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Victor Tan

Victor Tan is incredibly excited about AI technology and its potential to transform the world. He is the creator of Transform Your Creative Writing With ChatGPT on Udemy and the author of The Little Robot That Could Paint, an AI-generated children’s book that introduces children to artificial intelligence that will release on March 14th, 2023. He is deeply passionate about education, and In his coaching and tutoring business Ascendant Academy, he teaches students not only how to sell themselves to top institutions, how to write effectively and conceptualize ideas with AI, believing deeply that AI is not here to replace us, but instead to help us to level up as a species as we conceptualize and create the most powerful tools that the world has known since the dawn of humanity. When he isn’t spending time writing, creating online courses, and creating the occasional video about ergonomic chairs and curious uses of ChatGPT on his YouTube channel, he’s probably  spending time coaching students to enter top universities in the US and UK, creating new Apple Homekit smart home automations, and playing an already unreasonably large yet still growing collection of musical instruments.

The author has 90 posts

The Future of Writing: How Automated Speech Recognition Will Transform Your Writing

In the modern world, creating documents is a fundamental part of almost every profession, and they are key to a variety of tasks: communicating ideas, formalizing agreements, sharing information, reporting progress, instructing, or preserving records.

Whether you’re working in business, education, healthcare, law, or creative fields, the need to produce written content is pretty much everywhere — whether you’re creating a PowerPoint deck, writing a report, or crafting a script either for a YouTube video or for an episode of a TV show, you’ll definitely have to sit down and begin writing to bring out your ideas.

But as you may know, writing isn’t always easy.

In fact, it can be tedious and painstaking, imposing challenges upon your body that are difficult to deal with, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and the stresses of sitting down for long periods of time.

Thankfully, it’s a challenge that has a solution: Automated Speech Recognition (ASR).

ASR is a technology that historically hasn’t been the best at reporting down what people say, but it has remarkably improved although the best of it is something that still evades the modern and widely available voice assistants on iPhones and Android phones.

However, nowadays apps like Wispr Flow and also MacWhisper work effectively and allow dramatically more accurate and longer transcriptions that serve niches such as creating subtitles, as can the ChatGPT app on your phone along the way, which you can download on iOS or Android, Which allows you to use your voice to interact with your devices in ways that have historically not been possible and that also transform the way that we use our technology and therefore interact with the world.

Let’s dive into why.

While some of you already know that I started using Wispr Flow recently, I’ve actually been using a range of different transcription tools as part of the suite of different apps that make life simple and useful on a day-to-day basis.

In this article, I’ll talk about some of the advantages that I’ve seen from using Wispr Flow and also from ASR technology in general, and hopefully these will help you understand how it is that using these tools can be beneficial for you in writing and creating, transform your productivity and give your work a new edge, and maybe also add a bit of a twist onto your creative process. Ready for the ride? Let’s go!

1. Speed: Get Your Ideas Down in Record Time

Typing has long been the standard for writing, but let’s face it — typing speed can be a bottleneck, especially when you’re trying to keep up with a fast-moving train of thought. With automated speech recognition, the speed at which you can create content is no longer limited by your typing skills.

You can speak several times faster than you type, allowing you to capture ideas as they come, with no slowdown.

If you are able to speak out your ideas with the same level of quality as what you get when you are typing them out manually, you would theoretically be able to work much faster, create much more content, and just generally move onward with much greater speed compared to others around you!

Wispr Flow’s advanced speech recognition capabilities can transcribe your voice into text almost instantly, enabling you to turn even long-winded brainstorms into text documents quickly and easily.

This speed translates into more productivity and less time spent staring at a blank screen.

Of course, speaking is not exactly the same as typing because with typing you do look at a screen, think about the words that you’re going to say and then type them down one after another. That’s materially different compared to what you have with speaking, and it does recruit a slightly different network.

Typing does recruit a more slow and deliberate method of thinking that can result in slightly different documents, partly because the way that typing works is that you look at what you’ve written and then you look back and think about the new possibilities, while for speaking, you are very much just coming up with ideas on the fly as you think about the things that you had said before.

Some may argue that this leads to less detailed writing than what you’d have if you were simply to just type or handwrite but…

2. Natural Writing Style: Let Your Authentic Voice Shine Through

When you type, your writing can sometimes feel forced or overly formal, as you tend to follow traditional writing structures.

However, when you speak, your language often flows more naturally, mimicking the way you would actually converse with someone.

It’s no surprise that teachers of writing, including myself, encourage people to learn how to write the way that they speak to people — with an eye towards engaging the person who’s on the other side and towards thinking about the experience that they must be having while listening to our words.

ASR allows us to bring the modality of voice into the world of text, which effectively helps us to follow that advice naturally, and can translate into a more engaging and conversational writing style which resonates better with readers.

