JKDPN Submission (recap of old points)

Submitted to National Education Policy Committee (Jawatankuasa Kajian Dasar Pendidikan Negara, JKDPN) a rehash of my main thoughts on this from 2018.

Policy Area: "Nature and scope of "civics" syllabus."

Narrative: ""Malaysians mostly enter adulthood without knowledge of how to operate our republic. The reason for this, is that past leadership repeatedly consolidated power in the Executive branch of government, and so the headlines for 35 years (50?) spoke mainly of executives as agents of change. Now when a citizen wants change, they complain about Executive inaction. The citizens only know how to vote in general elections, and then they are dismayed when their ideal public policies do not easily come to pass. This is foolish. Sic.""

Context: "Secondary schools (years 7-12)"

Recommendations: "The Constitution is a manual. It is not enough to read it in school, there must be exercises and drills to practice it - mock parliaments, mock courts, mock financial markets. / The Civics education should not merely introduce the theory of Malaysian government, but it should instill a participatory Practice of citizenship, along the conduits of power and branches of government written in the Constitution. / The Legislators (parliament), the Executives (cabinet), and the Judiciary (courts), and the Council of Rulers (monarchy), each have different roles. The Executive in charge of national education needs to implement Drills among children, to ensure that they understand these levers before they become Qualified by Age to Cast Votes in the general elections."

Justification: https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-discuss-education-public-policy.html

Additional Notes: "(1/2) I think (your committee) needs to add a lawyer, specifically a constitutional lawyer. (2/2) The difference between a "moral education" and a "civics education", is that civics must focus on the hard skills of manipulating the levers of government, and political life in general. Moral education exists to instill values. Civics exists to allow you to co-exist with explicit disagreements on morality. The whole point is to get you to brain how, and why, we do not simply disembowel each other on a whim."

References: 2018-09-30 "Civics Education in Malaysia" https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/civics-education-in-malaysia.html 2018-05-20 "How to Discuss Education Public Policy" https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-discuss-education-public-policy.html

Forum Mamak chit-chat...

Ok, CEOs, I wanna hear some annual wrap-up stories!
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I just closed the books for 2018, and it was shit. But it could have been 20x worse, so I'm only slightly annoyed. How about you? Proposed answer format.
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1. Your product industry.
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2. Years operating.
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3. Mode of financing: self-funded / debt / equity / professional / non-professional / etc.
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[If multiple items per-line, list most important first.]
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4. Going into 2018:
- strengths (internal competitive advantages)
- weaknesses (int. comp. disadvantages)
- opportunities (environmental competitive advantages)
- threats (env. comp. disadvantages)
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5. Going into 2019:
- S
- W
- O
- T
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6. Did you make a profit or loss? Was it worth it (opportunity cost)?
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7. 2018 achievements in tangible/intangible value.
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8. 2018 write-offs in tangible/intangible value.
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Go!

1. Productivity infrastructure - stimulants, nutrients, hospitality (really, the world's oldest profession). Manual services. Brick and mortar.
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2. Now in year-4 of ops.
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3. 12% self-funded, the rest non-professional equity investors.
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4. Going into 2018:
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- strengths (internal competitive advantages): two years of ops optimisations, semi-stable balance sheet, established consumer brand, some R&D, too small to be attacked by largest industry players, and maybe one idiot founder who will probably work till he's dead or fired, or bought out, whichever comes first (there are others).
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- weaknesses (int. comp. disadvantages): heavy internal and external compliance mandates, hovering around a liquidity gap for the last two years, maybe one idiot founder, definitely a lack of more than one idiot founder... we require more founders (though, we probably do not require more idiots). We had one interesting forcing function in 2018: no social media, no media outlets... and for a B2C red ocean business, that's been very interesting. Unreliable lines of credit.
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- opportunities (environmental competitive advantages): our product is basically recession proof, so the perpetual tactical opportunity (given the limitations already stated above) is to really just trench-fight our way through enemy lines with the hope that the enemies with flame-throwers haven't got us targeted; we're pretty good in the trenches. Regarding the forcing function, we basically knew there would have to be a clear focus on offline, direct, marketing, online search marketing, and online non-social display marketing.
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- threats (env. comp. disadvantages): broad consumer pessimism due to weak local currency, general election turmoil, a LOT of hot money coming into our sector, from the mom-and-pop level up to the global leader valued at 50B hovering around the corner, non-renewal of tenancy, terrorism from petty activists (the origin story for why we have THAT forcing function), regulators.
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5. Going into 2019:
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- S: third year of ops optimisations, further stabilised balance sheet (shrinking slower), same brand (didn't get distracted), more R&D, a few good staff have been promoted from specialised roles to generalist roles as they have acquired the skills to run multiple functions, stabilised product, consolidated visual branding, expanded retail merchandising. Three years of audited accounts means that we can now, given internal compliance, obtain lines of credit from commercial banks. Tenancy was renewed for three more years, woohoo! Google Ads have been kitted out with bots that trade prices on an hourly basis, all year long - not that it's a cash cow, but having a bunch of bots at work (while not as useful as having humans) is better than nothing.
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- W: still no fucking website - but we discovered Google's mini-site generator. Idiot founder hasn't died yet. We still have the media forcing function. Compliance concerns are still backed up all the way to the top echelons of government.
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- O: we could effective add 120% to our floorspace, which is our most limiting production input, if we can raise sufficient capital to have a draw-down ready (because the availability to transact on that expansion is... volatile).
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- T: Cloverfield has landed, and there are sea lice falling everywhere. I made a map of startups in our space around April, and in six months I had at least six more appear within a 5km radius.
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6. We're down 18+% for the year. Could have been a wipe-out. Could have been shut down. Could happen any time. But we're still here and working on the same problem, because that's the point of business, I suppose. :) Can't really go into the details of where our credit is coming from, but you can ask me elsewhere - we're borrowing at 0% interest. This turns out to be a less popular option that you'd imagine off the bat.
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7. Achievements: Of the items listed in the (2019:S) section above, I think the greatest value is in the growth in human capital. can't tell you if we'll retain all our current staff, but I can tell you that they'll all be quite productive for whomever they work for next. :) Also, the bots. I love the bots. One day I expect that our floor operations will be staffed 85% by bots. I expect to be writing them myself in the distant future (unless you can get SoftBank in here for a quick round or two, then we can get to it sooner).
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8. Write-offs: We used to run a little party atmosphere around an Uber-for-bartenders model, but we had to destroy that to survive dropping sales in February during the holiday season, whereby the remaining staff were trained up to run the entire operation as solo-ists whenever anyone is on shift. We got leaner. And it's totally on-brand, since our business is productivity infrastructure. (Also see the forcing function.)
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Right, hope to see you next year.

