Is high IQ necessary for success?

Not in my books. There are far too many MBAs and PhDs from Ivy league unis out there who flunk badly in the real world. I mean failed businesses, trashed friendships, divorces and shit like that.

What I do know is that high IQ people tend to be unhappier than not-so-smart people. Whenever there’s a problem, a not-so-smart guy sees one solution but a smart one will see five or six. The smart mind likes to spend all its energy pondering all the possible permutations and scenarios long after the not-so-smart guy has taken off and finished the challenge.

I’ve seen companies that are led by very “bright” CEOs who probably qualify to be Mensa members but cannot increase corporate earnings to save their lives. They suffer from too many meetings, analysis paralysis and basically a fear of making the wrong choice in a sea of too much data. (Haha, reminds me of my pal who’s working in the CRM line).

So what is necessary for business success? Well, get a clue and look at our Asian millionaires. Ask yourselves how many of them might even understand the meaning of regression analysis and complex marketing theory.

My answer is simple. Two things – experience and foresight. Nothing beats having “eaten salt” and having a solid gut instinct. After all, the backbone of all business – risk – is an emotional number.

What about IQ? I think its somewhere around number 5, after capital and location.

I’m not saying that a good brain is useless. Far from it. Intelligence is just a tool and you can use it to solve problems that require the tool, for example a design problem. But try to use it to cool down an angry customer/lover and you might get beaten on the head with a handbag.

What type of friend are you?

Do you fall into any of these categories? Be honest now.

1. The Promise Breaker. You make promises to go for mamak or a movie and 9 times out of 10 never show up.

2. The Double Crosser. You have a habit of saying nasty things about your friend to other people until they stop talking to your friend. I think this one is for ladies only.

3. The Self Absorbed. You can’t stop talking about yourself. You view your friends as a sounding board and find no worthwhile reason to listen to them except to impatiently wait until they stop talking so you can start talking about you.

4. The Discloser. The “this is just between us” promise lasts only until you reach the phone or email. I think this is another one for ladies only.

5. The Competitor. You like to show off your abilities, toys and bling-blings because you think they’ll put you ahead of your friend in the race. A win-lose friendship that afflicts many men.

6. The Fault Finder. You find fault in everything your friend says and does.

7. The Ego Tripper. You want your friends to agree with everything you say and shut out those who don’t and you want them to rally you to popularity.

The first 6 are from Dr Jan Yager’s 6 Types of Toxic Friends and How You Can Deal with Them. The 7th is mine.

Father’s Day: Why so pathetic

That was my response when I when to PPS & Sarawho expecting to see bundles of Fathers Day blog dedications but only found a handful. So pathetic compared to the oodles of well-wishers on Mother’s Day.

So what does this mean? That most bloggers don’t bother about Father’s Day? I dunno but as someone who will be a father (hopefully) some day, it sort of got me thinking.

Unlike in my other home (the US) I notice father figures aren’t very popular here. My friends would have a lot to say about their moms but almost nothing about their dads. In fact they don’t seem to know much other than what time their dads come home and their annoying habits.

I confess that coming from a culture where most dads would take time to rail for their kids from the days of little league baseball to their first day in college, I find this a little strange.

I can think of a couple of reasons why this is happening. Firstly, probably due to work pressure, most fathers here tend to be a crabby lot. They don’t interact much with their kids after a certain age and the bond is never strengthened. Whereas mothers tend to ‘mother’ their kids all the way to adulthood.

Digi has this great ad about a father sending off his young daughter to the big city seemingly devoid of any bonding. It underscores exactly what I mean.

Secondly, it could also mean that Father’s Day is a western celebration that’s alien to Asians. But if folks here can make a big deal of Mother’s Day then why not Father’s Day?

Whatever, I empathize with dads who didn’t get that phone call from their sons and daughters on this day. They are no less important than mothers if you ask me.