Using Wispr Flow for voice-based writing encourages you to embrace your authentic voice and craft content that feels less stiff and more relatable. It’s a way of letting your personality shine through, giving your writing a touch of humanity and connection.

Having said that, I do acknowledge that not everybody is a master of speaking. That leads me directly to the next point.

3. Practice of Public Speaking: Sharpen Your Verbal Communication Skills

Using voice technology to write doesn’t just help with document creation — it also helps you become a better speaker.

When you dictate your thoughts, you’re practicing the art of spoken communication, which is a valuable skill in its own right.

Speaking your ideas aloud helps you refine your verbal expression, giving you a chance to practice public speaking without even realizing it.

Real-time transcription capabilities mean that you can listen back and see how your spoken words translate into written form, making it a powerful tool for improving your clarity and persuasiveness in everyday conversations and professional settings, and a tool that is definitely useful beyond just document creation but also extends into learning how to engage with people and to persuade, inform and entertain with our voices as practiced in a unique modality that promises to improve the way that we speak, present and articulate ourselves whether at home and on our laptops or in front of an audience.

Beyond the consideration of strain, it’s also worthwhile to note that ASR helps us to…

4. Minimize Strain, Maximize Comfort

Speaking, unlike typing doesn’t put any strain on your hands and wrists.

You might not have thought that this was important at the outset, but the reality is that writing can be a physically demanding task, especially if you spend hours on a keyboard. It can lead to wrist, neck, and back strain, making it challenging to stay comfortable while working. Also, if you have carpal tunnel syndrome or pinched nerves, using a keyboard for long periods of time can be painful.

I know that that’s definitely what I personally experienced while I was using a keyboard very extensively and trying to type along the way. I would often find myself with wrist pain as a result of typing and would have to stop after a while.

Automated speech recognition (ASR) helps to resolve these problems, because…

  • Being able to articulate things very quickly means that you will spend less time on a computer overall, and as a result would spend less time than you would otherwise spend typing.
  • You would be able to eliminate almost all the stress that you normally sustain while typing because the only thing that you would need to do on Wispr Flow is just press a single button and then begin speaking along the way. Sure, you might need to drink a little bit more water along the way, but that’s always good. And all the other advantages that I mentioned also apply as well.
  • You can compose your content while sitting, standing, or even walking, freeing you from the constraints of the traditional workstation setup. It’s worthwhile to note that sitting down itself is an aspect of work life that poses unique new challenges in the workforce. Simply put, it’s not great for you. It’s even what some might call a generational challenge that is associated with the modern day paradigm of work and the development of the computer as a key device in creating, developing, and executing our work (I might talk more about this in the course of future LinkedIn posts!)

This ergonomic benefit makes voice writing an excellent option for anyone who spends a lot of time writing and wants to protect their long-term health and well-being.

Conclusion:

Automated speech recognition has many core advantages which I’ve deeply enjoyed and am proud to share. I hope that you’ve enjoyed thinking about some of them.

Let’s recap:

ASR is a technology that historically hasn’t been the best at reporting down what people say, but it has remarkably improved although the best of it is something that still evades the modern and widely available voice assistants on iPhones and Android phones.

However, on apps such as Wispr Flow, ChatGPT, and MacWhisper, the technology has matured to the point where it can help you get your ideas down in record time, it lets your authentic voice shine through, it helps you sharpen your verbal communication skills and practice public speaking, it helps minimize strain and maximize comfort as a result of the better ergonomics allowing you to work for longer in a fashion that is better for your body and that ultimately allows you to get things done more quickly, more efficiently, with less strain and in a way that teaches you crucial skills of interacting verbally and composing along the way.

I strongly think of ASR as a tool that will fundamentally change the way that we interact with technology and reshape the paradigm that we use nowadays for creating documents, projects, and ideas along the way, helping us create documents faster and more comfortably while also sharpening your public speaking skills and enabling a more natural writing style.

If you’re ready to take your writing to the next level and experience the benefits of using your voice for document creation, give Wispr Flow a try, and potentially MacWhisper as well, as you enjoy the transformation of our world through the development of this new technology and look forward to everything that there is to come that will improve the efficiency of our work and lives while at the same time freeing us up towards greater and more ambitious projects.

Affiliate disclosure: I have a financial relationship with both Wispr Flow and MacWhisper. They are incredible technologies that I completely believe in. If you happen to use the links here, I may receive a small commission that helps support my work. Thank you in advance if you choose to use these links! Hope you will enjoy using these new technologies; they are quite the ride!

Wispr Flow: The Future of Voice-Activated AI Transcription

In the past couple of decades of human history, I can remember the seminal inventions that shaped our human existence so profoundly that somehow or another, whether we realized it or not, our lives had changed.

