Category Archives: Life

Asia, Life, Travel

Trip Notes: Bali

I was in Bali a couple of weeks ago for the second time in my life. It is one of the few things that I really regret that I have been so close to Bali in the last 3.5 years and this has been only my second visit. Many people have asked for recommendations for Bali, so I decided to provide this short write-up. There are many different areas in Bali, such as Ubud, Nusa Dusa, Jimbaran and Seminyak. I personally prefer Ubud over any other area as it is very tranquil and authentic.

So far, I have stayed at the Kamandalu and the COMO Uma Ubud. I slightly prefer the Kamandalu to the COMO Uma Ubud as it has larger grounds. I would say that the staff were very friendly and helpful in both cases. The COMO Uma has a great yoga area, with a stunning view. Alternatively, you might like to check out the Four Seasons, but it is a bit pricey.

Como Ubud Hotel

You might want to try out the Bridges or Mosaic restaurants if you like European cuisine. The Bridges has a good variety of wines, but relatively reasonable prices, although my “carnivorous” friend was not very happy with the size of the meals. For a local treat, you might like to go to Pulau Kelapa, where they grow their own organic vegetables and fruits. If you have chance, walk around their gardens and you will be amazed by the lovely smell of each plant. If you would like to try the local cafĂ©s, you could visit the Seniman, Clear and/or Elephant coffee shops.

Pulau Kelapa Restaurant’s own garden

In terms of sightseeing in Ubud, I would suggest you go to the Volcano, Monkey Forest, Uluwatu and Bath temples. There are many temples and I personally don’t think it necessary go to all of them, except the Uluwatu and Bath temples.

In Nusa Dua, I stayed at the Amanterra Villas and my experience was good overall. The level of English may sometimes be challenging, but the access to the beach and the hotel facilities are good.

Como Ubud Hotel Yoga Area View

If you would like to have some drinks, try the Single Fin and the Rock Bar in Jimbaran. The Single Fin is the place the Aussie surfers go and there are many beautiful ladies there, so watch out! 🙂 The Rock Bar in the Ayana Hotel is a “must visit”, but it is unnecessarily expensive and be prepared to wait in a long queue to be able to see the sunset from the bar.

Monkey Forest

I hope these are some useful tips for trips to Bali. If you want to have a chat, you are always more than welcome.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Best books of 2016

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I managed to read 25 books in 2016 and I hope to finish two or three during my Christmas break.

During 2016, I read the books listed below.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Focus by Daniel Goleman
Homo Sapiens by Yuval Harari
Homo Deus by Yuval Harari
Startup Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer
A Funny thing happened on the way to Enlightenment by Lenny Ravich
His life biography by Jak Kamhi
Arrested by Can Dundar
Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education by Tony Little
Power of Palace: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape by H.J. de Blij
Never Give Up: Jack Ma in his own words by Suk Lee
Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor
Confession of a Sociopath: A Life spent hiding in plain sight by M.E. Thomas
Facing with our own history by Emre Kongar
Acknowledging what is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger by Bert Hellinger
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
Blimey! from Bohemia to Britpop: The London Artworld by Matthew Collin
This is London by Ben Judah
 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
When Breath becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
2014: The Election that changed India by Rajdeep Sardesai
Last night I Dreamed of Peace by Dang Thuy Tram
Memoirs of Ataturk’s Servant by Cemal Granda

Of course, you learn something from each book and each book has a relative value to each reader. If I were to suggest only three books to read from this list of great books, they would be the following:

  • Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Harari
  • Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
  • The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

 Both books by Yuval Harari are great and I believe I have already given at least 40 volumes as gifts to my colleagues, friends and clients. In particular, Homo Sapiens is a must read. For those who have not read my review of these two books, here are the links:

http://haskanwrites.com/2016/02/book-review-sapiens-by-yuval-noah-harari/
http://haskanwrites.com/2016/12/book-review-homo-deus/ 

Incognito is also another great book which confirms that while most of us think that we know everything, our brain plays tricks and we are, in fact, missing a large part of the world. I also published a review of this book a couple of months ago.

http://haskanwrites.com/2016/11/book-review-incognito-by-david-eagleman/

Finally, The Prince by Machiavelli is a classic and I bought this book during my summer visit to Florence. I think this is the sort of book that you should read every few years.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone happy 2017!

I am sure 2017 will be much better in many ways than 2016!

Best of luck in 2017.

