Eli Hong

A poem by William Shakespeare, a poem that didn’t mean a lot to me when I first read it in my early teens, but more recently, it has become very real coming into passing my mid-30s soon.

The realisation that in 15 years I will be 50 and it feels that I haven’t figured any of life out just quite yet.

Some things, perhaps, through iteration and practice, becomes better overtime.

At the moment, I feel that life unfolds slowly and quickly at the same time. I can barely grasp it.

Pardon me if I’m a little cryptic today.

Life in its own way recently, have spoken to me, revealed truths and sometimes I get a clear picture as the days goes by.

Sometimes, the opposite, a fog. I wonder. What is life telling me?

Or through a life’s incident, a rude awakening and that it can hit home pretty hard.

Priorities shift, goal poles shift.

All these shifting is making living in the moment and the present more important than ever.

Special moments are meant to be made in the “now”, not on the “morrow”.

The saying it’s now or never makes a lot of sense now.

And yet every day, is a new day to live in the now, to make things happen.

Yet, the now is dictated by micro decisions which lead to consequences in the years to come.

Micro decisions today doesn’t seem deadly.

These decisions, when compounded, will be profound.

Overtime, it either ages well or doesn’t age well at all.

And in most cases, a lot of things doesn’t age well.

The question is, will all micro decisions made today age well for tomorrow?

We can bend the rules, change our life story and re-evaluate as we go, if we make a steadfast commitment to make it happen.

I’ve got a confession and that I’m terrified of needles.

That itself makes me procrastinate when it comes to doing blood tests or even getting vaccinated.

And that fear, really is unfounded as these needles are pretty much an ant’s bite at the end of the day but reason enough for me to sway and delay.

But given the opportunity, all a sudden a FREE blood test appeared from a rising-in-popularity business entity in Malaysia known as Beacon Hospital, known for their cancer solutions which opened a number of Beacon Marts, selling their chicken, frozen seafood and even chicken essence. Wait, they also have a Resort called Beacon Resort.

From what I heard, the founder Mary Chen cares a lot about creating affordable healthcare especially when critical illnesses such as cancer is being treated. Her story is remarkable, being just limited to a Form 5 education to having a visionary outcome.

Now, the founder aside, what I can appreciate is their drive to get people into their brand, sales process through a FREE blood test campaign.

I wholeheartedly LOVE marketing and promotions. That’s what I do for a living and I love the process, the way it works from the sign-up to the actual fulfilment of the process.

And so from making an appointment ahead of time, the dreaded day arrived when I “excitedly” wake up in the a.m making my way to a local Beacon Mart.

The initial registration process was smooth, easy number taking, I see that they have also pre-registered me into their hospital system with sticker barcodes and all. There goes my data.

Here comes the concern after my registration:

1. Seated, I was asked some quick questions, pretty standard. Have you fasted? I said yes. Spoken in mandarin which they assumed I understood, which I did.
2. Step 2, a quick rundown on their offers. Alright pretty comprehensive, covered all grounds, all kinds of tests from top to toe. Straight to the point mini-sales pitch before the blood test. Quick briefing, effective indeed.
3. A quick highlight on prostates, yep got that. Thanks.

What I don’t appreciate is when someone from the sales team after all that sales pitch ends with, so you are here just for the FREE tests “lah”? I said uh-huh, yes.

This should be unsurprising, the offer was clearly a Free Blood Test.

But hey, I get it, it’s free, you have my permission to sell me, help me understand your offers better please and thank you. I genuinely may be interested to buy.

After politely declining on their full-package offer, they said: Try buying the cancer markers for RMxxx and etc, etc.

I said I don’t think I have cancer but I may consider.

The up-selling and down-selling was done rather distastefully.

Though I can’t blame them probably they have some sales KPI to achieve.

This condescending approach really ticks me off.

I’m grateful for a free blood test and I can very much afford to pay for one.

Also, when given the option to learn more about their offerings in English or Mandarin, I asked if they could explain in English and they continued speaking in Mandarin, which I do have some basic understanding.

But we’re talking about medical terms here, which I’d very much prefer to have full clarity so that I understand their complex offerings based on many different problems that may potentially occur in the future.

I also mentioned that I have a family member who’s in their hospital and that’s how I came to understand about this offering and they just shrugged it off and focused on selling their packages and then told me to go to the next station.

Given that they only have a few minutes, I can understand the rush.

But overall, a lack of a good ear and empathy in sales indeed.