Of these inventions, the most immediate that I can point to is Google, the search engine that made it so we could see the entire world. Beyond that, I’d say Facebook, the social media app that connected the world in a strange technological network. 

The next one of these and probably freshest in people’s memories is ChatGPT, the tool that showed us the power and usefulness of generative AI, highlighting for us both the revolution of this new technology and also heightening our fears that one day robots would take over all of us.

Well, I firmly believe that the next one is here, and its name is Wispr Flow.

Download it here! 

(Unfortunately, it’s Mac Silicon only at the moment. Sorry if you’re out there using Windows, guys.)

But what exactly is Wispr, and why are you asking me to download this? 

Well, I’m glad you asked.

What is Wispr?

Wispr is an AI transcription software, but it is not just any transcription software.

It’s a transcription software that activates at the touch of a button. 

You can use it in any text field and begin transcribing what you are saying by nothing more than a touch of a button and then speaking into your microphone, which ends up creating transcriptions like this, and even intelligently paragraph what you are saying while at the same time minimizing redundancy by fixing mistakes for you on the fly, based on your writing style, yielding transcriptions like this.

What does it cost?

The software itself is free to use for up to 2,000 words in the course of a single week if you choose to use the Flow Basic plan. 

On the other hand, if you use Flow Pro, which most of you probably will. that’s going to cost $12 a month and it’s going to get you unlimited words and access to a couple of cool features such as:

1. Command Mode: This mode allows you to use ChatGPT in any text field to edit and format text. It also enables you to utilize the AI’s capabilities to generate output and edit text with ease.

2. Perplexity integration: This feature is an additional component of the AI’s capabilities, which can be utilized in conjunction with Command Mode. It can be used to further enhance the output and editing capabilities of the AI.

I will cover these in more posts at a later point. Let’s get into the meat of things and talk about the killer feature here: seamless voice transcription!

How does it work?

Activating Flow is literally just the touch of a button that results in the entire transcription process beginning, processing, and eventually concluding within no more than a few seconds.

In this small example, I’m just using the Option key as a customized hotkey.

Whenever I want to activate Flow, I press the Option button twice, and then begin speaking on my computer, then this guy pops out.

Immediately, within just a couple of seconds, an entirely formatted paragraph comes out.

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

But doesn’t ChatGPT allow you to do the same thing?

Some of you might very well say, doesn’t ChatGPT allow you to do the exact same thing anyway? 

Moreover, isn’t it true that you also don’t have to pay?

You’re absolutely right. You can definitely do Whisper transcription inside ChatGPT just by tapping the little button to the right of your text box in the ChatGPT app. 

The button is highlighted Yellow above.

It’s very quick, very efficient, and it allows you to capitalize on the massive speed advantages that voice typing allows you to obtain.

However, it is still slower than Wispr Flow.

Let’s do a bit of a comparison then.

Wispr Flow vs ChatGPT for Transcriptions

Let’s consider this in terms of what actually needs to happen in order for you to use each of these different transcription methods. And let’s begin with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT voice transcription process

First, consider that you need to actually open ChatGPT in order to begin the transcription process.

This means that you need to switch tabs away from what you were actually doing, access ChatGPT, and then only begin this process, and it means you have to move away from the context to forget what you are saying and to start afresh or new and maybe even rearrange windows so that you can see what you’re looking at in order to begin the process of transcribing.

Here’s a look at ChatGPT being used to transcribe and create a message for sending.

As you can see, there were at least 8 steps in this process to get to the pasting stage and before sending, even though there are 5 images. To summarize…

Here is the ChatGPT process:

  1. I had to open up ChatGPT
  2. Then I had to push the record button
  3. I had to speak
  4. I had to copy the output
  5. I moved to the next app, WhatsApp.
  6. I tapped it.
  7. I tapped the text box where I was supposed to send what I wanted to send. 
  8. I pasted it.

Compare this to Wispr Flow, where the process is much simpler:

1. I tapped the text box.

2. I tapped a key on my keyboard.

3. I spoke.

4. I saw that the output was complete and also formatted.

What does this mean?

As you can see, ChatGPT takes a minimum of 8 steps in order to get the same message out, while Wispr Flow takes only 4 and it even formats the output so that things such as lists, paragraphs, and other kinds of formatting are taken care of, while ChatGPT will not do that.

Let’s also remember that for Wispr Flow, all transcription takes place within the same context window, so you can refer to everything that was said before as you decide on what you’re going to say.

For ChatGPT, you have to open up multiple devices and then try to decide on what you’re going to say by memory and may very well lose the plot unless you’re constantly referring back to what it is that you are referencing before eventually going back to ChatGPT, whereas if you’re using Wispr Flow, you can just read what you’ve already written in order to decide what it is that you’re going to say next.

Put simply, ChatGPT is great at cutting down on typing time, but it is still much more inefficient compared to Wispr Flow.

