Merry Christmas!

It was a pleasant surprise for me to have bought a copy of "The Priests" album; I haven't bought a CD for the past few years after getting used to YouTube being my music source of choice.

The story goes that 3 catholic priests were spotted by Sony BMG and the rest was history. This debut album has already hit platinium, hit the Top 5 in the UK album chart and even awarded a Guinness World Record, all within barely 2 months of launching their album. With the proceeds from the sale of this CD going to charity, it is the perfect spirit of giving in this season of forgiving.

While I'd love to share their music, their YouTube video is not embeddable so here's the link for your Christmas enjoyment. Happy holidays and God bless!

YouTube video: The Priests - O Holy Night

EDIT (10/102009): Managed to find a "trailer" video of their performance.

Quirks in a day of a Venture Capital Firm - 31st May 2008

It is a glorious long weekend with the Hari Raya Haji break here in Singapore, and being home for more than 24 hours is a very welcome change.

Having some time off from doing up my speech and PowerPoint presentation for a renewable energy conference in January 2009, I managed to dig out this delusional investment email, spacing errors and all. Live long and prosper.

Subject: Investment Partnership
From: "President RayoZ"
Date: Sat, May 31, 2008 7:56 pm
To: startup@azionecapital.com
Priority: Normal

Dear Sir I am Mr Raymond Foo and will be 20 years old this year. I am looking for funding to invest and trade US Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and stocks using the SaxoTrader program offered by Saxo Capital Singapore. Hence, I will like to enquire if you are interested in this partnership despite a slowdown economy in US. Best RegardsRaymond Foo



_________________________________________________________________
Check out Barclays Premier League exclusive video clips here!
http://fc.sg.msn.com/index.aspx

Quirks in a day of a Venture Capital Firm - 3rd December 2008

It is a common assumption that Venture Capitalists are an arrogant bunch by either never replying emails or always asking always probing.

Every other day, I would receive some quirky emails requesting for investments. Some are genuinely misguided while others are seriously delusional. I believe it is time to clear the air on what a Venture Capitalist has to wade through their email boxes on a daily basis. I will be posting up (on an irregular basis) various email solicitations worthy of a Simon Cowell retort. Enjoy.

PS. Do note the sender name differs from the sign off name.

Subject: INTERNET DUAL SYSTEM
From: "Michael Wedra"
Date: Wed, December 3, 2008 9:29 pm
To: startup@azionecapital.com
Priority: Normal

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’ve a patent that drastically increases internet security.
For the realization of the system I need 200 million USD’s investment capital.
With this amount of money you can buy 20% of a new company.
You’ll earn 600 million USD’s per year.

A video – presentation is available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4UWUG5RShE

Thank you for your efforts in advance
sincerely

Csaba Bona

PS: Please forward this email to every known Billionaires, investor.
In case of realization for 1 % comission.

Your answer is appreciated.


E-Mail deleted@deleted.ch
Phone +41 61 del et ed

What do you have?

In a time where music is mere glorified shallow actions and words, timeless classics like Elvis still hold their own. I was told more than once that this song was the epitome of a loser; the people that told me that were rich individuals and families.

Yet within myself, this song is what embodies the never-give-up spirit of an entrepreneur; the world will always see them as idiots that challenge when they can accept, that stands up when all others stand along the by-ways, that does actual things rather than survive for mere cheap compliments and empty words, to put in their all while others put barely enough.

I have been beaten down time and time again, viciously betrayed and endured injustice all my life, yet what truly matters when I look into the eyes of my aggressors and know that at the very least, I truly did it My Way and no matter what they do, that is something they can never take that away from me.



For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

The price of truth

I was raised up with the values of fighting against injustice and standing up for the oppressed; these values persists till this day, but the environment of which the price of truth is systematically reduced to the point that speaking the truth has become a taboo, for fear of retribution.

I always liked this classic exchange between Col. Nathan R. Jessep and Lt. Daniel Kaffee in the movie, A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin.

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: You're goddamn right I did!!

