I've always wondered how far my business skills would go. While none of them involved major finances, I've been easily fleeced many times. Thank God I'm abit more sensible now, but it remained to be seen how far I could go in dollars and sense. With that in mind I grouped with Ben, Jonathan and Andrea to participate in CEO Match 2007, joined later by John. We played at a booth at the Global Entrepolis Singapore exhibition.
Some interesting sponsors there...
and photos of me and Andrea trying our best to look cool in formal wear and holding a WSJ. Not cheap sia that small newspaper... I thought well, if I couldn't conduct the business, at least I could try my hand at observation - seeing...
I'm sorry I got to pause here. I'm listening to the 1812 Overture that Jerrick sent and it's super absorbing.
Ok, sorry. ... - seeing the reactions from people's faces and their body language, gauging what sort of shit or heaven they are in. But I never expected the game to run at such a speed. It was Monopoly on crack I tell you. And in the end all I had time to do was listen to Ben and Jon bickering behind me then telling me what to do.
In the finals, we judged the game wrongly, and ended up last. Each round we were earning barely 15k nett. When we decided before the beginning of the 5th and final "fiscal year" that well, we're dead, no point crying. Let's take a loan and have some fun.
We earned 50k in 30min. And I learnt more from that last round that I ever learnt in the game.
At the end of the day, the world is just a huge casino, and we are gambling when we do business. Gambling involves risks, and if we do not have the confidence and courage to close our eyes and say "Hit me!" when we already have 18 in our hand, we will never hit the blackjack. Sure you have luck, but Lady Luck is unfaithful. She flits around faster than you can gasp, and you bet your ass you'll die out if you just depend on her.
Here's a rare photo of the game in action. I mostly didn't even think about pulling my phone out because I was so worried about how the hell we were going to survive with 8 fucking thousand in the bank balance. You can see the teams in the process of bidding to sell at the lowest price, tapping away on their PDAs. The wooden board in front of us were a physical representation of what we had. Raw materials, machines, laborers, trucks, finished products... the list runs on. In the centre, and the spinning table denotes the world and its respective markets by continent. The Malay team on the left came all the way down from Universiti Teknologi Petronas (I think that's how you spell it), and the team beside them was the SIM team that won the competition in the end.
It was a really fierce competition, and I'm glad I joined. I learnt many things I never would have learnt otherwise.
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