To summarize:


Wispr Flow takes forward the culture of efficient and highly accurate voice transcription that was set forth by OpenAI’s Wispr algorithm and it improves upon it in every way.

It is quick, it is fast and works with the touch of a button, and it is the most seamless transcription experience I have ever had in my entire life; while ChatGPT may have saved a good chunk of time, Wispr Flow can help you save hours upon hours of editing and publishing work more, while at the same time cutting down on the transaction costs that take place whenever you switch between windows.

It cuts away every single bit of the fat and the adjustment processes associated with creating a text and having your voice translate itself into a text into, and that’s not even considering the way that it is constantlyaccurately spacing your words, minimizing edits, and even learning the way that you write so that you can create more efficient transcripts and also articles and publications along the way.

Installing Wispr Flow is simple: just go over to this link, click download on the upper right corner, and you’re on your way to ensuring that you can access one of the most incredible pieces of software in the entire world.

To conclude:

I’ll start off with an admission.

Every single part of this piece has been written with Wispr Flow by me just sitting down and writing everything into this document with nothing more than just a bit of conversation on my part with the device straight away, ensuring that my thoughts can be translated into the document. 

It is deeply incredible and something that I have never imagined being able to do, and I truly believe that Wispr Flow is the service that will create the next vanguard for new interactivity with the computer. 

I don’t think that Wispr Flow is going to entirely kill the keyboard for a variety of reasons. 

Namely, for example, in a modern office environment (though without prejudice to the possibility that other kinds of office environments may evolve in the future where this point is not a concern), people can’t very well be talking to themselves constantly because that’s going to end up disrupting people, as well as the keyboard’s ability to adapt to different typing styles, its advanced macro capabilities, and its compatibility with various keyboard layouts; also, things like gaming and other applications may still recruit the capabilities of the keyboard along the way, and human society may end up adapting brand new technologies that may be more usable with keyboards than just the modality of voice interaction.

Still though…

For me, Wispr Flow is quite possibly the single most efficiency-raising software development that I have ever encountered.

I consider it a godsend for me and for anyone else out there who has carpal tunnel syndrome and faceless difficulty as a result of carpal tunnel and hours spent moving fingers one after another, opening up a route not only for navigating computers and the human-computer interactions that we take part in in a more healthful, ergonomic, and ultimately beneficial way that helps to reduce the strain that we place upon the human body.

A side benefit? 

Wispr Flow and other forms of automated speech recognition (ASR) algorithms have allowed me to constantly practice my ability to articulate my thoughts and ideas in the realm of the spoken word; I consider it valuable for those of us out there who need to make ourselves heard by speaking, interacting, and articulating themselves to audiences — not only of readers but also to those who will eventually end up experiencing our presence in conversations or in auditoriums during the odd moments when we have to give speeches, and I am sure that it will be the same for many people out there as well.

I’d like to reiterate what I said at the start of this piece about seminal inventions. 

These were inventions that were incredible and that fundamentally shaped the way that we existed, interacted, or connected with one another. 

After having written this piece, I am all the more convinced. The ease at which my ideas came out, the speed at which it took place, the lack of focus on the mechanical aspects of what would otherwise be an arduous process predicated upon my manually looking for errors along the way has been transformed into a process that has allowed me to use my mind rather than deal with the intricacies of ensuring the physical accuracy of every single thing along the way. 

In short, the entire paradigm of interaction and creation has for me transformed. 

As I move forward to posting this, I will observe that it was the easiest blog post that I have ever written in my entire life, requiring no more than the 10 mouse clicks to copy, paste, and upload it along the way. 

I truly cannot recall a more transformative technology throughout the course of my life and give my profound congratulations to the Wispr Flow team, including Tanay and also Sahaj, for having brought this incredible piece of work together. You have personally transformed my life, and I am confident that millions of people await this journey of transformation as well. My heartiest congratulations to all of you for this world-shaking achievement, and I look forward to seeing your names further up in lights in the future!

  • V.

Meeting Tun Dr Mahathir

Today I had a conversation with Tun Dr Mahathir. 

This is the kind of conversation that a person doesn’t normally have. I don’t expect that many people will have it or many people would have had it.

Given everything that has happened so far, it’s far from clear that many other people will be able to have it, and so I know that it is a rare and wonderful privilege. 

I remember clearly all the things that happened. I showed up in a GrabCar to the Perdana Leadership Foundation, ten minutes before our 9:30 appointment. 

Walking in to the picturesque building, there I saw our very first national car in blue – the Saga, brought forth from one of Tun Mahathir’s pet projects. 

As I looked around, I saw that the place was grand – the paintings of prime ministers depicting Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Mahathir, and Tun Abdullah – the gallery – the chandeliers and carpeted floors broken only by gorgeous wooden balustrades that led a curved staircase up into an open space.

