Another long flight to the US with 2 nights in Taiwan

It was an urgent trip to go to Taiwan and within half an hour of my arrival, the Japanese party had planned to arrive in a flight just half hour later and we met in the late evening to discuss about business in Taiwan.

But the discussion on opening up Taiwan is still early and the bulk of the preparation is with the US office and I brought along in my trip to US the man who can help us in Taiwan.

It was truly a mission of East meeting West

Intense meetings began before the US Thanksgiving day which continued to the end of the year through tele-conference calls after we got home.

We were creating an A-Team or the eXfuze Team in Asia!

With one of the investors of eXfuze, Michael Seymour in the center.

Remembering Mervin Chan who left us

Today is the funeral of Mervin Chan, a member of the church whose name is quite familiar with most members in Singapore from the pioneer days. As I am with Han enrolling him to driving school in KL, we are unable to attend the funeral. Geok Lee messaged me that he had passed away a few days earlier on Nov 12.

Living or Dead, I'm one who is always interested to connect to the individual, asking questions like when did we first meet, who is related to him that I know and reflecting upon the time we have shared together. For the past few days, I kept thinking about Mervin and searched my memory and went through my archives of photographs and realized I didn't really know him that well. It was only until recently when I met him at the same ward as Geok Lee at the cancer hospital in Singapore last year that I got to know him better.

Found this photo of Mervin with his wife Christina and their son at an event of the Singapore Armed Forces.

I guess Mervin is a man who easily makes friends with others that even for one like me who lived in Malaysia most of my life with occasionally visits to Singapore, he would become a familiar face to me, always ready with a handshake to greet me and would come and talk to you as if he has been your friend all his life. It was this same way when I met him at the hospital and we talked as close friends. I felt that comfortable familiarity with him even though as I said we have not been really in close contact in the past years. I saw his face more when he started working for the Church office in Singapore but I had always known him from way back but wasn't sure since when, how or why? I asked Geok Lee about it and she too acknowledged that she only knew him only since the family moved to Singapore. Here are some pics of our recent association with Mervin and his family to share in rememberance of him in our family post :

He was always an active member at church meetings and socials. Above is seen at the farewell party for Oh Chong Keat and Wyndia family in Nov 2007.
His whole family seems to have joined the Church. Pictured at Church in the Clementi Ward is his mother and sister Delicia who served a mission in Malaysia in our KL branch before. The rest are his other sisters Irene, Serena and Eric who now resides in Canada. Wonder if we missed out any others?
Just earlier in the month on 2 Nov we heard he was at the hospital and had a chance to see Mervin alive for the last time. Being such a familiar person to all the saints in Singapore, I believed many visited him at the hospital too which would be tiring for Christina, his wife, who has been a positive and supportive partner in his life. May God continue to bless the Chan family and Mervin too. I think he is now happy to meet many of the people he has become familiar with that have also departed and may have left behind a legacy or fond memories of them.

Happy Birthday Shuan!

Always remember what your parents have taught you... ...that you need to learn how to walk before you can learn to fly! Always aim high and soar to the skies! You can do it!

Barack Obama elected as 44th President of USA

Someone text messaged me the early news that Obama won the US Presidential elections on US Nov 4 and I turned on the cable TV to catch his winning speech below :

My ears pricked to listen closely to Obama's touching speech and my eyes became teary. I was touched about what he said and my long held beliefs of America's spirit flooded my heart and mind again. Obama's victory seemed to give me more hope of my success in my latest business project with an American MLM company new into the Asia market. (Read about it here) I have been hitting hard with the message to the American management that they must change their thinking and management style to win the market leadership in Asia. I always had hope that Americans can do it, though doubts arose during trying periods of this possibility. With Obama's victory, I now know with greater confidence that the American management CAN change. I noted the key words Obama used in his speech and emailed it immediately to the CEO and senior executives of the company, quoting from his speech, 'That's the true genius of America, that America can change. The union can be perfected'

As the American political scene came to a climax in the news, I turned to the local political scene by reading the blog of our former prime minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad :

To my surprise, the former prime minister's latest post in his blog had a 'Congratulations Obama' title. I have read Dr Mahathir's blog several times before but this time round, I was inspired to leave my comments in his blog. Try to look for comments from 'Dad the KL City Kid' amidst hundreds of others with the timestamp as Nov 6, 2008 7:25 pm. (The post of Dr. Mahathir is found here where I had left my comments which had reference to my previous posting about Little America in Malaysia )

Ray celebrates his 11th Birthday!

Ray celebrated his birthday on a day typical of life, one filled with happiness and another of sadness.

Just after Church on Sunday at noon time, a new convert was getting ready to be baptized into the ward, symbolic of being born again to a new life.

We heard that another church member of the ward, stricken with cancer of the liver for some time, was now in a critical situation at the hospital and we went to visit him.

In the evening, it was time to celebrate Ray's birthday with a special dinner plus cutting the birthday cake. He was as usual anxious to open his presents and just as he was about to open Dad's presents to him, I related the significance of the presents to my advice to him about life.

1) One was that he should always be organized in life.

2) The second was that he should follow his north star.

3) The last was that he was to be the one to label his own life and not worry about the label that others might give to him.

Can you relate his presents below to the advice given above?

That's the end of the object lesson given by Dad to Ray through his birthday presents.

Some food for thought as he prepares to move on with his life for another year till his next birthday!