Weed and Feed

Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in the modern society today affecting around 7 percent of the world population. Thanks to our fast paced life and multi-tasking work culture, people are becoming increasingly difficult to relax! More serious case can even lead one to depression.

Picture this scenario: a person gets extremely anxious on the busy highway after driving for long hours without having a good sleep the previous nights. He is physically tense and unable to enjoy the ride. He is tired physically and his brain starts to behave strangely. Negative thoughts start creeping in every now and then while he is driving and that leads to fear of having trapped in that situation. The traffic jam doesn't help and is making him worry that he may stuck in that situation and can't escape. He starts to think that what if he suddenly has an emergency situation and the ambulance can't get to him in time due to the jam. He becomes desperate and wants to get out of that situation ASAP! The fear starts the vicious cycle in his mind that tells him that he is in danger even though we know that isn't true.

Have you experience the above episode before? If you have you most like have anxiety disorder without knowing it. A few simple things you can do to reduce chance of that happening:

• Have enough sleep the night before you going on a road trip.
• Stop more regularly along the way, come out from your car and do some stretching exercises.
• Take deep and slow breaths. This shall calm you down.
• Being mindful, stop your mind from wandering all over the places.
• Listen to soothing music and enjoy the freedom of driving!

One important thing to note is that anxiety is largely caused by the brain. Imagine the brain as the beautiful garden at home. The garden requires constant maintenance and care. If left unattended, weed starts to grow very quickly. There is a product available at the store calls 'Weed and Feed'. When you spray 'Weed and Feed' in your garden, it will kill the weed while providing the much needed nutrition to your Buffalo lawn. The first time I saw this product on the shelf, I thought to myself "What a great idea!?" The same principle applies to our mind, we have to constantly feed our mind with positive information in order to get rid of negative thoughts. This has to be done regularly until we completely kill anxiety and can enjoy modern day driving once more.   

The Lost Envelope

We were on the way home from a visit with family in another state when I found it. I was pumping gas when I noticed a dirty, bulky envelope on the ground. I grabbed it, dirt and all, and looked inside. To my surprise, it contained one hundred dollars.

One hundred dollars that someone had lost and who at that very moment was possibly frantically searching to find. I gave our phone number to the attendants at the gas station in case anyone came back looking for it. But no one ever called. 

Someone had that money and lost it. Earthly treasure is often like that. It can be lost, stolen, or even squandered. It can be lost in bad investments or even in a monetary market over which we have no control. But the heavenly treasure we have in Jesus - a restored relationship with God and the promise of eternal life - isn't like that. We can't lose it at a gas station or anywhere else.

That's why Christ told us to store up "treasure in heaven" (Matthew 6:20). We do that when we become "rich in good deeds" (1 Timothy 6:18) or "rich in faith" (James 2:5) - lovingly helping others and sharing Jesus with them. As God leads and empowers us, may we store up eternal treasure even as we anticipate our eternal future with Him.

Source: Our Daily Bread

Story by Dave Branon

Such a great reminder to all of us to stay away from the temptation of the materialistic world which we find ourselves surrounded by in today's society. It's so true that money comes and go and we will never have possession of it forever. But the good things that we do will be registered in our lives' record forever. Go on and help someone today. It can be as simple as just listening to someone who is encountering personal problems.

Misconceptions About Penang

LETTER | Over the weekend, I had active discussions with my Penang friends who had migrated outstation and overseas over the state affairs in Penang within the context of the Federation of Malaysia. The issues are important for Penang specifically and Malaysia generally.

Misconception 1: Penang is stagnating and hasn’t been able to reinvent itself. The state remains dependent on the electrical and electronics (E&E) sector.

There is definitely nothing wrong in excelling in the E&E sector and, in fact, it is a sector that is extremely important to Malaysia’s economy.

From the country’s perspective, in 2018, the E&E sector created a trade surplus of RM119 billion (the highest among all subsectors for the manufacturing industry). The E&E sector represented 38% of Malaysia’s total exports in 2018, amounting to RM 380billion (+11% YoY), and Penang is the powerhouse that drives the sector.

