Pathetic pansy-ass 2016

THAT’s exactly the problem.

Try to schedule a post. Then misfired at the go-get. Then salvage the thing by adding rubbish to the empty post. A great start for the first post for 2016.

Please don’t remind me that my last post was a depressing 95 days ago.

Abject prelims

To make up for the lost time and general slack:—

• Merry Christmas
• Happy New Year
• Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year of the Mon(k)ey

Take your pick; I don’t care anymore.

Roundup for the uninterested

It’s been a bad time for me, let’s put it that way.

My right shoulder is healing but progress has been very, very slow. I still have trouble lifting my right arm to chest level.

My head got rammed to the ground last year (as detailed in my last post) by ninjafags. Still haven’t found out who they were, or why. Pictures of damage (long overdue) to come in due course.

The yearlong “office access” problem still hasn’t got sorted out since it started on 23 March 2015. Can’t get into details right now, but you can be sure it’s [expletive] surrealistic.

Literally every night (day) I’ve been having one bad dream about that “office access problem” — incredible as this may sound to you normies out there. [Expletive] surrealistic.

Home is a pig-sty. Remiss not only in blogging but also in homemaking. Definitely needs to have my knuckles rapped.

The “important people” in my circle (let’s describe them that way for now) seem tone-deaf to my warnings and advice (even when they’ve asked for it). Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to say anymore. If they don’t want to listen to, then very sorry, they don’t get to listen to me anymore. Simple as that.

We all have only 24 hours in the day. The rest is up to us.

Predictions

Some predictions for 2016 that I want to get in edgewise first for the record, just for the sheer handrubbing for winning my wagers with some people.

I do have a fairly good track record in making predictions — just that it’s a shame I hardly ever blog about them. Consider this out of character for me bloggingwise.

• The global economy would start weakening between May and September. Hong Kong’s economy would start showing signs of trouble about then too. Then the real ‘fun’ of the rollercoaster ride comes to the fore in 2017. This is my calculated risk assessment. Mark my words. I didn’t drink toilet water in coming up with this.

This I see:— It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist (or janitor) to notice this. HSBC is Hong Kong. If it’s in trouble, then we’re in trouble. Problem is, HSBC is shedding an extra 50,000 jobs over the next two years (2015–17). The bank, headquartered in London but retains historically strong links with Hong Kong, had already axed 40,000 jobs worldwide from 2011 to 2014. This is a big deal for Hong Kong.

This I see too:— Contrary to the latest fashionable received wisdom about China and opinions from quants and analysts, China isn’t the best thing since sliced bread.

• In some kind of economic and commercial trouble for some years.
• Export orders thinning since 2009 due to the downturn in global demand.
• Significant capital outflows due to investor concerns over overall economy.
• Currency is under pressure since December 2015 due to above.
• Jobless figures rising nationwide.
• High socioeconomic inequality remains.
• Over-rapid urbanisation impacting on environmental sustainability.
• External trade imbalances (of the kind not involving politics).
• Demographic pressures over ageing population and internal labour migrations.
• Energy inefficiencies.
• Inadequate and irregular social-welfare protection.
• Inadequate and irregular healthcare.
• Irregular, inadequate and inflexible education and educational access.

China is only as awesome as it’s operating properly (which it isn’t lately).

If you’re in the manufacturing sector (as I am), it’s obvious enough to the naked eye.

Dongguan city (東莞 founded in AD 331) is basically Hong Kong’s manufacturing centre. It’s almost entirely an export-oriented city, at 925 square miles (roughly twice the area of Hong Kong) with a population of 8.2 million to 13 million depending on how we work the figures. It also has several million jobless. Nearly all the manufacturing bosses I mix with have been relaying the same worrying picture for many places in the Pearl River Delta region, which is Hong Kong manufacturing hub.

Lately over the past six months or so, more and more mainland people have been coming to Hong Kong and getting involved in all sorts of surrealistic multilevel marketing setups. I just hope the MLMs aren’t scams, because my conversations with the mainlanders are that they’re mostly out of work and now trying their luck here. It’s desperation, if you ask me.

If that isn’t trouble enough, I don’t know what might be.

• Then there’s the thing with Ratta. When you’re 55 years old and lost your job in November last year, you don’t really have a great deal of leverage jobwise — mainly because you’re just a few years away from official retirement age.

I don’t really want to get into details right now. Let’s say you can take out a loan to set up your own office space. But you bungle the damn thing by not maximising your resources or time to maximise on the earnability of having your own office space. That loan at 55 years old is one of your last possible loans obtainable. No bank is going to lend anything later because … well … you don’t have a great chance to pay back loans at that old age. Nothing personal, but a bank is a bank.

Worse, you fly off the handle and take up a job that’s basically shite and unconnected with your previous jobs. That’s a BIG RED FLAG for banks making loans to you. It means you have no repayment potential, so forget about getting loans in future. It’s a BIG RED FLAG for job recruiters too. So there.

We all have 24 hours in the day. The rest is up to you.

Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to say anymore.

Promise to put in juicier stuff to make up for the slack, peeps.

__________

Images: Alternative Medicine via Curious Meerkat | Ratta via The Plush Palace

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