All the best from Galle, Sri Lanka.
Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Asia, Business, Economics, Life, Personal Development

Lecturing in China

I was honoured to give a short lecture on wealth management last week in Beijing at Renmin University. It was my first time in Beijing and I wish I could have spent more time discovering the city, but giving a short lecture was definitely more accommodating.

This has been my second teaching experience; my first one was in late 2014 at Singapore Management University.

Public speaking skill is a virtue which I really want to develop further, as it is always good to give back to society and meeting younger people to connect with different generations is always a great opportunity.

My session took about 45 minutes and I spoke about various aspects of wealth management such as its challenges and the opportunities ahead, along with its advantages and disadvantages compared to other departments in an ordinary bank.

What I am amazed by was the quality of the questions and the level of spoken English in the class.

It was such a good experience and I hope to avail of similar opportunities more regularly.

Thank you Eric Sim for the invitation!

All the best from Sri Lanka.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Economics, History, Life, Personal Development

Book Review: Homo Deus

After reading Yuval Harari’s book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind early this year, it was almost impossible not to read his next book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow as soon as it is published and I can get it.

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Homo Deus is the second book written by Harari and talks about the future of mankind. Since Deus is “God” in Latin, he argues in his book that a new religion called Dataism to raise and humans will not need gods anymore since we will very accurately predict what will happen or who will do what by the help of gather data.

The book starts with striking statistics about the past and the present. Almost three million people–15% of the French population–starved to death between 1692 and 1694.  Today, more people are dying of diabetes, which is linked to being overweight rather than a result of starvation.  According to Harari, in 2014 more than two billion people were overweight compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030.

Some of the quotes from the book that I really liked:

“Sugar is more dangerous than gunpowder”

“We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon”

Does the above quote remind you of someone?

“Historians don’t ignore objective factors such as climate changes and genetic mutations, but they give much greater importance to the stories people invention and believe”

Like in his first book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, in Homo Deus Harari emphasizes the power of stories whether they are true or not. Actually my interpretation is; the less likely they are true and superficial, the more likely the people will listen.

Another point Harari argues is that humankind’s definition of knowledge has kept changing since the Agricultural Revolution. We were simple creatures during this time, so knowledge for reading the scriptures and applying and applying our logic.

“Knowledge= Scriptures x Logic”

Then the Scientific Revolution came and everything focused on collecting data and trying to find meaning for the gathered data.

“Knowledge = Empirical Data x Mathematics”

Finally in 21st century, as much as we are confident about ourselves, we care more about our life experiences and our sensitivities.

Another provocative fact that Harari argues is that there is no free will, and that free will can be manipulated. With the help of technology and data, machines know much better than what we will do or choose. Harari argues that companies are using this to manipulate us. In other words, Harari says what you think you want to do may not be really what you want to do.

He strengthens these points in the following sentence: “We are about to face a flood of extremely useful devices, tools and structures that make no allowance for the free will of individual humans”

Fascinating and provocative! Isn’t it!?

Harari also argues “In the 21st century we might witness the creation of a new massive class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society”  I personally did not get this point. Since societies are manipulated, how can they have this massive new class?

Some other provocative thoughts in the book are about collecting personal data.  Harari states “In the 21st century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos”

“After 300 likes, Facebook algorithm can predict your opinions better than your husband or wife!

Yuval Harari is a young and great visionary writer. He definitely make my 2016 and led me to think as well as learn a lot!  He offers great opportunities for readers to think and learn. Harari’s Homo Deus is highly recommended.  His first book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is suggested as a prerequisite to Homo Deus.

I believe he will be in Istanbul on January, 25th which I am planning to fly and meet him in person!

Best Regards from Singapore.
Sukru Haskan

Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Book Review: Incognito by David Eagleman

I do not know if it is a coincidence, but I have started reading quite a lot of neurology books recently.

Incognito by David Eagleman was recommended by someone who I really value and I immediately ordered it through Amazon in September, but it only arrived in Singapore in early October.

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The author discusses how we run mostly on autopilot and how little we are conscious when we are living our normal lives. One of the provocative parts of the book is: even though we are in a consciousness state in most of our lives, we are not able to access this part of the brain. According to the author, this consciousness is carved by natural selection to solve problems our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary history or simply by practising something so hard that it becomes part of our lives such as a tennis player serving a ball or a driver driving a car.

He discusses that when an idea comes to your mind, your unreal circuitry has been working on it for hours, or days, or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations.

