are indefensible and this does not even take into account the military doctrine to provision a ratio of 2:1 reserves. My point in highlighting all these nitty gritty details is to illustrate this is NOT an invasionary deployment of men n material. As all it can reasonably do is maintain the 2014 status quo.

Running with Wolves

She realised the spy who they called Yuri, had stopped, turned around and looked at her for the very first time since she had come across them. She exclaimed, ‘I want to follow you all to the border.’ Yuri suddenly looked up enviously at a flock of birds heading east. She instinctively sensed he wished he had wings. Then as if seized by some deep primal impulse, she blurted out, ‘I can keep up with all you…. I promise, I wouldn’t slow you all down.’ Though he remained strangely impassive and silent. She could make out thru the caked blood into the depths of his eyes that swirled a kaleidoscope of shattered hopes and unfulfilled dreams. There nestled somewhere with the forest of sharp jagged layers of silent hurts, she could just about make out embers of an indescribable yearning called home. She realised then, despite their seeming apartness, they were cut from the same cloth and this realization filled her with a salutory feeling of solidarity that swept across her cold and desolate heart like the first breathe of spring.

Extract from the Book – A pilot called Yuri /The Brotherhood Press scheduled for release 15 March 2023

Couscous

Many do it wrong…. My feel tells me, this is the right way….. With stock.

Provocation

Those who are determined to be slighted will invariably discover a provocation in something you said, did or should have done, but didn’t. When one is well versed with this psychology, it is almost impossible not to be forgiving of one’s detractors.

What conscription really means for the war in ukraine

To politicians. Conscription just means compulsory enlistment into the armed forces. To them, its just a mathematical necessity like maybe having to procure raisins to bake a fruit cake. But to me, the word conscription means a deep and profound sadness. Because it signals the end of the Russia that I have always loved. You see Russia in a sense mirrors my own life, it is a story of a boy who was seduced by the ideal of democracy only to eventually realise that those who were the firmest o Democrats were infact least interested in the idea of propagating everlasting peace and international Brotherhood…… Now the boy who once put all his hopes on that democratic dream has turned his eyes back to the darkness of sovietization. So what conscription really means is that in 5 or 10 years the war will still go on and whole droves of young men would be sent to the front where no one would even know what they are actually fighting for. Neither would it matter. Conscription will also mean Russia will close its doors and this time she will make sure the key is thrown into the deepest and most mysterious lake in Russia. This means we will have less and less interaction with Russians. Less exchanges. Less of everything and anyone who thinks that is a good thing knows very little about life.

Darkness 2022

Coffee Stainless Steel Drip Cone

Instead of having to keep using paper filters, this seems like one very credible alternative………. Thanks Mun Yen.

Why the world cannot have a defeated Russia

The world doesnt know how dangerous a defeated, humiliated and seemingly powerless Russia really is…. Maybe there are planners who know abt this aspect of danger, but regrettably not in sufficient numbers or seniority to shift either strategy or policy concerning Russia. Let me put it this way – many years ago. I heard this story about this small landowner who was ridiculed by a group of bigger landowners. At that time, I cautioned many who cared to listen, this was dangerous……. But regrettably no one paid any heed. Instead I advised that a face saving option should be offered to this small landowner to smooth things over. But even this fell on deaf ears. One day, this landowner took his 12 gauge shotgun, sawed the barrel off and drove down to a party and shot the shit out of those big landowners and finished himself off with the last round. My point is all this could have been sensibly averted. And this brings me to the issue of a weak, humiliated and defeated Russia. I can’t think of anything more dangerous than that, so much so, you now have folk debating whether Russia will deploy tactical nukes. Well my answer to that question is – what does a defeated, humiliated and weak Russia have to lose should they decide to deploy atomics……….. This gentlemen would seem to be common sense, but it is not so common, it seems.

This is an extract from the meditations of a man called Darkness 2022

Will tactical nuclear weapons be used?

I think the question is framed incorrectly. This is not only a casual mistake BC how a question is structured often produces a certain slant to an answer. The correct way to frame this question is as follows – under what conditions will Russian military doctrine permit the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

In my opinion, the use of atomics is not a question of if, as much as when.

Fritz Lang – Metropolis

US dollar going up, up and up

The value of the US dollar against other major currencies has reached its highest level. Even as recession fears mount and the economy shows signs of slowing, the dollar continues to surge…….. This incomprehensibility is very problematic. At one level. A strong dollar renders US denominated goods and services uncompetitive, but on the flip side it may soften the impact of run away inflation that is currently rippling thru the US.

Chicken Rice Calculus

At some point in the food security calculation concerning securing a stable supply of fresh chickens in Singapore. It is impossible not to consider mass industrial scale breeding IN Singapore.

Winter during the Dneiper

In the last one hundred years. The Dneiper to the extreme South has frozen over 32 times, but only on 11 occasions was the ice more than 2 feet thick at its epicenter. 2 feet is good for tanks. The September rains seems to be late this year……its going to be a very cold winter in Ukraine this year.