I am thankful for this opportunity, it’s just that I think they could improve in the following areas:

1. Have a heart – some empathy.
2. Listen, carefully.
3. Don’t push and shove. Educate.
4. Explain, clearly vs focusing on price and offer. e.g deadlines, when does the offer end, when can it be redeemed?
5. What are the potential problems that I could face in the future if I don’t test now?
6. What are the best probably solutions that I should pay for today and how it works? Why the price is the best price today, not tomorrow? State their value so that their discounts will not be taken for granted.

That being said, probably in my next blood test, if they do, do it again, I may pick up one of their offers knowing that these are essential tests that everyone must go through.

I can’t possible take for granted that my health is all that great either.

That’s my little piece of sharing for now.

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I mean, yeah everyone is talking about chatgpt, how it’s used to generate content and it has many applications.

I’ve used it so far for client work, getting ideas, videos and stuff.

But more recently I heard from a friend that he used it to code in python for website scripts and yes I’ve used chatgpt to simulate code as a non-programmer myself but didn’t have very much success with it.

My childhood dream was to create a game through code but I just didn’t have the mental capacity to wrap my head around Visual Basic and stuff, tying a graphical user interface and all that to code.

As it’s a Sunday and I wanted to give myself a little time to explore.

There was a learning curve to get the game rolling, installing stuff on my mac and trying to figure out how text and GUI works with Python.

So I’m going to skip all of that and have some content created for that another time.

I had an idea so I started off with a ball being able to move from left to write.

Then I instructed chatgpt to let the ball jump.

Then I experimented with adding an object in the screen, like a slope.

That didn’t work out too well.

Then I added some walls, and it started to look pretty darn interesting.

Soon after my ball is now having a double jump power.

Then I added another wall from the top.

Added unlimited jumping via spacebar.

Then it turned out to be like a basic flappy bird kind of game which I’m totally surprised that I could code it with chatgpt especially with extremely limited knowledge of Python and compilers etc.

This is how it looks like below and it’s not perfect but it WORKS!

It would seem that I would wake up to a usual Friday, with my days planned out accordingly, where I’m expected to have meetings and then have a home-cooked dinner with my family as usual capping the week over to the weekend.

But as it’s a long weekend for most people, I’m working due to having international clients.

However, my wife had a task to have my kids renew their passports and that’s where the odds of having a pretty-much-planned-out Friday turned topsy turvy.

The universe has its ways to flip the world upside down even if you didn’t ask for it — and maybe for a good reason.

I had no intent to leave the house, in fact that’s far from my ideal Friday plan as I’d anticipate a lot of movement, traffic and crowds. Ideally, I’d love to stay away from crowds as much as possible.

Due to some unpredictable circumstances, my wife had to make 3 trips to the National Registration Dept due to a long queue and she decided to drop the kids back off after they were done and they were getting cranky and out of control.

That decision lead to the 3rd trip which was to bring the kids back to the NRD to receive their passports due to the fact that they need to have their thumbprints stamped and printed on their signature page. Previously kids do not need to have those done or it’s stamped exempted if they are under 2 years of age.

Long story short, that move made me leave the house to send the kids over to the NRD and while waiting for my wife and kids, I had two choices.

1. To stay in the car and wait for them, given that parking was limited.
2. To walk into the hall and meet them in case they need help.

I chose 2.

Little did I know, I would bump into a childhood friend who’s about to get married soon and by sheer chance, I recognised the friend and greeted her. If I chose convenience, which was option 1, I’d miss out on this opportunity to say hello for another 20 years likely.

I probably haven’t met her for easily 20 years.

After catching up, exchanging numbers. I moved on with my family.

My wife being tired as she was, wanted to eat out and that’s where I decided to drive to a local mall to grab dinner before heading back home.

That decision led to another fork of decision making.

I said, let’s go to Mall 1, my wife said she’d prefer Mall 2 because she’ll be going to Mall 1 tomorrow. So I said alright sure.

So once again, with a split decision and the timing being as such, heading towards the escalator upwards, I chanced upon another long time friend of easily 16 years with his family from the USA.

To say what are the odds of bumping into two long-time friends who are no longer staying in Malaysia and are in town is mind-boggling to say the least.

But I’m writing this here so that I’ll remember that this day happened and it’s worth noting that this made the end of June pretty darn funny.

Actually on a separate note, I did bump into another person whom I also haven’t met for more than 15 years and it was on a separate occasion at the same mall that I bumped into my USA friend today.

Grateful to have met friends over the years and are still able to call them friends even though we’ve not met for years and speak from where we left off.

What a gift and what pleasure to be able to enjoy such a beautiful and simple thing of life and friendship.

I haven’t had a chance to update since the last time I wrote in 2022.