What did I do on Father’s Day? Well, firstly I drove over bright and early and fixed both mom and dad breakfast. I didn’t burn the ham and scrambled eggs this time and they actually finished it! We spent the morning talking about his passion – the Business. We joined Uncle Shawn and family for lunch and after that they went off for golf.

I gave him no presents. I don’t think material things are important to him any more. But he lighted up that I would choose to spend quality time with him and I could see he enjoyed our talk. I mean we actually connected. I think it meant a lot more to him than any present I could give.

So for all you would-be fathers out there, no matter how busy you are, please, please don’t alienate your kids and outsource everything to mommy. Take time to bond. You’ll appreciate the payoff much later in life.

This to me is the most important message of Father’s Day.

Browser Review: Safari 3 for Windows

This is the 5th day I’ve used Safari 3 on my Windows XP machine. To cut to the chase here’s my review:

Things I like

1. Sleek gunmetal grey interface

2. Fast. Media-rich pages load noticeably faster than with Firefox and IE. No kidding.

3. The standard fonts have better contrast than FF and IE and are easier to read, especially if you’re into text-heavy stuff like blogs.

4. The URL window at the top doubles up as a download progress indicator (window fills up with a blue color as the page completes its download).

5. A dedicated button bookmarks the page you’re viewing with a single click.

Things that annoy me

1. No skins other than standard grey.

2. Primitive tab control. No option to auto-open links in a new tab in the same window without right-clicking.

3. The RSS bookmarking sucks. Instead of showing you a list of topics on a site when you mouse over the bookmark, you just get a number in parenthesis against the site name. Example, a (2) means 2 new topics on the site since your last visit. To see more you have to click the bookmark and import the entire RSS content into the browser which can take a while. Not very smart when all you wanna do is quickly scan thru the topics list.

4. Haven’t found any status bar that displays the URL of a link that you mouse over. Basically you can’t decide beforehand if a site’s worth a visit until you actually visit it. Duh…

5. No sign of any plug-in or add-on features meaning you’ve to live with whatever (in)capabilities that come with the browser.

6. And most annoying of all, you can’t turn off the URL autocomplete feature which apparently compiles its URLs directly from your history and imported bookmarks. Its very distracting. The only choice left is to go into private browsing mode (no history) and delete all my bookmarks. Blegh.

Ok maybe I am biased in favor of Firefox with its plethora of free skins and add-ons that give the browser so much power so it doesn’t really make for an apple-to-apple comparison (no pun intended) but seriously, if you can get past the inconvenience of the slightly lower speed, FF is waaayy ahead of Safari in functional richness.

I don’t really buy the argument that Safari is new therefore deficient. They’ve had plenty of time to catch up in versions 1 and 2 which didn’t happen. If the folks at Apple know that 90% of things done on the internet are done through the browser and more and more people are buying PCs just to get online, this all-important window to the cyberworld won’t be this half-baked. I mean other players out there are killing each other to be top dog in the browsers war.

Needless to say I continue to pledge my allegiance to Firefox.

Body or personality is more important: My take

Thanks to the few who graciously responded to my questionnaire on the net and my friends on terra firma, it seems that most girls I asked (more than 60%) seem to prefer guys who are socialites with normal body type. Meaning type a2 according my questionnaire.

That means I lost my bet with my buddy Ken: one dinner on the finding that most girls prefer type d3, i.e. an opinionated SOB, big on attitude, swears a lot with a hot muscular body.

Now how did I come to my erroneous conclusion? By observation. Lets assume

Type a – “Normal” social type, nice guy, friendly to everyone
Type d – Opinionated SOB, big on attitude, swears a lot

If I take a sample of 10 type-a friends and 10 type-d friends, I found that only 6 type-a friends have girlfriends compared to 8 type-d friends who do.

I learned two things from this observation. One is that “character” plays a big role in attracting a mate. It acts like a brand. Since everyone’s nice and icky, you want to be different so you act and talk like an SOB because it makes the girls notice. The power to attract and to sustain are different though but that’s another story.

The second thing I learnt from observation is that despite all the saying that its the heart that counts, the body shape of a guy is more important to a girl than she’s willing to admit. If you doubt this, go to a short or fat guy and ask him when was the last time a girl agreed to go on a date.

Would a girl forsake a guy’s body for his heart? From my observation initially no but eventually yes. By initially I mean the first couple of months after pairing up. A mate with a hot bod is a good asset to show off but after a while, the novelty wears off and reality sinks in. And by the way, I think its the same for guys too.

Anyway my little unscientific survey shows the opposite is true i.e. most girls do seem to prefer nice sociable guys with normal not-so-thin not-so-muscular bodies.

And I thought nice guys finished last

Body or personality, which is more important?

This post is targetted more to girls but guys are welcome to chip in too.

Question 1. Which type of character do you find most attractive in a person.

a. Social type, nice guy, friendly to everyone

b. Strong silent type

c. Flamboyant type, wants to be seen and appreciated

d. Opinionated SOB, big on attitude, swears a lot

e. Non-conformist, ponytailed, bad dresser

f. Natural born leader, a talker

Question 2. What body type do you find most attractive.

1. Skinny

2. Normal

3. Well defined muscles

4. A little chubby

5. Doesn’t matter

Final question. If you could choose only one – body or personality – in a potential partner what would it be?

I’ll tell you why I’m looking for this feedback later.

A joker a day

This week starts of with a rant. But that’s what I’ve been doing in the last couple of posts haven’t I. Anyway who cares.

My jokers for the week (one for each day):

1. People who speak extra loudly in a closed public place like a restaurant not caring if the whole world hears them.

2. People who arrogantly talk down to others thinking they have THE answer to riches, not realizing the person they’re talking down to has already made his millions while they themselves are struggling to pay the rent. Nincompoops.

3. Similar to #2, people who rubbish others and talk righteously about the secret of happiness when their own households are in a state of disaster. Jackasses.

4. People who complain, complain and complain (and look who’s talking )

5. People who don’t know how to park properly.

6. Women who say ladies first when it benefits them and men first when it doesn’t benefit them

7. People who borrow things and never return them.

I got a feeling this is going to be one hell of a week.

Should you acknowledge smses

I have a habit of acknowledging every sms I get by sending back an answer even if its a simple “Ok” or “Yes”. My friends, well most of them do the same. None of us like to talk to a brick wall.

I know someone who doesn’t. His reasons are always, “I was driving”. “I’m too busy”. “I forgot”. “Hah? Must reply meh?”.

So a few times after sending this friend of mine smses like “Meet you at 7pm in Hartamas?” went unanswered, I would assume he’s got problems and can’t make it. Only to find that the idiot actually did show up. And his remark? “Yah I got your sms but I didn’t know must reply. I thought confirm oredi.”

So there are people who would spend money and time to drive to the place and park rather than send one cheap lousy sms to confirm. I didn’t show up of course and he was pissed about it. I told him serve you right. And despite that my friend was still adamant about why reply smses. “Since you oredi said it yesterday, means confirm lah. Why must sms again?” he would say.

I suppose there are people who believe that plans once set can never be changed or that people have perfect memories and never forget an appointment. Then again there are cheapskates who don’t like to incur the cost of sending an sms.

What do you think? Is it reasonable to expect your smses to be acknowledged? Do you send acknowledgements?

Where have all the women gone?

Go to any mamak stall or 24-hour nasi kandar shop and you will notice one thing. There are no she-mamaks. Not one. Okay there might be one or two ladies (non-mamak) helping out but from what I can see, the mamak shop business is monopolized exclusively by men.

Anybody know why?

Still on this topic. Some mamak shops serve more than roti, tandoori and mee goreng. Some are into western food, thai food, even chinese food.

Would you go to a mamak shop for a steak, tom yum or chicken rice?

The last 24 hours

So much has happened in the last 24 hours. Accidents, emergency rooms, leveraged buyouts, migration planning.

How I wish the world is this simple.