Without it, Malaysia will be in deep financial trouble. While there could be a slowdown in the first half of 2019 due to uncertainties arising from a trade war among others, industry research expects a recovery in 2020 as the world moves into the 5G stage and the proliferation of many new technologies such as autonomous driving, IoT, Industry 4.0, augmented/virtual reality etc.

On the Penang economic front, the E&E sector contributes at least 300,000 jobs and more than RM1.5 billion in wages per month to drive the Penang economy.

If we have doubt about our capability, just look at the high value added, knowledge base products manufactured by the MNCs using local talents.

In addition, we have been seeing an increasing number of MNCs with a manufacturing footprint in Penang also choosing to operate their Global Business Centers (GBS) here, suggesting that Penang is versatile in terms of ecosystem and talents.

In recent years, the state also diversified into new segments of the economy, attracting investments for medical devices, aerospace, automation and equipment manufacturing.

In fact, the E&E industry in Penang is not only about creating jobs but the strong technical know-how of the engineering pool has successfully nurtured entrepreneurs who are able to compete on the global stage.

One only has to scan the Bursa Malaysia for these Penang-based listed companies and get a sense of their earnings growth record. For examples, Vitrox Corporation, founded by two ex-Hewlett-Packard engineers, has recorded a net profit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% in 2013-2018 and its direct competitors are the renowned automated test equipment (ATE) companies from the US, Korea, Germany and Japan. The company’s market cap is now at RM3.3 billion.

Inari, an outsource semiconductor assembly and test vendor, recorded sales CAGR of 42% in FY11-18, with its market cap currently at RM5.6 billion.
Other home-grown Penang-based international E&E players are Globetronics, Pentamaster Corporation, SRM Integration to name but a few.

Penang is also proud of its tech start-ups such as Jobstreet, which grew exponentially before it was sold for a staggering RM1billion and Exabytes, a young web hosting and cloud service provider in Penang which attracted RM44 million investment recently.

Penang does have the environment to nurture high-potential local companies that are ready to scale and compete regionally, if not globally. To conclude otherwise is to ignore the facts before us.

However, we must not be complacent and we need to continuously upskill our labour force to ensure our competitive edge remains.

Misconception 2: For decades, skills migration, brain drain and the lack of high-quality job opportunities has been Penang’s Achilles heel.

There are plenty of jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for both the manufacturing and service industries, the mainstay of the state economy. For other sub-sectors of the service industry, such as financial services and journalism, Penang just doesn’t have the related industries due to the size of the state economy. 

No doubt Penang has been facing the brain drain issue but this is not solely out of Penang alone. In fact, this applies to all other states and this is a challenge to Malaysia. In actual fact, Penang is the state that registered the highest positive effectiveness ratio of migration at 58.4% in 2015-2016, according to Department of Statistics.

Misconception 3: Despite having achieved a high growth rate of 11% per annum between 1970 and 2008, growing from RM790 million in 1970 to RM49 billion in 2008, GDP growth rate has slowed down to 5% for the past 10 years.

It is illogical to look at Penang’s growth rate entirely on its own while we are a state within the Federation of Malaysia. However, Penang’s GDP growth rate has always mirrored that of Malaysia’s and most of the time, Penang is doing better than that of the country.

Further, many licenses and development budgets need to be approved at the federal level. Just imagine, if Penang could have the necessary financial licenses and more money to expand the airport, for example, Penang can do much better economically than what it is doing now.

Misconception 4: The state is losing ground in tourism, especially with it having not invested sufficiently in this sector, a situation compounded by how cities around the world are reinventing themselves.

As a state within the Federation of Malaysia, Penang’s economic growth is constrained by the national context. An example is the Penang International Airport which is now at a utilisation rate of 120% (demand more than supply) due to the increasing number of passengers.

It is worth to highlight that Malaysia is one of the top ten medical tourism destinations in the world with Penang being the leader contributing close to a 50% share for medical tourism to Malaysia.

Stop Momo Challenge

Young innocence lives have been sacrificed for this sick joke that has invaded the cyber space lately. All parents to take extra precautions and stop your kids at all cost from this harmful challenge.