2 of my friends, myself and a non-profit organization which I co-founded in 2003 are now in the midst of a defamation case raised by an individual of whom we have named and provided details of our experiences with him. As of last week, he has changed his lawyer from one of Singapore's top law firms in the field of online legal suits to that of a larger firm while simultaneously expanding on his charges against us.

During the past 3 weeks, my friends and I have been taken away from our day-to-day, gathering and compiling evidence to back our statements, of which I am glad to say that we have mustered up over a hundred pages in both independent statements and public domain information to back up our case. However, the time wasted and the undue stress in which we are subjected to due to the need to respond to such an individual is draining and to say the least, highly unproductive.

What price, truth? When all that is said and done, is doing the right thing for the good of society still worth it?

Nigerian Scammer 2.0

Barely a few weeks after my post on being authentic, I received this rather amazingly researched scammer email into my Azione Capital email; this scammer actually checked up on who I am in contact with, in this case Puay Hien from the Singapore Entrepreneur Network Meetup group, and crafted out a rather incredible story of which I am about to share with you in its full glory.

Do pass this information around on the Nigerian Scammer 2.0 so that others would not fall prey to these nefarous people.

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 20:17:10 +0100
From: "Pauy Hein Lee"
Subject: PLEASE HELP ME

Hello ? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.
I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 950 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management, I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1050 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2000 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i need your help.i have decided not tell my family so that they will not be worried.when I return I will tell them and they will understand.
I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home.You need to transfer the money through Western Union to the address below

Name:Puay Lee

Adress:Marbel hotel and suite room 6

City:Lagos

Country:Nigeria

Zip code:23401

After you make the payment send me the details as follows

Sender's name

MTCN in 10 digits

Amount of money sent?

Secret question and answer e.g who is it for?

Answer:Puay Lee

Please reply back to my alternative email puayheinlee@aol.com because Gmail here in Africa is very bad.I will be waiting for your reply soon. Am counting on you for this.

Regards,

Puay Lee

Being authentic

One of the key traits I value in a person, be it an ordinary friend or an entrepreneur seeking my assistance would have to be being true to oneself, being authentically you.

In a city state like Singapore, it is not uncommon to see so many people wearing a mask, desperately trying to make themselves appear as someone they are not. It does not take too long before one can witness first-hand the overwhelming number of poseurs putting on their clearly fake american/european slangs, their persistant need of having "westerners" around themselves, both hanging on their arms or in their arms, while putting on a constant show of finding any and every opportunity in putting down their own race or any other asian counterparts.

While being fake doesn't hurt anyone, there is a growing number of a "darker" breed of such individuals. Conmen and confidence tricksters that prowls the internet and neighbourhoods. Some worse than others, some maintaining a facade that can and will fool most people on their authenticity, but that will be another blog post for another time.

People may forget words you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

My Life List

I had a chat with Darrel Lim, an old friend and associate working as an R&D Executive in the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore on 7 July 2008 (Monday) and he shared with me on how he keeps track of his Big Hairy Audacious Goals in his life via a simple "Life List". Summarizing some of the points taken from the very well written Robin Brande's Creating a Life List article, here is the first cut of my own Life List. This article would be updated as-and-when I have something new to add or when I achieved some portions of it.

Skills I would want to learn

8 July - Master the command of the Chinese, Teochew, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese languages.
8 July - Obtain a private pilot license.

Places I want to go if money and time was no object

8 July - Russia, to witness first hand the tenacity of the people.
8 July - Uganda, to visit a Singapore social entrepreneur who made it his home.
8 July - The islands of Micronesia, to finally see the routes of which the M/T Heracles sails.

Experiences I want to have no matter what other people think

8 July - Work on lifting up the lowest in society in the world by the formation of social enterprises within their community.
8 July - Defend helpless civilians from fundamentalist terrorists.
2 August - Establish a comprehensive "green" taxi company powered by Electric cars, with a comprehensive distributed recharging network powered by wind and solar (for urban areas).

Giving HOPE, or HOPElessness?

I was at the Central Singapore Community Development Council on 28 June 2008 (Friday) for a sit-in session as part of the People's Association YOUTHSLead programme to better understand the various social assistance and employment schemes made available to residents within the Central Singapore district.

