Personal Update

It's time for another personal update.

a) No classes until end-March 2020.

My next ERM is quite a while away on 28 March. This is to have a short break for Chinese New Year but I will be keeping myself  busy. At the top of my agenda is to create an alternative preview for my course to keep things fresh for myself as well as for folks who need another preview to make up their minds.

This year we are going to push the envelope further and one of the things I want to disrupt is the idea that  preview is merely sales vehicle to drive more conversions. With an alternative preview format with different content, I am trying to embrace the idea of the course preview as "theatre", an opportunity not just to inform, but to entertain.

So we will still have the current play (super-successful so far I might add) which is entitled "The Four Seasons", but I will performing in February a different preview called "Roads to Riches" next month.

I think the crux of my drive is to do less selling and to do more edutainment. Expect to see more research and data in the newer talk that will be relevant for your financial life. The idea is that if you can learn so much in 2 hours, imagine how much you can pick up in 2 days.

b) Work-life integration of Netflix

As part of the drive towards a new theatrical performance, I have made it a point to integrate Netflix to my personal life. I have started binge watching on stand up comedy - trying to integrate some aspects of it into my work. I've not managed to go very far, having only managed to repurpose a few quips from The Witcher into my last finance talk.

I would just like to say that of all the stand-up comedy I watched, Ricky Gervais' Humanity is the best one so far. Do watch it if you can. Also, if you want something Singaporeans can relate to, you can follow Ronnie Chieng.

c) Starting work-outs with a personal trainer

This has also been a painful week with my first session with a personal trainer. My trainer has experience with diabetics patients and started with a rigorous workout targeting my leg muscles on Tuesday. The work-out were ok on that day itself, but I ended up taking painkillers on Thursday.

I have just recovered and will go back to normal exercise later. Hopefully the pain will pay off dividends in the form of stronger muscles as I suspect that I am suffering from sarcopenia or accelerated muscle loss.

d) Travelling this weekend

There will be no update this weekend as I will be travelling to KL with my mum. We will be travelling to KL to meet up with some relatives and I need to get some second hand book shopping done.

e) Books I am reading

I am currently reading a Wiley Finance volume on how to integrate Big Data and Machine Learning into Quantitative Finance and am really shocked at the new sources of alpha hedge fund managers are currently using, many involving non-traditional sources of data.

I am pretty certain now that almost all of us are really in the stone age when it comes to investing and I suspect even these hedge fund analysts will be rendered obsolete by newer ideas in a year or two. Maybe the only way to keep being in the know is to become a perpetual student and never leave cutting edge.