It is just like the apple that fell down from the tree onto Newton’s head and he discovered gravity. He had already been working on it quite hard so that the apple falling from the tree and hitting him on the head was just the last touch to the ball to cross the line for the goal!

He emphasises that the conscious mind is not at the centre of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.

One of the interesting examples that he uses in the book is that we believe that we see naturally but actually we learn to see and it is interesting that the majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are only seeing a limited cone of vision at any moment.

There is a very provocative blind spot exercise that I will leave you to find out whilst reading the book.

He argues, “Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true that doesn’t mean it is true.”

According to the author, many people are found to have the neural ravages of Alzheimer’s disease upon autopsy – but they never showed the symptoms while they were alive. This is because these people continued to challenge their brains into old age by staying active in their careers, doing crossword puzzles, or carrying out any other activities that kept their neural populations well exercised. As a result, they built cognitive reserve.

The author gives many very interesting examples throughout the book, which I will leave you to discover. He discusses that a slight change in the balance of brain chemistry can cause large changes in behaviour and he adds that the behaviour of the patient cannot be separated from his biology.

The conclusion is: human behaviour will always remain unpredictable and we are not really responsible for all our actions, since many parts of the brain lead us to do a lot of stuff against our will. In addition, he believes the legal system and punishments should be adjusted to the state of the criminal’s brain where they may not be responsible for their actions, but his brain would (!)

Finally, David Eagleman has a more recent book, Brain: The Story of You, and he has a website, www.eagleman.com, where you can follow him.

Best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Travel, Turkey

Tourist Trap in Istanbul

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I do not feel very comfortable about writing this article, but I want to make public this true story, which was experienced by a Chinese friend of mine in Istanbul recently.

To start with, Istanbul is a wonderful city with many attractions, and visiting only once is not really enough to understand the vibe and culture. In addition, generally speaking Turkish people are very hospitable with a kind attitude towards tourists. Unfortunately, my friend experienced something very different, which does not represent Istanbul and Turkish people.

Since there was a whole week’s holiday in China a couple of week ago, my friend took the opportunity to fly to Moscow and then to Istanbul to spend a few days there. Like any ordinary tourist, he was visiting the usual Istanbul tourist attractions, such as Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet area.

He was travelling alone; since he is Asian, it was not easy to guess that he was a tourist, and he was approached by a stranger initially asking for a lighter. Since he is not a smoker, he politely told him that he did not have one, and then the conversation started. According to the local guy who approached my friend, this area is very touristic, and he offered to give him a lift and show him local places, which unfortunately my friend accepted and the story begins here.

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He was taken to some places, although he does not know exactly where they were, and in the end they sat down in a restaurant and ate dinner together. Given that the local guy had spent the last hour or so taking him to some places, my friend offered to pay for the dinner and did so.

Then, all of a sudden, the local guy offered to take my friend for a night out, and he accepted the offer. They initially went to his hotel, where he changed his outfit, and then he took him to a kind of striptease club, of which he does not know the name or the district (although it is possibly in Sisli).

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After spending an hour drinking and chatting with some half-naked women, they asked for the bill, which turned out to be 12,000 Turkish lira: in other words around USD 4,000. Having travelled and lived in many countries, my Chinese friend was amazed and asked the local guy how this could be possible; he was told that this is quite a normal bill for a night out in Istanbul (in 1 hour).

Apparently a security officer then escorted the local guy outside to an ATM to withdraw money and he came back with 6,000 Turkish lire, so he paid his half. Then my friend was escorted to the ATM, and he withdrew 6,000 Turkish lire and closed the bill.

I was disgusted by this experience, and, with his permission, I decided to publish his stories with his pictures from that specific night out. This guy even continued to SMS my friend even after he had landed in Shanghai.

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As mentioned at the beginning, Istanbul is a great city for tourists, and Turkish people are quite hospitable to tourists, since it is part of the Turkish culture to make sure that foreigners feel at home when they visit their city. Unfortunately, this experience is a little odd.

I hope it will not be replicated with somebody else and that nobody will suffer from it.

Best wishes from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Is white hair enough for management?

 

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The world is changing very fast and the ability to make accurate decisions quickly is becoming ever more complicated.

Traditionally, the world has seen managers of at least 50 years of age, since they would have spent many years within the industry and possibly within the same company, which one would expect would translate into good candidacy for board membership.

Technological innovation beginning in the early 2000s changed that trend, since many of the largest innovative companies have been founded by young entrepreneurs. For instance, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is 32 years old; Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are 42 and 43 years old respectively.