I stood there spellbound – I had not expected a place of such beauty. 

As I looked around, I realized that I had arrived early and it was not time for my appointment yet. But before long, my contact Adam called – and so with bated breath, I walked into the room where I would meet Tun Dr. Mahathir. 

In the morning, I had watched Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahril Hamdan’s interview of Tun Mahathir on 2X, paying attention to the questions that he had asked and all of the things along the way, which was also interesting because incidentally I’d also met both of them just the other day at a book launch featuring Kishore Mahbubani – How strange fate is and how the world seems to connect everybody in short order. 

And then I stepped in to the door that separated me from meeting Tun.

It was funny how I didn’t feel a sense of fear at all – rather just a sense that maybe this was destiny and that somehow or another, the fates had decided that this was to be my lot:

And so I stepped in and there I saw an office that I’d only seen on Google – the gigantic table hidden behind a gorgeous wooden screen and a sitting area clearly meant for entertaining diplomats, high level guests, potentially members of royalty along the way; as I walked past the screen, there I saw it all. The gigantic Quran that lay unfolded at the back. The backlighting of the entire place tastefully brought together. 3D printed Darth Vader helmets and a Stormtrooper helmet; trinkets from Japan… And eventually, as my eyes moved around the scene, there I saw the person whom I was meant to meet: 

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. 

There was the person that I’d only seen on television or known through the newspapers. Physically and in the flesh. 

At that point, I realized something strange – I was oddly calm. In fact, I wasn’t sure of only exactly one thing – What language I would speak to him first. 

As I gazed at the man, I extended my hand and said, “Selamat sejahtera, Tun.” 

Somehow, I had decided that it was Malay, although we immediately continued in English. 

If you’ve ever seen any of my videos, you’ll notice that what I tend to do is place a camera at the far end of a table, and then film people using the wide angle and then point a long focal length lens at them and then that makes up the entire video.

But it was then only that I saw the enormity of Dr. Mahathir’s table. I looked at it and the thing was immense. Probably five regular-sized tables, one after another, forming a U-shape in all directions with all kinds of different paraphernalia all over it, terminating only in the far corners, even as it accommodated what seemed to be infinite space.

The next couple of minutes was spent setting up and thinking about logistics, as Dr. M told me about some fascinating things like his Japan obsession, the 3D printed Darth Vader helmet, and everything in between…

…And then we began to speak.

How do you even describe a conversation like that?

A conversation where you’re sitting with someone who has led an entire country?

A chat where you think that the person who was speaking with you had the willpower to push millions of people forward in the course of a national project?

Oddly enough, for me… I’d describe it as ‘calm’, if I think about it, is kind of a strange thing to say, because one thing I never noticed is that Mahathir’s eyes are truly, in case you’ve never looked at them closely, objectively quite terrifying. 

I say terrifying in the sense that, if you look at his eyes, it appears that there is a sort of life force inside them, a vitality, a struggle to push forward which is large enough to encapsulate an entire nation. 

Looking at the man, I could see that his willpower was truly incredible, that somehow within those eyes there was a spirit so large that it could overpower dragons, conquerors, and everything in between – possibly even a demon king – even at the age of 99. These are the eyes of the the man who became the Prime Minister of Malaysia twice and was elected as the world’s oldest head of state.

Yet I was calm. 

I don’t know why, the words just arrived. They came out of me, second by second and minute by minute, as I just pondered the questions that had come about on my mind. 

If I were to describe it again, I guess I would call it a state of flow, the sort of thing that comes about when somebody is truly in their element, ready for every single challenge that may come along the way, even as I listened carefully to Tun and all the things that he shared along the way – one of the few people who could. 

How fascinating to realize that probably the most nervous person of all in that room was Tun’s assistant, Adam, who had ushered me in with a cautious look on his face, seemingly nervous at what was to come. 

A video will come up soon, in which Tun M and I will speak about affirmative action, the Malays in Malaysian society, Israel-Palestine, and the crucial question of education in our society. 

Thank you for the incredible conversation, Tun Mahathir. It was and always will remain one of my dearest memories!

It’s going to be a fun one! 🤩

The Night Before I Met Mahathir

It is the night before I meet Dr. Mahathir.

For those of you who didn’t know about this, welcome to yet another strange and interesting episode of my life:

Tomorrow, I will be interviewing Tun Dr. Mahathir, the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia, for my podcast, Pathways To Excellence.

I sit here with two books in front of me, the first, The Malay Dilemma, and the next, A Doctor in the House, and I contemplate both and the way they have unquestionably shaped my life.

Dr. Mahathir was my Prime Minister when I was just born. From young, I always thought that every country had a Prime Minister; indeed, it is from him that I learned the very concept of Prime Minister itself.

