Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush is now a well known man.In Geneva recently he was greeted by the Swiss with rounds of applause - it was a hero's welcome on Monday 19 October 2009. At the conference he repeated his allegations that he was severely tortured, including with electric shocks, during his none months of detention!
But this is now history, his reception in Switzerland was noteworthy unlikely those that were given when he was just released from prison back in hi home country. Yes! They said he is now famous as there are now more engagement for him, either to write or invitation to talk... Much money are involved especially gifts coming from the wealthy Arabs and an opportunity to spearhead the a foundation to support suffering Iraqis. What an achievement now compared to the days before he hurled his shoes at the President of USA.
Is that how people can become famous and improve their status financially?
I supposed so.... You can try throwing your pair of shoes at your boss during some important functions especially where all the press people are around. I am sure you can be famous! You could became famous if that's be the Bank Governor while she is delivering some speeches to foreign guests! You may end up being called to lead a group of deprived insurance workforce - deprived of promotion and reasonable increament... merely getting a 1% to 3 % increament year in year out! As you throw you shoes - but do remember, throw slippers will do as you are not famous and wealthy enough to buy a good pair of working shoes - you know your shoes may be confiscated as an evidence in court! After throwing do make enough loud noices and shout on top of your voice - shout whatever reason you think is approprite - make sure the people around don't think you are a sicko...oooo otherwise you end up in Tg. Rambutan serving hard times for nothing!
Nevertheless, I think you should end up famous.... if you act as if there are important political message to be sent in the slipper throwing incident... Yes you may be the next CEO or perhaps able to write a sell-out ebook! But then, do be prepare to be put into the lockup and suffered for a couple of months.... out of a job and so on! You must presevere so that you can get where you want ot go.....
Care to throw your shoes or slippers at your boss?
It was summertime in some small coastal european village. The place looks deserted and gloomy in the air. Troubled economic times have left everyone in debts. The town folk live entirely on credit!
One day, a tourist comes to town. He goes to the only hotel and put USD100 note on the reception desk, and ask to inspect the rooms to see whether if any is suitable for him.
While the tourist is checking the rooms, the hotel proprietor grabs the money and runs to pay his debts to the grocer. The grocer takes the money and runs to pay his debt to the farmer. The farmer takes the money and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his pesticides and fuel.
The supplier of the pesticides and fuel takes the money and runs to pay the town prosstitutes who in those difficult times, has been servicing her clients on credit. The prostitute the runs to the hotel and pays off the USD100 that she owed for the rooms she rented when she brought her clients there.
The proprietor of the hotel then places the USD100 note back onto the reception desk. Just then the tourist came back and tells the proprietor that those rooms were not suitable, grab the money and left.
The town folks certainly have improved after this chain of activities. Although no one earned any money and yet the entire town is now out of debt!
Well....don't stare blank? What is wrong with that?
Incredible....if that be the word when Zulkifli Noordin, the MP for Kulim Bandar Baru told the press that Malaysian would be like Filipinos working as maids or low-costs foreign workers one day, if we continue to put too much emphasis on english proficiency. Filipinos who took pride in their ability to speak english has only succeeded in exporting many maids....so what is so good about english? He quipped...
Don't quite understand him, what has Filipinos being maids got to do with our nation using english for Science and Maths! What I think he meant was with english as the medium of instruction the rural boys just cannot cope. Since the rural boys are the majority of the malays and if they are not able to cope then the repercussion is bad for the country as a whole. Nevertheless he has over reacted just like the urbanites who had reacted "badly" to the "Back to BM" decision over the last couple of days. However we cannot be stopping those brighter students from moving forward and then moving to university studies overseas just because we need to cater for those in the rural areas...is that correct? What the real solution is all about options. If the rural groups are not able to cope, then they should put emphasis on BM to get them there if they are able to get where they wanted to go....Leave english as the option intact so that there can be future comparison.
Hold it....I would be most happy if this PKR MP is just talking about the better side of "Back to BM...". He distastefully went on insisting that the government should bring back the Jawi thing - writing BM in jawi! He categorically states "Romanising the Malay language has made the people illiterate in Jawi and therefore in Al-Koran". But wait, he seemed to be telling everyone that english is no good and BM is still not good enough; but Jawi is the solution...Damn him if we have to learn this Jawi thing....we gone through hell when we were young. Why not he propose to the government to adopt Jawi as the medium of instruction for everything!
Just take a look at his educational background:
Saya, ZULKIFLI BIN NOORDIN, dilahirkan di Kg. Carok Bemban, Batu 42, Baling, Kedah pada 19 Februari 1962.
Mendapat pendidikan awal di Ashby Road (English) Primary School, Ipoh. Bersekolah menengah di Anderson School Ipoh dan King Edward VII Taiping. Pra Universiti di Maktab Tentera Di Raja, Sungai Besi sebelum melanjutkan pengajian ke New Zealand. Pengajian A-Level di Pakuranga College, Bucklands Beach, Auckland dan akhirnya memasuki Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand di antara 1982-1986.
Wah! With so much of english language education to get him till todate, he is now telling his country men that we should go back to Jawi....
If you want to vote for him.....I cannot imagine!
Remember
I was having dinner with some of my Gen-X friends or are they bordering the Baby Boomer generation? Sam was telling me about an interview with one of the candidates, a fresh graduate, that he offered him a starting pay of RM1,600. The guy requested for an additional RM200, so Sam retorted that he has to prove to him that he deserves the additional sum. The poor chap tried to demonstrate his capability by explaining what he actually done for his univ and his many achievements. Sam however did not gave him a damn insisting that what a person learns in univ is nothing but just education and academics.....and a piece of paper to show, he would have to unlearn (ie. bring him back to earth) the person before teaching him all over again to achieve success in this very competitive world. Wait, he then requested the poor chap to show him how to fax 5 pieces of papers to another party. The poor chap actually took more than 25 mins to do just that! Sam then explained to him that is why he must learn from him.....and the best part for him as Sam hammered home the point...."that's way you have not learn anything yet about the real world....!"
I told Sam that he is abit weird and tha fax part was nothing but an off beat thing not suitable for this era...the industry actually don't need a fax anymore. We now scan the documents to the desktop, save the images and then email to the party concerned. This process would help kill two birds with one stone....that's how the gen-Y world is all about.
KS agreed that Sam is indeed outdated....but he was equally shy when his subordinate (a Gen-Y) told him that he need not print his email including attachment piece by piece and then scan the document into his desktop for archiving....what he can do is just print the emails with cute.pdf (a free software) into a pdf image file. He was amaze how things have changed....and it has to take a fresh graduate to tell him how to do it!
There you go....those gen-Y graduates do deserve the additional RM200....it is theirs to keep.
Cheers....
On fathers' day, I spent time writing my blog on "Spirit of Fathers" for the www.malaysianinsurance.com weblog and creating a banner-logo for my blogging site: www.malaysiainsurance.info (malaysia insurance entrepreneurs). Let see whether this logo looks good over at blogger.com:
Do take a tour of my blogging site, it is basically blogging about everything technical about our insurance industry. I would also hope my readers would support the site by contributing ideas and original write up. Just register your and then you will be given a password through your email account, just log in and write your ideas out and load. Write great ideas and things down actually help you to learn better - Don't believe, try and you should know what I meant.
Just now I had dinner with my kids, they dictated what to eat but of course I have the first rights - to choose the restaurant, otherwise they are certain to opt for KFC, McDonald or Kenny Rogers.... Thai food it was! However, when it comes to ordering - they insisted on creamy butter crabs, steam fish, lala and of course all those exotic drinks..... but the pricing is reasonable. The restaurant name is "Thai Food" and located along the road on the way to Teratai.... to get to the place, just get to the only Shell station in Teratai - it is nearby.
It is good feeling knowing that the kids are growing up well, their studies are more or less in line with what normal parents would expect. The institution of family is very important otherwise it is very difficult for us to work and achieve high level of performance at work.
It's a dog eat dog world out there.....they said. Indeed it is true, agents have been discounting motor premium to their customers all this while in order to compete with one another, snatching and enticing customers creating a war path that eventually caught up with them. While aggressively transacting motor biz which is supposed to be done on Cash-before-cover, agents still continue to buck the Insurance Act and its regulations. Late settlement of premium is still rampant and money continues to be owed and this is not without the indirect blessing from the marketing staff of the insurance companies. Things had been abit lacking in controls as insurers inclined towards market and marketing driven rather than underwriting sensibly with growth that they can understand and digest.
With the implementation of the Risk based Capital this Jan 2009, Kurnia Insurance emerged as a clear casualty of their many years of aggressive motor portfolio growth. I would'nt wish to speculate whether their predicament is a result of their yester years' sins or not, but the loss ratio is rising....fast it seems. The main culprit it seems hitting the industry came from the motor thirdparty bodily injury (MTPBI).