First of all, experience gained only through years is invaluable and hard to ignore, and it may be important in traditional businesses such as banking, insurance, retail, etc.

But think about FinTech.

FinTech is actually a candidate for replacing a traditional industry, banking.

Many FinTech companies in the US and UK have quite young founders.

TransferWise in the UK is one of them. It is a very good candidate to replace the telegraphic transfer and foreign exchange space traditionally dominated by banks with a much cheaper and more efficient system.

Its founders are Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus. Kristo is 36 years old and Taavet 35.

Their motto is: “No skyscrapers, no suits. Just like-minded people everywhere, connected by TransferWise.”

I remember a bank CEO being asked about a possible big merger with another bank. He replied: “There is no need to merge with a traditional bank now. If there were a merger opportunity, it would be with Apple, Google, or another IT company.”

Age may bring wisdom, but it is no longer only age and experience that define senior management. Having said that, they are still a part of the equation, but a less dominant part nowadays.

No matter what age you are, it all comes down to the ability to update yourself. On top of that, being in a job you enjoy matters, rather than simply making a living and having an endless desire to progress your career.

If you have a wealth of experience with a non-growth mind-set and a lot of white hair, you are definitely out of the game.

Even if you are not yet, you will be.

Just like the many.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

 

Life, Personal Development

Are you too busy to innovate?

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Life is becoming very demanding and most of us have a heavy schedule to combat every single day.

On top of our business schedule, we have personal commitments such as family (the most important commitment!). But, unfortunately, our time is limited.

Every single week, we have only have 168 hours.

If we simply assume that every healthy human being has to sleep seven hours a day, then we consume 49 hours of 168 hours in bed. In other words, roughly 30% of our time is gone without doing anything.

It is even more scary if we continue to add our other commitments such as a daily job. An ordinary full time employee spends 8 hours a day in the office, whereas this figure can easily go to up to 12 hours a day for more demanding jobs such as banking!

I will take the average of those and that translates into another 50 hours. Another roughly 30% is gone!

Commuting to our jobs takes another vital part of our time.

According to a research, the average commute time per day in Jakarta is 42.1 minutes, in Moscow 43.1 minutes, in London 41.2 minutes, in Milan 40 minutes and in Amsterdam 37.5 minutes.  Since you have return where you have come from, you have to multiply these figures by two.

It will take 70 minutes on average for a commute each day, which translates into 350 minutes. In other words, almost another 6 hours are gone per week while commuting. (I believe this figure is quite conservative since I know many people who spend a minimum of two hours in traffic in London and Istanbul.)

So, finally, we are left with only 63 hours of personal time out of 168 hours per week.

These 63 hours are very crucial. You have to decide how to use them. You can watch TV, spend the time with your family, read, go jogging, etc.

I believe how you personally choose to spend this valuable time is a main factor in how your future will look!

First of all, you have to switch off from your work during this time!

I know it is not easy.

This is especially the case if you are an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is not a 10 hours a day job, as it is a lifestyle that requires regularly working during nights and weekends.

The challenge faced by  even our smartest and hardworking friends is that we all have a limited bandwidth. Once this bandwidth is used, it is not possible to be innovative or be efficient.

Even if we are getting a lot of chances in life, this full bandwidth prevents us from leaping a step forward. This is the main reason that switching off is important.

Reading (especially on different subjects), observing our surroundings, travelling and networking with people is the key to understanding and learning what we currently are not doing and to innovate. Otherwise, like the cartoon above, even if we are offered the wheel, we will refuse it at our own expense, nobody else’s!

Finally, being left with 37.5% of the total time is not too bad! It is the personal choices that make us different and we have the power to be innovative.

But…

Is your mindset ready for that?

 

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Persistence and Sustainability

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Recently, the above letter went viral on the internet. According to this letter, Einstein had applied for a doctorate in physics at Bern University and he was rejected since the university committee found his theory to be more artistic than actually physical. I don’t want to disappoint anybody, but it is very likely that this document is fake. It does not really make much sense for a Swiss German institute to write back to a German in English, and there are many grammar mistakes which do not lend credibility to authorship by someone at the University of Bern.

Even if it is very likely a fake document, it could be genuine. Many people are rejected in many different aspects of life since the people who evaluate them might be inferior to the applicant. And unfortunately, we lose a lot of talent due to this inefficient selection process.