Even my SSL expired. I use SSL Zen, it’s Free but requires updating. It’s a great SSL by the way, if you choose to use it.

Admittedly, I’ve been pretty busy, juggling between my business, family, extended family and kids.

The long and short of it.

Currently living life in the sandwich generation. Focusing on what matters.

This shift changes gears completely and to maintain a strong mind over incredible daily challenges is not what school or any institution have prepared me for.

From this all I can say is living in the present day and cherishing every single opportunity and the blessings and memories that one can experience during that very same day is more important than worrying about the past or the future.

And yet every single day has its own challenges.

Just make the best out of that day and push forward.

Well at least that’s my takeaway from Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘s latest Netflix docu-series. “Just keep moving forward.”

He has a strong mental ability to rebound regardless of the situation although life would push him down.

So that’s what I want to say for the next 6 months of 2023.

Push Forward.

I haven’t had the chance to update recently due to getting Covid-like symptoms and lingering persistent cough, even at this moment.

The cut to the chase, I lost all sense of smell and partial taste for a couple of weeks now.

To demonstrate how bad it was, I would usually be able to smell the fragrance of my shampoo but there was a point where even the shampoo had a stinky odour which totally surprised me and ultimately, I couldn’t smell a single thing soon after. Now, this is without flu or mucus blocking my nose which I found odd.

At the moment I’m still barely being able to smell and taste as before but it’s a lot better from a scale of 30 out of 100 probably.

I’ve never had this experience before and even after doing a few tests, I was Covid negative.

Not trying to into too much details, admittedly, I haven’t had the chance to rest properly while being sick and that could have taken a toll on my recovery.

I’ve been taking the goodness taste and smell for granted as I’ve been eating just for the sake of eating to be nourished.

In the midst of all these, a little ray of sunshine came about, not too long ago I wrote about Rubiks cubing here: https://elihong.com/learning-curves/

In my journey of cubing which I picked up from YouTube, I spent some time solving it for the longest time and then started to teach my daughter how to cube. I kind of did it because I never solved a cube or much less care much about it but probably after watching Max Park’s story on Netflix, it was inspiring enough for me to make that move forward.

Now with my daughter’s journey of cubing.

All this happened naturally and organically, as she had to learn the ropes and memorize a few algorithms.

Amidst all that struggle, she pressed on and had her fair share of giving up along the way, which was a lesson on its own for her, but it helped to have her learn perseverance.

As a parent, I try to encourage her, show her the ropes and allow her to learn from her mistakes. What precious moments!

Tonight, I’m a proud parent as she officially solved the cube herself and I had to resist the urge to tell her if she had a move wrong and allowed her to figure things out on her own.

It gives me great joy and satisfaction to be able to pass on something to a child and even more gratitude to see her running in the house celebrating this win.

Her smile, her confidence and all that oozing out of her was just extremely satisfying to watch.

I also realized what motivated her though and she mentioned that a friend of hers has an unsolved cube at her school and she wants to show her friend that the cube could be solved which was her prime motivation.

I said, if you can solve it, teach it to your friends too.

Now bearing in mind she has another friend who can solve a cube at sub 10 seconds, which is impressive.

For me it isn’t really about speed cubing but more so the journey of being able to pass on something.

I enjoy teaching and learning at the same time.

When learning, I try to be a good student.

When teaching, I try to guide and be a better teacher while learning as a student too.

In the process of teaching my daughter, I picked up nuances that made my cube solving slightly better.

So it’s actually pretty important to be able to teach immediately after learning a skill so that you can verify the truth and verify the quality of the content and flow.

That said, I better head and get some rest. With another month ahead before the closure of 2022, I hope to recover soon.

We live in uncertain times.

But in uncertainty, certainty is created through

SYSTEMS.

We create steps in life to create certainty to beat uncertainty.

Otherwise, it’s just playing in chaos.

In a classroom, students can be wild.

But the teachers must take control.

They use either a reward system or a punishment system.

It’s either the carrot or stick mechanism.

Everywhere else in the world is uncertain.

The economy can go haywire, interest rates or inflation goes up.

The economy can be booming and people still go haywire, spending behaviours change.

Governments create systems to create balance in an otherwise imbalanced situation.

Whether it’s balanced in their favour or balanced in their people’s favour, that’s a different story altogether.

The rich pays more taxes to go to the poor, the poor creates a Robin Hood to take back control of what the rich has taken.

Law and order creates certainty in an uncertain world with crimes and deviants and for people who follow order to maintain order.

The fact of life is that we will have to live with uncertainty and allow systems to help create certainty in a chaotic world we live in.

