The 1st Week Of March

The past week has been a busy one for me, personal and work wise. I would not say it was eventful but rather things happened all at once.

Firstly, my staff is absent from work returning to her hometown in Malaysia to visit her family for 2 weeks. She deserves this break as she has not returned home for 2 years ever since the pandemic started in 2020. Then, there was an incoming cargo shipment from Japan which arrived late, caused by vessel delay from Japan and port congestion over here in Singapore. I had to notify my customers that they will be receiving their orders late. Thankfully they are rational enough to understand this is a situation beyond my control.

Next comes the most challenging issue… PRICE ADJUSTMENT! The background of my business is a trading company buying electronic components from Japan, UK and USA; to supply them to customers located in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. In the same week, I received an official announcement from our head office in Japan about increasing prices across all their products. From my 20 years’ experience, PRICE has always been the most sensitive topic to discuss with customers in this region. In a highly competitive market, price has become the top priority, over other factors such as country of origin, lead time and quality. Majority of the clients have a hard time accepting price increment as many of them (including myself) are working on very thin margins.

With inflation occurring everywhere around the world, I think price increment is inevitable may it be commodities, electronics, food, real estate, transport, electricity and utilities. In the end, these increments will be passed on to the general consumers. Furthermore, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine may also have some effect on the global economy especially in the energy sector.

Now on to my personal stuff. Out of nowhere, I wanted to organise my past academic results from my primary to secondary (elementary to junior high) education and tertiary education from diploma to my university degree course. I must have misplaced these documents in different parts of my home. So far, I only managed to locate my university degree and transcript. As for the rest, I need to request the replacements from the respective institutes, and of course pay for them.

I am not sure what triggered me to do this. Perhaps my subconscious is sending me a signal to prepare these documents beforehand. Once they are available, I’ll make sure to organise them and store them in one single folder for convenience in the future.

Thank you for reading and now its time for me to relax to some music. My musical mood today is swinging towards an album, "People Move On" from 1998, by Suede’s ex-guitarist, Bernard Butler.

Have a blessed weekend ahead!