Asian Tiger

Many of us own a printer at home; most commonly, the inkjet printer. Why so? Because the initial cost to own one is so darn cheap. Imagine, for below RM200, you can own your own colour printer and start printing out your own digital photos. However, many of us fail to realise that it is not that the printer is cheap, it is the printer ink that is expensive.

There are 2 ways that I can think off to save printer ink and the associated cost:

1. Print in black – always print in black even for pictures (unless you want it in colour) because black ink is the cheapest compared to coloured ones.
2. Print in draft – printing in draft mode uses less ink than necessary. If you are hard pressed for high quality colour printing, go for this mode. Do not use this if you are printing photos; it simply won’t look good.

One final piece of advise; if you are one that does not print on a regular basis, don’t own a printer. Simply have your document printed in any cybercafes. Infrequent use of the printer will cake your ink rendering it useless when you actually need to use it.

It’s funny how my colleagues are now taking the email facility as their main mode of communications.  It is as if the workers here have all lost their mouth and therefore their ability to communicate through analog vibrating air signals.  I’ve even seen peers sitting next to each other in their cubicles, emailing to each other.  No wonder we are going backwards in terms of productivity.

Don’t blame the productivity plunge to Facebook, online arcade games, instant messaging or SMS. I think largely, our time in office are bogged down in front of our terminal, reading every word that email server throws at us.  At the same time, we try to read in between the lines as to what the writer really intends to say.

Many a times, we try to write as subtle as possible (trying hard not to offend anyone) but that may backfire as the reader may not get the gist of what you are trying to say.  Misinterpretation causes more loss of business productivity time. If only we picked up the phone, dial the recipient and communicate.  Saves time, save money, save face.

It took me 5 minutes to type all this in a blog post, but it took me the whole morning to clear my emails which arrived over the weekend.  Time for lunch. 😉

Mrs Wong and I have just completed yet another round of long talk. This time around, it is about our retirement and how we are going to cope with it. We are both adamant that we are not going to see the end of our days in retirement homes but to live it out in a comfortable and fulfilling manner.

Some points we pondered and planned upon:

1. Provide the kids with the best education based on their capabilities.
2. Provide the kids with their basic needs to survive in the working work.  This includes a deposit for a car if necessary.
3. Never to bother the kids on our needs such as financial needs or companionship.
4. Prepare a retirement fund now (after we settled the mortgage and car loans)

Living in Kuala Lumpur is getting more and more expensive by the day.  Everything is going up in price.  From fuel to toll to food.  Fuel increase inadvertently increases everything you can think off.  I am having a feeling that my purchasing power is shrinking and the wallet seems thinner than ever before.

Since Kuala Lumpur is where we are currently making a living, it seems apt that we retire somewhere away from the city.  Somewhere in a small town, away from expensive living zones.

If you have a retirement plan, I would love to hear some of it.