The key here is the persistence of the applicant. It does not matter how good you are, as it is still very likely that you will get rejected at some point on your life journey. On this journey, no matter what happens, you have to keep a growth mindset and continue to develop yourself while trying to reach your target. By the way, rejection is a confirmation that you are trying for something. If you haven’t been rejected so far, then there is a problem with your mindset.

If failure is one of the key components of success, persistence is definitely also another component of the equation. People like to put people into different folders and label them, just like classifying computer files. For instance, someone may have been a clerk in a bank for many years, and so many people think this person cannot be a good software programmer. Actually the person can be!

If the person is willing to, he/she can be a much better software programmer than many programmers.

This rigid classification makes career transitions very difficult and it costs the global economy billions (maybe trillions) of dollars since we cannot get the best out of people. I see more and more people spending thousands of dollars on MBA degrees just to make a shift in their career. Apparently being filled with theories for two years enables you to make that transition more easily. This is just another form of labelling. An MBA makes the transition easier. Persistence is good, but it is not enough by itself. Sustainability is also important.

Once you reach your goal, you must continue to perform over and over again. This is real success! In Turkey, we say ‘Start like a Turk, finish like a German!’ The logic behind the saying is that, like all Mediterranean people, Turks are hot blooded and enthusiastic at the start, but sometimes it can be difficult for them to finish the job they have started, whereas Germans start slowly but surely and finish off a job within the given time frame.

To sum up, I would not trust all the documents circulating on the internet, and I would pursue my ambitions no matter what people think and no matter how difficult they are. Most importantly, once you have reached your goals, it is important to stay there!

P.S: If you are a clerk and want to switch to software programming, it is far more possible now than ever. Try to have a look at edx.org where you can enroll yourself in a lot of Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley courses for free.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Turkey

It is more than a club, it is Besiktas!

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As Bill Shankly, a former manager of Liverpool FC, said: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

I personally assure you that it is not actually football in general, but Besiktas specifically that is a matter of life and death.

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Some people think it is not very intellectual to align yourself with a sports club. First of all, Besiktas is not merely a sports club, but a strong social community where many people have known each other for many years, and they are like a real, big family.

It is such a powerful family that it helps other Turkish sports clubs, who not only steal the chants of Besiktas, but also adore its character and soul.

As the Daily Mail wrote in 2015 after the club’s victory against Liverpool, “Brendan Rodgers’s side were greeted at the AtatĂĽrk Olympic Stadium with a loud and intimidating atmosphere as the Turkish fans made it clear the opposition wouldn’t get an easy ride.”

In the Besiktas community, there is no real social hierarchy. You can find a billionaire drinking beer with a factory worker in the heart of the Besiktas borough before each game.

Besiktas is the public; the public is Besiktas!

Sometimes, when I try to step back and really look, I see a lot of similarities between us and religious communities. (Okay, we maybe drink a bit more than them …)

It is everything, as one of our chants says; it is the meaning of our survival.

It is not about the world record decibel level in the Liverpool game, nor about victory over a rival… It is about the soul and the character of the club and its supporters.

I was only six years old when my father took me to my first Besiktas game. It was like a dream, since it was the start of the three year domination of Besiktas.

I sadly lost my father only three years after our first Besiktas game, and I decided to go to games by myself from the age of 12.

In Turkey, it is a courageous act to go to games at that age, since Turkish football can be dangerous. However, the more you follow the road to the Besiktas stadium in Istanbul through the trees, the more you become addicted to this passion.

It is in this stadium that I have made so many friendships, met so many wonderful people. Even our new stadium is fantastic, thanks to our current president, Fikret Orman, though I am sure many of us are still nostalgic for the old stadium because of its wealth of memories. We, Besiktas supporters, are addicted to nostalgia…

We don’t trade the present for the future, but we will always happily trade the present for the past.

Last weekend, Besiktas became champions of the Turkish Super Lig for the first time in seven years. This is the source of tremendous joy that is impossible to define in words.

But you know, even had Besiktas not become champions this season, they would always have remained the champions of our hearts.

As a person who doesn’t have the ability to write a single love letter, this is the only love that inspires me to write and which makes me miss my hometown: Besiktas, Istanbul.

Long live Besiktas and the Besiktas community!

CHAMPIONS BESIKTAS!

P.S. Distance can be problematic and long-distance love can be challenging, but not for Besiktas. Of course, I travelled for a whole day from Singapore (about 8,000 km) to be there with the team I love.

For Turkish followers: ASIL OLAN HAYATTIR, HAYATTA BESIKTAS!

All the best.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan