mcmansion cafes

- brick wall

- plastic chair

- veneered table

- bitter coffee

- sweet cakes

- food colouring

- whipped cream

- spaghetti

This is the mcmansion of cafes

reflections on studying investment : EOY 3

Reasonably productive day. I am still broadly on standby to provide logistical support to the family, in the second week of developments.

While waiting, I took time to study realestate prices. I started investing in realestate (2011) before I started trying to master investment in general (2023). I worked for an asset manager way back in 2007, but it wasn't intellectually stimulating at the time ... Malaysia to-date remains a laggard in both tech and finance. At the time, I was more interested in catching up on programming computers, which I had postponed beginning in 2002.

Life remains a happy string of postponed interests. In primary school, I wanted to be an architect, engineer, or scientist, but those interests had to be put on the stack between the ages of 8 and 15 because Malaysia's education system didn't allow such specialisations. When I could specialise in science at 16, I quickly found the pedagogy to be disorganised and inelegant, so I diversified further into subjects the Malaysian system did not include at all : mainly subjects of art and literature. 

Investment management was postponed partly because I had no financial capital to begin with, so I took a strategy of unhedged short-term focus from 2005 to 2011, only then buying a flat in order to put some money aside for strategic reasons. I worked mostly cheap jobs, and when I didn't I invested in R&D, not financial growth. Secondly by 2004 I had already figured out the structure of consciousness, and so was pretty much of the view that the remaining time I had to live should not be too concerned with ladder-climbing, given the altitude of that first ladder unexpectedly ascended. I figured I needed to reflect and digest upon that until I was 40 or so.

Anyhow now, this is my THIRD year of putting any significant effort into studying macroeconomics aspects of investment management, albeit a slightly greater than minimal focus. I am enjoying the process, and today I felt (intuited) that perhaps I should work in property development in order to understand the inputs of land politics and construction terrors, upstream from property price distributions in Malaysia.

Maybe I should try to find a property developer that isn't an altogether horrible employer, and put some time in there, at some point. 

I also say the same about working on Malay and Chinese language accounts in a creative (ad) agency, but that is a distinct complication, as philology is certainly not finance.

Today I drove around Seremban with a greater appreciation for its architectural styles, than I had before any study of architectural history, as a child.

I am still looking for something to do with my life. It passes happily, but boringly, most of the time.

famlly law and death

Family is an expensive distraction. Last week I was reviewing the current LAW in Malaysia.

1. CHILDREN are NOT OBLIGED to manage and pay for the lives, or collect the bodies of PARENTS. Any such discussions are extra judicial CULTURAL norms. (Generally, only parents are required to manage children.)

2. You can create a TRUST to do pretty much anything, anytime, within Malaysia. But these are expensive. 

3. You can create a WILL to do pretty much anything, after you die. It is quite useless before you die. 

4. You can create a POWER OF ATTORNEY to do pretty much anything also, but this IS CANCELLED the moment you are ( officially ? ) MENTALLY INCAPACITATED ( MI ).

5. So if you do not die (3), but have a loss of executive function (4), to the effect that you are MI, you are out of self-protections unless you had a trust (2). Anyone can apply to the HIGH COURT to GRANT THEM rights and obligations to manage your life, at this time. 

6. Unclaimed bodies will be disposed of by the STATE.

Structurally, items (1,4,5) are currently receiving some remedial attention in Malaysian Syariah and Singaporean law.

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Malaysia : loss of mental capacity : once it happens, we can simply apply to the high court for authority to manage the estate, of the living incapacitated, right? 

Wrong : seems like our entire legal system is wrapped in the grey. So it comes down to conventions, which may be based simply on precedent, and professional guidelines, and nothing firmer than that. 

So once we have queried doc+lawyer, we should expect not a crystal clear answer, but a description of "the currently accepted practice within the medical and judicial system".