Ordinary Days (Briefly Celebrated)

It's been a really chatty day, after a really thoughtful week, after a supremely noisy year.

With regards to the day, I've engaged with staff on the cadences of our work, and on the geometries of the presentation of our work to our audience ("schedules" and "retail merchandising"). I've engaged with customers on the history of our product, and the internal challenges that we face. I've engaged with suppliers on the physical variables which determine the quality of our receivables, literally questioning the tactics which we employ to address changes in the weather on the days in which we cook some of our products (and I wonder if, "on the days in which," is grammatically sound). I have spoken with four women, one is a close friend, one only wants casual conversation, another is reticent, and another exchanges with me the details of our habits in masturbation. And this is just one day. One, casual, day - during which books were kept, and marketing collaterals reviewed / recycled / reproduced, and the peristalsis-pump of caustic-soda-laced liquids was repaired, and the toilet was cleaned, and the coaching of toilet cleaning was enacted. And surely I have missed the lesser half of it - I ate fish two, maybe three times, today. It is difficult to remember, when the mind has optimised away the details from one's eating at the same three or four shops every day over three-some years. More conversations from the day that passed: a passing comment on hegemony of China and the port of Kenya, a view on the halalness of usury earned on overnight swaps from forex brokers, rumours on the proceedings of our monarchs. One, foolish, ordinary, day. Mostly, I work alone. With each individual above, I speak only of the domains relevant to them. Few of the individuals I meet daily,share more than two or three of my interests above.

I think back across the span of a week. I have been concerned with the proceedings of my nation's public policies (who hasn't). I am reminded of why old men spend all day reading the newspapers (as I now have the mundane responsibilities of an old man, who cannot go anywhere, or do any work, beyond the compound of a small farm which is tilled for others). I have wondered if I am under-, or over-reacting, to the criticisms of reactors to political movements such as #metoo, that those reactors are over-reacting because they are defensively in jeopardy. I have no qualms listing out my questionable behaviours, as I do not by myself find them questionable - only acknowledging that others would not find them easy to accept. I have inseminated others without intending to, and engaged with them in the administration of therapies for the avoidance of implantation; I have offered a hand to those who I perceived to seek comfort, regardless of age; I have mocked young people; I have spoken endlessly until told not to speak; I have spoken endlessly until prevented from speaking, without being told not to speak (very often, in fact); yet I find these to be ordinary affairs in the world, common among human beings. Yet people, many people I meet, are ashamed to discuss such things. Their timidity offends my temerity, and the offense is welcome. But timidity is rarely welcoming of offense. My peers fear to lose their political clout - fear of losing jobs and other access to resources, fear of losing acceptance with societies, fear of losing citizenship, fear of losing friends and family - these fears are ordinary. And ordinary is not enviable, so it has been years since I decided not to retain such attachments.

But how does that play out over months? Well, let us not go there just yet... perhaps soon, it will be time for bed, and another day. Yet another, ordinary day.

When I ended college thirteen years ago, I had spent over 98% of 45 months within a single square mile. Over the past 36 months, I have spent over 98% of my time within a-hundred-meters-squared. It looks like I'm on track to one day spending a few years in a cell, and after that, a few more years locked into this body on bed... haha. Who knows what the future holds? Every ordinary day is already a stride away from extraordinary places.