It’s a tango between chaos, systems and people who stand for either systems or chaos.

Recently, when I paid a visit to a local foreign exchange booth and met a man from Pakistan.

He was wiring money to his family while I was changing some SGD notes.

The Pakistani started a random conversation:

Are those Japanese notes? Where does it come from?

I said, those are SGD notes.

He said, I’ve never seen these notes before.

I was caught a little off-guard assuming that most people would know.

I then asked the Pakistani, if he’s here in Malaysia to work and he said it has been 3 months since he came.

I saw that he was wiring at least RM1000 to his family back in Pakistan.

In some parts of the world, people come to Malaysia to work and have only seen this part of the world and travelling means work and supporting family in another country.

Yet, while writing an essay about systems, chaos, having the privilege of education and not having to do laborious work.

We live in parallel worlds.

Where there’s plenty, there’s famine.

Where there’s peace, there’s war.

Where there’s the talk of Metaverse, there’s still billions without food, water, basic health.

It’s just food for thought.

I have a love-hate relationship with wordpress.

I like it because it’s easy to install and set up.

On some of my funnel sites, I use Thrive Themes to build my landing pages, capture pages.

It’s a really great plugin and I highly recommend it for funnel building.

There are so many funnel building options out there but I choose to deploy whichever that works best and as quickly as possible.

But here on elihong.com , I use the default settings.

Running wordpress on a shared server is a nightmare, with resources being shared, and a ton of plugins installed, one thing is guaranteed, slower site performance.

The only problem with wordpress is when things break.

And it’s pretty easy to break things in wordpress.

One wrong installation, one extra plugin is all it takes.

But more recently, an outdated plugin or multiple outdated plugins was a cause of it.

If you find yourself having a jquery issue, or javascript not working on your plugins, there could be a couple of outdated plugins that needs updating.

That solved my problem painlessly and quickly.

It may or may not work for your site but if you have to troubleshoot, perhaps start here and work your way through all other potential problems.

I’ve set all my plugins moving forward to update automatically so that it would work fine accordingly.

In as much as I love Yoda-like sentences like this (Originating from Sir Winston Churchill), I tend to ask deeper questions like, what does that statement really mean?

The simplified way of looking at it is, yes as a matter of fact, failing to plan will lead to unproductive days or wasted time and life is like a sailboat, taking you wherever you’d like to go.

I don’t even want to go into the thousands of literature written about this. It’s a multi-billion dollar business in the guise of books, courses, software and more.

Our obsession with optimization, living life to the fullest (planned) way, micro-managing every bit of life seems like a necessity for urban living.

Whether it’s peer pressure, ranking up… or for personal fulfilment… the big question is:

Does it all really matter at the end of the day?

I don’t really know. Maybe some may say yes.

I prefer to have a lot more flexibility in this area BUT it depends on whether it’s personal or business.

In business, there are no two ways about it. The demise of ones business is soon to come if there’s no clear direction, goal or outcome.

In life, perhaps there’s some leeway but this too, is subjective.

The simple answer is, having some idea of planning or motion in place set with a deadline may actually help move things, make things fun and or even profitable if its a business.

I see planning as a solution to procrastination or lack of accountability, perhaps even as a reason to have a reason to do something.

Maybe it’s time to unplan everything.

Or maybe its time to plan a plan that’s an easier plan to work with.

Word twisters aside, I admittedly have to say that taking a few minutes to a few hours in a day to map some ideas is actually pretty useful.

My wife says that she has a bucket list. I used to have one and after she told me she has a bucket list, I had to create one for myself.

Given that I’ve actually achieved quite a few of my bucket lists in life so far, I’m not that adventurous but enough to have tasted the goodness of life.

I guess, I don’t have enough of a bucket list and so I’ve added 100s more to my list (which took some time to plan and prepare.)

When it comes to business and meetings, when there’s a bunch of scrums, sprints, meets, whatever six sigma, Edward Demmings, Ford related way of working more efficiently, I guess that’s how things are going to have to be, adapting to systems that create progress and moving people to move big ideas and goals.

And so, the million dollar question: Failing to Plan Is Planning To Fail?

(If we do not fail to plan to plan to fail.)

p.s I’ve used Trello and a few other popular tools for planning, but my recent favourite admittedly is Monday.com , though there are a lot more out there.

The only thing about Monday.com is the slight lag but otherwise it makes spreadsheet planning (for excel sheet lovers) a lot more versatile, fun and productive.

I’m not an affiliate but I think it’s worth a tinker for those who are interested in planning.