While the presentation by Suzanne was moving along, one particular scheme left a particularly bitter aftertaste in my mouth and heart. Inappropriately acronym-ed the HOPE scheme, or Home Ownership Plus Education scheme, its claim "to assist young, low-income Singaporean families get out of the poverty trap by providing comprehensive assistance." in my personal view, has dark undercurrents and darker purposes.

• That the scheme's targeted economical and age demographics would appear to disproportionately affect a specific racial group in Singapore; I encourage you to research at Statistics Singapore to make your own assessment on this.


• That the agenda of encouraging these young, low income Singaporean couples to be provided with incentivized sterilization, both reversible and non-reversible, with a far higher cash incentive for the latter.


• That should the young, low income Singaporean couple fail to ensure that they have only a maximum of 2 children, that the scheme will be revoked unless the couple accepts a state-provided abortion-on-demand backdoor.

While I have no doubt that the HOPE scheme has its merits in providing for key pitfalls faced by such young, low income Singaporean couples such as:

• a Conditional Housing Grant of S$50,000.


• a training grant of up to S$10,000 per Singaporean family given over a 10-year period to enable parents to attend skills training.


• a one-off cash grant of S$1,000, payable to Singapore Power Services, to help the Singaporean family offset utilities bills


• mentoring support from a social service agency to guide the Singaporean family and help them resolve any issues.


• a cash grant of S$6,000 - S$9,000 to help Singaporean couples with family life education, family planning and parenting skills.

I personally cannot accept the financial blackmail approach taken with regards to the literal exchange of death-on-demand for cash just so to have lesser births from "lower society" Singaporeans.

It is said that a drop of sewage in a barrel of sewage is sewage, and a drop of sewage in a barrel of fine wine will still be sewage. With such outwardly beneficial schemes put forth targeting simple, lowly educated and low income Singaporean folks would lap up without much thought, much less read the fine print nor consider the future ramifications, I am filled with the bitter aftertaste of truly knowing how cheap life is in Singapore.

Professionalism and acting one's age

It came as an amusing update from Yusheng, a fellow volunteer in Project:Senso that the ever eccentric Bill Ang Siow Chen of SmartVirtualOffice graced the book launch and mini-talk session held on the 14th of June 2008 and, before entering Geek Terminal, had the following short conversation with Yusheng.

Bill Ang Siow Chen: I am here for the event, (looks around suspiciously) does Nicholas have anything to do with this event?

Chew Yusheng: No, he is not the organizer for this book launch, what's about it?

Bill Ang Siow Chen: That's good, because if he is here, I don't want to attend (throws a pout).

Apparently he ran away from the last event where Abang Abu was speaking because he saw me by peeking out of the corner of the lift. While this may be put aside as his irrational, intense hatred and bad blood for me for having repeatedly exposed his con jobs in his early days in the ACE Forum of which he created multiple accounts in an attempt to fool users of the wonders of his newly formed virtual office company, and the subsequent threatening calls and strange baseless allegations of my intention and supposed action to harm his family of which eventually nothing could be proven, what irked me most was his constant nipping at the heels of me and my old classmate Peter Tan, CEO of Virtual Office Singapore which ranged from his constant vandalism of Peter's wikipedia entry to his constantly inflammatory and defamatory blogs and other actions which honestly appear to be nothing more than the act of a 6 year old lout.

Not even police reports with recorded evidence of his threats over phone, printouts of his postings on forums and pages upon pages of threatening emails sent from him to both me and Peter Tan was able to stop him, not even when his partners pulled out totally in name and in investing from his firm barely weeks after SmartVirtualOffice went live, it baffles me on what drives a maniac hell bent on making life hard for people who exposes his lies.

While much proof can be easily obtained via google on his increduous lies, such as going to the USA with not a single cent and having stayed there for years and built a business empire there while simultaneously serving his Keppel Scholarship bond in Singapore is beyond me. Such people sully the good name of entrepreneurs, but sadly in a world where anyone who is vocal enough is assumed to be an expert, or anyone free enough to blog is naturally assumed to be "the real deal", and where people who are busy making a living and can't spare the time to bother writing prose, there is little that can be done of such scum.