For years and years, this had gone on, and I went from thinking that he was the only one who would ever occupy that position, to learning that other countries had ‘presidents’ and ‘kings’, later downgrading the man’s significance as I thought of the ‘world’ and how wide it was, moving first from thinking that Malaysia was everything to thinking that it was tiny, insignificant, hating it, coming back, making it home, and then realising that it was what we made of it.

It is fascinating how small the mind of a child is – yet, as I would later realize, how small the mind of an adult is when they fail to contemplate the significance of things that are nearby.

I never really thought too extensively what it would mean to actually encounter this person one day.

Then one day, many years after my father had died and was buried in the Sungai Petani Christian Cemetery, I found a book. My mum said that she wanted to throw it away, but somehow she didn’t, and there I saw it in its ancient form, yellowed pages and everything. I had never touched it for the longest time, for the longest time and frankly took no notice, until one day when I remember seeing an article somewhere where it said that the author had disavowed it or something of that nature.

I don’t really know though, because memory is a fragile thing, and perhaps that is just me telling a lie to myself, but what I do know is that I never really thought about it until one day, I remember thinking about my father’s untimely death after I’d come back from university, thinking about things that I wanted to do along the way, not really knowing what was on the horizon and I recall at that time that I just thought to myself that I had to increase my knowledge somehow or another, by whatever means possible.

In that year, I read like a person crazed, with no rhyme or reason, determined to fill myself up somehow with the knowledge of the entire world.

It was then, looking for things that somehow would suit me, that I found the Malay Dilemma again, and decided that now had come a time to read something that I disagreed with.

Read I did. I took up the book, I still remember, and flipped through its yellowed pages, and there I saw a mind that was deeply powerful, and strongly at work.

At that time, I remember how impressed I was at the clarity of thought, the reasoning, the issues that were brought forth, on the sheets of paper that I turned over, contemplating then in my mind, as they thought me about how how someone entirely from a different world within my own country saw the place that I live.

Thinking back, that feeling of profundity was just a feeling, a sense, an emotion, and a shock at the eloquence that I saw in the book – it would translate into a broader appreciation of society, but not just then; I would have to read it several more times over the years for that to happen.

It has been years ever since the Malay Dilemma has been published, and society has changed ever since then, but life and time have shaped my thoughts around it, and brought me to understand a little more of the world that gave rise to it, evolving my thoughts on inequality, justice, racism, and society.

As I sit here, book in hand, looking alternately at the old and faded cover, and then at Mahathir’s face on his Doctor in the House memoir, I can’t help but wonder about the person I’m going to meet tomorrow, what he’s going to be like, how the years have shaped him, how many people have come, gone, and passed through his office seeking the same inspiration with similar questions and with other thoughts that come along the way.

The man is a 99 year old this year of 2024 – the oldest person I have ever encountered in my life.

I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, but what I do know is that it will be a monumental privilege to chat with the first prime minister I had ever known, the person who, from the day of my very birth, was most responsible for spearheading the country forward, compared to so many other individuals within my geographical region.

I know of course that history is not shaped purely by the leaders, but also by individuals within their small enclaves, and that society’s movement is the collective product of our fever dreams, imaginations, and self-interest amalgamated into a single pathway that leads us forward, yet I cannot help but think about the person that I will be speaking to, and how he led this small part of the world forward in the context of the history of the world that I have always known.

I cannot help but wonder what I will say tomorrow, which even now is something unknown to me. The questions, they alternate from one minute to the next, percolating, coalescing, fading away, and getting replaced with new ones… And as I reach the end of this night, all I can really think about is a sense of wonder about the person who shaped Malaysia, what he will have to say, and how my life will be transformed and I am confident that it will be a transformative conversation.

At this time, I think of my father and how he might have encountered this book. Curious, wondering, eager to understand the world.

As far as I know, at the age that he had bought it, it would have been in the very first year of Tun Mahathir’s premiership and I suppose that he would have been the same age that I am now.

Somehow this conversation feels like it was fated. A gift passed down from heaven from which my father smiles, looking at destiny itself being fulfilled, his son coming to meet one of the leaders of our nation.

Loved, feared, hated, admired, but ever controversial.

That is Tun Mahathir, and that is the person I will meet tomorrow.

It is a wonderful feeling to think about that privilege, and to realise that it is a complex one. That is the last thought that I will chronicle, bringing this feeling of fatedness into the morning.

Societally Valuable

Every morning I wake up, I ask myself:

How do I be someone valuable to society, and how do I create things that are valuable to society?

Ever since I was a child, I think that this question has been a part of me – the part that wants to create something that’s of my own in service of the world in which I live through imagination, thought, and the machinations of a mind that will not sit still. 

Some may argue that choosing to make a difference is a matter of disposition.

I don’t want to give to society. I want to live for myself!

Why should I care about what other people think?

