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This morning, I started off the day by visiting this famous Buddhist temple in Jalan Ampang.

I walked there and it was surprisingly quiet at the time I visited. A very peaceful and serene place.

I do think that this temple is well supported by well wishers and volunteers because they do free meals for the needy on certain days. They apparently also have a good vegetarian restaurant behind the temple where they serve reasonably priced meals for lunch, which I didn’t get to try.

I do know that this temple can be packed during festive occasions and it is also next to the MCA building. So perhaps there is connection between the two?

As I was walking around, I was asked to donate RM 500 to have my name placed on a wall lamp in the temple where they will pray for happiness and good health for a year. I duly did and discovered that it was the last available slot there.

Since I am in KL, I decided to have my 2026 flu shot. I have started taking flu shots for the last 4 to 5 years. I do think that it has been helpful. So why break a good habit?

The doctor showed me the box before he unsealed it to take out the vaccine. It is the 2026/2025 version and it just arrived. Cost me RM 60. So far am feeling good. Waiting to see if I suffer any aftereffects later.

After a fabulous late afternoon, I attended this dinner. Eurokars are just so kind to invite me every year for their CNY dinner and I am always glad to oblige.

Unfortunately Charmain Kwee was not well and wasn’t there. Her father was and he gamely visited every table to wish all a happy New Year. As for myself, I didn’t know anyone seated at my table.

The event started with a lion dance.

This was followed by the traditional tossing of the yu sheng.

The highlight of the dinner was the feng shui talk.

Somehow the acoustics in the room wasn’t that great and a number of people at the dinner weren’t paying attention and were more interested in hearing the sound of their own voices and so I couldn’t follow the talk well. Anyway the takeaway for me from that talk is that for those born in the tiger, they need to lie low this year and plan ahead. So I will do just that!

The food was good but I left slightly earlier because I was going off to KL the next day.

Spent a pleasant afternoon with Prasoon yesterday at the Shangri La, sipping coconut water.

Prasoon has,over the course of many years, built good friendships and business relationships with influential people in India and Indonesia and he has therefore excellent insights into what is happening there and the current thinking of their leaders.

And sometimes what is the truth may well be different from what one reads in the papers. So it was good for me to understand what is happening in these countries from someone who has his head to the ground.

We also spent time talking about the living costs in Singapore. And to me it is clear that this now a serious concern of not just the middle class but also the upper classes. Something Singapore has to look out for, although I am not sure what is the solution.

An early morning breakfast with Murali this morning at MTR restaurant.

We arranged to meet at 830am but I wanted to get there a bit earlier to do some reading. Unfortunately I only realized that they open at 830am when I got there so I ended up waiting outside and reading a bit of the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which I was asked to read. More on the book some other time.

Anyway catching up with Murali is always good. We share many common views on things. We each had a rawa onion dosa and a coffee and chatted till he needed to rush off for his next meeting. Also good to see that he has almost fully recovered from his knee surgery and is walking well.

Good for Japan. They have finally elected their first female PM. That has to mean something in Japan , which is a traditional male dominated society. She is younger, media savvy and appeals to the younger voters.

Of course, she has done and said things that appeal to voters. Tax cuts, more defence and infrastructure spending and reducing immigration and the presence of foreigners. None of which is fiscally good for a country which is already seriously in debt. How will they balance their books by spending more and at the same time cutting taxes? Of course the people don’t seem to care so long as you promise them what they want to hear.

I did think as I was writing this, these were the same things Trump promised the US voters, who then duly elected him. Perhaps this will become the new playbook for politicians. Be populist a d forget about economics or budgets.

I do think the firm stand she took against China also helped her. The high handed Chinese response to her remarks made her even more popular a home. Strangely China seems to be getting things wrong so regularly nowadays I do wonder whether they need a new group of people to do their thinking for them. Venezuela, Panama, Brazil, Peru and now Japan are just examples of how they are now seriously under pressure on the diplomatic front.

I did a heart stress echo test at the National Heart Center yesterday. This combines an echocardiogram and a treadmill test and it takes about 45 minutes to complete.

The bill for this test came up to $842.57 after gst.

I then compared this with the heart packages offered in Malaysia by their prestigious heart center, National Heart Institute or IJN.

One of their packages, which includes both these 2 tests and a full range of other things, including a chest X-ray, 2 d echocardiogram, complete blood test and a doctor’s consultation and review of the results is only RM 1388. They have several other packages, some with even more extensive testing, including the calcium screening test.

Gosh. I didn’t realize that we were that expensive. And this is at SGH. The price I paid for these limited tests in Singapore doesn’t even include my next visit to the doctor to review the test results. Perhaps I need to start looking at the issue of medical costs here seriously and start doing my medicals in KL.

Today was our food tasting for our Club 100 dinner which will be sometime towards the end of March.

We have chosen Asian Civilization Museum as our dinner venue and one of their preferred caterers is Rasel Catering. Since we have never used them before, I suggested that we try their food first.

So 6 of us were going for the food tasting and I was informed yesterday that after the food tasting if we decided to go with them, the tasting today would be free. But if we decided not to use them, then we would have to pay $800 for the session tasting session. I thought that paying something for the session was fair but certainly not paying $800.

Anyway it turned out that we will be using them and so the issue of paying this amount didn’t arise.

Not everything that we tried today was to our liking. We gave our feedback on some items that we still wanted to have and we replaced some items that we didn’t want at our dinner. We avoided beef and lamb. We also made sure there were sufficient vegetarian dishes.

And so I do believe that with all our feedback in place and the fresh choices we made, we will have have a good dinner that night.

Yesterday evening I went up to the Razer offices for a meeting.

I have only been there once before, when they had just finished their construction works and they were about to move in. I remember discussing with Min then as to whether I wanted to rent premises there.

Now the place is fully operational and it is buzzing. So many people working there, mostly young and in black t shirts. And the whole place looks nice in their traditional black and green decor.

The meeting was with Min, Wei Pin, Bryan and U Zyn regarding a Project Ace. It was an interesting idea and concept but I had so many questions which I felt were not quite thought through. I think the whole idea is still in it’s very initial stages and it needs to be looked at carefully from all angles especially from the risk and the investor perspectives.

Just glad to have been there to offer my preliminary thoughts and to catch up with friends!

I was walking in KLCC yesterday and this Chinese lady came up to me and said hello. She looked very familiar and at first I couldn’t place her. Later I realised that I had met her at Scotts Square in Singapore and she was in the jewelry business. Her name is Liya and she worked for an auction house in China for many years before she came out to do freelance work.

She was with 2 other people and she suggested coffee nearby to chat. She introduced the young man with her at Fan Wen tian.

He is just 25 and is an artist. They showed me his portfolio of works, which was really impressive. He must be doing this full time and must have been doing this for sometime. They were in KL to decide whether they wanted to open a gallery/workshop either here or in Singapore.

I spoke with him and then found out that his father is a famous calligraphy artist in China, Fan Guo Qiang. He is national level artist and is a full professor at the 2nd highest rank.

Wen tian is a pianist and a singer as well. He has appeared in Sing China and he plays the piano very well although he had never learnt music. He listens to a piece and plays it. He gave me a demonstration of his playing on the piano at KLCC and when he played so many people stopped by to take pictures and record his playing.

He invited me to Qingdao, where he resides, to visit his gallery a d meet his father and see his father’s works. This is an invitation that I will accept.