Perhaps someday there will be a way where such individuals can be publicly named and shown in their full unadulterated glory of lies and deceit, and of which the public warned of their existence. Until then, we, the consumers and entrepreneurial community will have to live with their unprofessionalism and childish antics as a stubborn blemish we can't remove.

Kaspersky Anti Virus + Mozilla Thunderbird + IMAP = Big Problems

I just uninstalled my Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 software after having found that even after turning off the mail scanning function, it still interfered with the moving of emails from one IMAP account to another in Mozilla Thunderbird. Even after following their proposed solution it still did not work.

Previously if I left the mail scanning function on, it prevented me from using the Offline -> Download/Syncronise now function by continually downloading data that never ends, and that never gets any messages down in the end (From my firewall software, I saw that over 10 Gigs was downloaded from an IMAP account with just 600 Megs of mails).

After turning off the mail scanning function, the Offline -> Download/Syncronise function works but moving large messages from one IMAP account to another just gives the same problem of never ending downloads/re-uploads.

Simply put, I put in AVG Free an hour ago and everything's working fine and useful information for anyone wanting to figure out which antivirus plays nice with Mozilla Thunderbird.

No politics please, we are entrepreneurs

I caught up with Robin of Envisage Reality on Thursday afternoon to discuss about a new project his company is working on at the moment which he hopes would encourage and empower local game developers, and on his end, in helping his own company expand exponentially. Things are still very much in the preliminary stage but are looking good and on track.

As we chatted and caught up, we broached onto the topic of service to society and he commented on whether I would consider serving the country in a political capacity, and was surprised when I said I honestly doubt I will ever consider contributing in such an arena. My take is relatively simple, I contribute a lot better with my two hands than my mouth or my words. Additionally, in politics, it would be a near-impossible battle to perform my duties based on my guiding principles which are at times, abhored by my fellow countrymen. These would be:

1. Pro-Life: The protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception to natural death. In Singapore, abortion is fully legalized and will not be going anywhere anytime soon.
2. Pro-Family: The recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family -- as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage -- and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its de-stabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role. In Singapore, alternative lifestyle groups are growing and gaining support from the public.
3. School-Choice: The protection of the right of parents to educate their children. In recent years, there has been progress on this aspect, and I am glad for it.

While I will not be able to actively pursue the realization of these principles at-large in the capacity of a public figure, I believe that by doing my part in improving the economical well being of my fellow countrymen, be they fellow entrepreneurs, charities or individuals living below the poverty line that I may assist in getting them up and running, I may inspire them to do as I do and to help others as I have helped them.

On a lighter note, I am finally able to get to grips on knowing what I am actually doing on a daily basis by using Twitter as my makeshift timesheet, time flies...

Blog 1.0

So this is how it is like to blog.

Welcome to the new online blog of Nicholas Chan from sunny Singapore, with this nicholas-chan blogger domain kindly gifted to me by an absolutely great guy, Nicholas Chan of nickchan.net from Penang, Malaysia.

Rather interestingly, there are a fair bit of similarities between us. The other Nicholas Chan is also very much a techie, a photographer and a member of the Chung Ling High School Young Entrepreneur club; I certainly look forward to catching up with him over a cuppa in Kuala Lumpur in the coming weeks.

The reason for the existence of this blog is primarily for myself to keep track of things as a personal record of my life, interests and on what matters to me; the corporate blog at Azione Capital would be where I would be sharing my views on my work and what is important in our times and markets. As it stands, I decided to start this personal blog out and see where it goes. Who knows, I may delete it in a week or two or maybe never.

I would want the focus of this personal blog of mine to highlight matters of which would fall outside the jurisdiction of my postings in the Azione Capital corporate blog; I would very much appreciate your insights into my thoughts. More importantly, the reason I went ahead with starting this personal blog (even though I find blogging a timesink) is simply because I have opinions and I don't mind sharing them with you.