I consider people entirely able to make such statements and accept that they exist don’t disagree with that – human beings are different and naturally abide in different worlds; bearing different personalities, we approach the world through myriads of different lenses built from different world views, cultural backgrounds, and educational experiences.

In such a world, might someone not argue that becoming societally valuable is merely one of many pathways. Surely that is an overgeneralization? 

Personally, I feel that that is not so, purely because society is a large and far-ranging concept. Rather than an abstract and faraway entity, it is something that is close and begins from those closest and dearest to us before it extends outwards into the world.

Society is fundamentally made up of individuals – our friends, our family members, the people who make up the sum and total matrix of people whom we know and love, and those whom we have yet to know whether near and within our communities, or far away and outside of them.

To bring value to these people and by extension to society is not so grandiose as ending climate change, eliminating inner city crime, or resolving budgetary constraints on a macroeconomic scale, even if those things are desirable – To share laughter that enlightens your spirit is to be societally valuable – to make others cherish you through your words, thoughts, and actions is to bring social value – to create products, ideas, thoughts, and things that inspire others to take action, to make a difference, and to think just a little differently is to bring social value into being and to create something that is meaningful to society. On all levels and in all ways, the barrier of entry to contribute towards society is not so high, and it certainly suffices to play one’s role well as a son or a daughter, a father or a mother or a friend, alongside the numerous other things that a person might choose to do in their careers.

In all likelihood, even if for some unlikely reason we were unsociable and cold or we knew nobody in this world, the ability to create societally valuable things is a key component of survival in the world. Creating things that people value is the key reason as to why people would sacrifice resources for that thing, whether time, energy, or money – it is the reason that people take part in exchanges to mutual benefit, which is impossible to do if one doesn’t discover traits, attributes, or qualities that allow them to be beneficial to the world at large in the social context in which we live, especially in a capitalistic context where survival rests upon the exchange of resources and growing them to meet our ever-increasing set of wants transformed into needs.

There are so many different ways to satisfy the needs of a person in a capitalistic context that command their instincts, willpower, and personal volition together as part of a project of building something that is unique to themselves, yet it is not only in service of capitalistic needs that we create things. 

I think that I could have written this in more relatable language and with a little more engagement, but this is what came out of me today – I’ll write a little more later 🙂 

AUAM-NAMSA Corporate Pathways Networking Dinner – Some small reflections.

The journey has been pretty interesting in a whole bunch of different ways.

Amongst other things, I’ve received a partnership with GerakBudaya, and also in conjunction with the American Universities Alumni Association of Malaysia and the National Assembly of Malaysian Students in the United States of America (NAMSA), we are organizing this event.

Here’s the event PDF to showcase that this is quite real.

AUAM-NAMSA-Networking-Dinner-CircularDownload

Honestly, even the term Corporate Pathways is a bit of a misnomer.

I don’t know how corporate this event is going to be, primarily because it’s mainly going to be focused upon experience sharing and how people thought about their lives in the course of GLC in relation to the education that they received while they were in the U.S.

There is a whole backstory to this that goes back about a month or two months or so, but has led me to a place of networking, meeting different people, and establishing friendly chat after friendly chat, rather than transactional moment after transactional moment with a bunch of different people with whom I probably never imagined at the outset that I’d be on casual speaking terms with.

Anyway, here are some of the people who will be on the panel.

GLC Panel:

Nick Khaw, Head of Research at Khazanah and alumnus of Harvard University.

Aik Chong Phuah, previous CEO of Petronas Digital and alumnus of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Brendan Yap, Senior Executive at the Securities Commission and alumnus of NYU.

Athirah Azmi, former Manager, Client Coverage at Maybank Investment Bank and alumna of the University of Chicago 

Private Sector Panel:

Audrey Ooi, co-founder of Colony Coworking Space and an alumna of Mount Holyoke College, also known as @fourfeetnine.

Dato’ Vincent Choo, Founder, Urban Ground Group, Franchisee Subway; alumnus of Eastern Michigan University.

Yen Ping Teh, APAC Product Partnerships at Google and an alumna of Mount Holyoke College.
Brian Soo, Chief Innovation Officer of Firefighter.my and an alumnus of the University of California, San Diego.

It’s been a whole whirlwind of experiences from trying to ensure representation, meeting different alumni clubs, encountering representatives of the different organizations dedicated towards Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and so on and so forth. All I can say is that it’s been interesting and unique to see what’s been going on develop over the course of time.

Didn’t think that it was going to be possible for me to organize something like this before, but I guess it was… And here I am with just another iteration of the thoughts that I had before.

“Now that we’ve done this, what can we do next?”, goes the thought.