The loss ratio for MTPBI for the industry has blown up to 272% out of a approx. RM380 million worth of Act premium written in 2007. Because this ratio has suddenly gone crazy, actuary tends to stare at this development and have to bring this in as a major factor in their computation of the loss development and actuarial analyses. Thus, most companies that write substantial % of motor portfolio have to contend with the fact that the case reserves in combined is just not enought to meet such actuarially calculated ultimate claims amount. The result is therefore reflected in the actuarial assessed Incurred but not reported reserves, culminating in more provision of claims reserves to satisfy the Central Bank. When you have to foot out a RM10 million or RM30 million to feed your balance sheet, thie is going horrendous especially when the world is facing an economic melt down.
So who is it to blame? The industry lose money, fingers start pointing and the following are the collection of reasons or scrap goat......? They said - > 30 years the tariff was not review, the courts are not only slow with the litigation process, they are bad with their awards, lawyers are crooks - they drived the costs up thru their inefficiency, there are just too many people who work as ambulance chasers, loading of the third party premium is inadequate......and the story goes on..... are all these fingering reasons the cause of it....well, you decide.
Off the General Insurance association goes to the Central bank and try working their way to get the removal of the premium cap. naturally the Bank rejected and this was after being squeezed with premium discounts for direct customers......citing two main reasons: that the industry needs a new distribution channel, ie. direct walk in (if this is a channel??) and internet-based channel, which I gladly agree; and the other reason being removal of certain profit commission barriers so that such commission can continue to be paid out annually to the agents.
Therefore, a little bit here and there, squeeze here and there, every where.....and we have arrived. Soon enough we should see Insurance companies giving out motor premium discounts to walked in customers as well as internet based transactions to the detriment of the agents.
But then can the agents blame the insurers for their predicaments? After all the insurers are trying to save their profit commission for the more profitable agents and to save their butts having being affected by the RBC and the 75% confidence level actuarial computation....it is only human if we all lose some and win some. Actually agents have to rethink about their future.....and one of the main agenda that I can think of is to collectively work towards a representative body so that the agents can be properly represented in this industry. But what can we said when most of the sizeable agents are still owing their principals a big chunk of premium.....especially on the non-motor portoflio. How can the agents get to be in a stronger position when premiums owed run in hundred of millions nationwide? Perhaps ti is going to be extremely difficult and to an extent mind blogling....not until we see a wave of new breed of agency coming into the market.
While it is certain that this mandatory motor discounting is going to be a reality this year, agents should not be overly worried.....the next best thing is to change ones' mindset, work towards innovation and creativity in discharging the services demanded by the customers. Moving towards internet based selling and servicing of customers is going to be one hell of an innovative solution. So start entering cyberspace and get familiar with the twists and turns of the other world.
But then.....don't worry I am behind you all, dear agents....... the industry is pushing hard to only allow such mandatory discounting for "natural" person only. THis means if customers who are biz, be they partnership, sole proprietor or corporation, they should not be entitled to any form of discounting.
Cheers.
Since the last quarter of 2008, everyone was doing nothing but predicting where the world economy is heading, many even predicted that this round of economic slide is so bad that it not only sucks but hit us so bad that we can't possibly recognise ourselves.... Eveyone is a phophet of DOOM, preaching that the world is going to go bad with civilisation going backwards. We normal guys just have to be sucked into their belief and domains. We are damned....possibly pay-cut??
Just as we braced ourselves to be BAD....SUCKs, then the share markets worldwide just go up...up and away. Shit, shit....we missed the boat again. How can that be....another round of missed opportunities..... That is why we workforce people must start believing the economy is not for us. We chicken out when things go wrong.....we talk like a guru on share market when the market escalates to a new height, but when we buy, we lost our pants.......
When things look bleak, our employers are not forgiving, every now and then, reminding us to work doubly hard.....so hard that we forgot to live our lives.
Trust me..... economy is not for all. So start believing that..... and we should be able to handle our life, family relationship and friendships better. Live life with abundance.....economy is not important, they are for the rich......and perhaps for the academics......bloody economist.
So.....so....abundance of resources or scarcity of resources......you choose; the former contention.....that's the way to achieve greater things.
By the way.....I just can't find much time in writing this blog as I am also involved in another blog: malaysianinsurance.blogspot.com and http://malaysianinsurance.com
Well, click and visit me.....you should find alot of good and interesting stuff there.
Cheers
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