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but what’s for sure is this:

The universe has placed me in a unique position, I think, to make a difference, to bring people together, and to create new experiences that are valuable and meaningful towards members of our society at large. And so long as I am here, and that universe continues to give me strength, I will endeavor to create better ones, and to level up along the way, so that I can do good to my country, and contribute towards it, rather than constantly complaining, failing to take action, and sitting immured in a prison of my own doubts.

I look forward to seeing this happen, and the interesting developments that lie ahead 🙂

The Most Moral Business?

From a very young age, I had always understood businesses as entities that bring value to society in meaningful ways that otherwise it would not receive – and that’s one of the many reasons why the bookstore had always stood out to me as one of the ultimate business forms; after all, what could deliver more value to society than the transmission of knowledge itself for the profit of mankind, far above and in excess the monetary value that is paid for them?

There is a huge camp out there of people who think that knowledge should be free and fairly accessible – I don’t dispute this to be a valuable point of view, but I also consider it to not be tenable; sure, we can say that society is the core issue and that knowledge *should* all be made available to the universe, but the fact remains that creating and obtaining knowledge is a costly effort, and if nothing else, the process of assembling something together whether through study or physical organization is something that manifestly should be rewarded.

A critic might very well say that that’s the capitalist in me speaking and fighting against all the tides of justice, but I believe that life is about managing circumstances, finding spaces in the interstices of ideals and reality where there is a happy balance, and pushing forward in the thrust for existence.

In my ethical system and paradigm, that bookstore is the most moral of the businesses out there – maybe a little strange if you consider that Amazon had started out as an online bookstore perhaps, but that’s what we’re working with here x)

Anyway, I’m very happy to announce that I have a brand new partnership with the online bookstore GerakBudaya, for whom I’ve begun writing reviews – most immediately, a review of Dr. Toh Kin Woon’s “Malaysia’s New Economic Policy In Its First Decade”, casually titled “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions” (not by me, but by the admin!!!)

It was super fun to reflect on the New Economic Policy, to meet a thinker who had dedicated his academic career to something so crucial to Malaysia’s society, and to become sufficiently capable of understanding as to develop a viewpoint valuable to society.

There are many things that have been happening recently – too many to contain within the margins of this page alone. Can’t wait to see how things will develop in the days ahead 🙂

Fighting Perfectionism

If there were a flaw that I would observe about myself, I think it would be this. That I am someone who thinks a little too much about what other people think.

What this means sometimes is that I tend to not want to release things because I fear that they won’t be appreciated, people won’t like them, or anything else of that nature.

And granted, that doesn’t happen across everything. If it’s just an Instagram story, for example, I just enjoy releasing dumb, interesting things that reflect the different random things that happen during the course of the day.

But when it comes to more extended creative projects, I think that I am restrained in some ways by feeling that everything needs to be perfect.

Everything needs to somehow just match up with the best. And in some ways, that is kind of negative, because if you were to just try for things that aren’t always good, if you’re a new perfectionist, then what ends up happening is that, sure, you might end up creating a good product, but what will probably happen also is that you’ll just not release anything.

And believe me, that does happen quite a fair bit for me. I am the kind of person who tends to hem to haw, to just kind of let things go by because I think, “Oh, it’s not ready. Oh, I shouldn’t release this. Oh, more needs to be done.”

And that’s just my nature. I tend to be pretty careful with a lot of different things.

But at the same time, I’d like to try to get past that and I think that that can happen in at least two different ways.

One is that I reach a level of ability whereby the things that I do end up matching what I consider to be a nice standard. Maybe that’s a bit of a cop-out because that requires me to get to a certain level whereby pretty much anything I say or do just becomes acceptable as a creative product. It’s not really that sort of change of heart that I was kind of going at along the way earlier, but it’s one possibility, really.

I genuinely believe that people who can produce prodigiously, many of them are at that level partly because I think that that is the level that I would need to be at.

Maybe that’s a limiting belief.

Maybe in reality, the vast majority of the things that people make out there in this world are just not particularly good.

Maybe I’m just a little too self-concerned, conceited, caught up in my own thinking when actually there’s no enemy.

But who knows?

What’s for sure is that there is a sort of limiting belief that has been operating in my life, and I think it’s a good time to let it go – one of the reasons why I’m treating this website sort of as a group therapy session at the moment.

But in the future, I do genuinely hope that somehow or another, a little part of me is going to change. A little part of me is going to transform. A little part of me is just going to develop that skill, that pride, that recognition of something worthwhile to share. Maybe so worthwhile that it doesn’t matter even if I come out imperfect, even if it’s not ready, whatever – Because what matters most is the contribution and not perfection.

Who knows? Anyway, life has been interesting, and I’m kind of looking forward to what’s coming up here and there. So many different things to update, lots of ideas to share along, and a whole range of things I never thought that I would ever experience.

I’m very grateful for what the universe has brought, what it brings, and what it will continue to bring. Let’s just put it there.