English is the dominant language of business

Posted on 17 May 2012 by ssquah

This Reuters news item should be food for thought for people who think that the English language is not important to their lives. On the contrary, if one wants to progress in their careers, the English language is seen as the increasingly important business tool.

English the preferred language for world business

May 16, 2012

Cyclists in front of Singapore’s financial district skyline in this file photo. A new poll says English is the preferred language for world business. – Reuters pic
NEW YORK, May 16 – Workers whose jobs require them to interact with people in foreign countries say that English is the dominant language of business, according to a new poll.

More than one quarter of employees in 26 countries around the world told an Ipsos poll that their jobs involve dealing with people in other countries. And of those, two-thirds said that English is the language they use most often.

Workers in India, Singapore and Saudi Arabia were the most likely to say their jobs involved interacting with people in other countries, with 59 per cent, 55 per cent and 50 per cent saying so, respectively.

But only nine per cent in Japan and 13 per cent in Russia said their work required communication outside the country.

“The most revealing aspect of this survey is how English has emerged as the default language for business around the world,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.

The survey of 16,344 employed adults in 26 countries showed that 67 per cent, or just over two-thirds, of workers who deal with people beyond their borders said English was the language used most often, with Spanish a very distant second at five per cent.

Nearly as many, 61 per cent, said the language used for such interactions was different from their native one.

Bricker said the findings suggest “that all those in the English-speaking world who suggested that our children should learn Mandarin or Japanese to have successful careers were beaten to the punch by the Chinese, in particular, learning English first.”

While more than three quarters of people in North America said they used English most often to communicate with those in other countries, 63 per cent in China said the same thing. The same was true for France.

More than two thirds of workers in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa also defaulted to English.

In Latin America only one-third said English was most common when dealing with people in other countries. In Argentina and Mexico the choice was Spanish, in Brazil, Portuguese.

The survey showed that people with higher levels of income or education were among the most likely to say English was most commonly used for foreign business relationships.

Gender and age had no bearing on the dominant language for conducting business.

Countries surveyed included Indonesia, Turkey, the United States, Sweden, Great Britain, Spain, Canada and Italy among others. – Reuters

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Nina Wang’s forged will now a criminal case

Posted on 14 May 2012 by ssquah

Nina Wang ‘forged will’ case begins in Hong Kong

Tony Chan, arriving in court with his wfe, is accused of forging Nina Wang’s will

The criminal case against Tony Chan, the fengshui master accused of forging the will of Nina Wang, once Asia’s richest woman, has begun in Hong Kong.

Mr Chan fought for years to inherit the property tycoon’s multi-billion dollar fortune after she died of cancer in 2007 but a court dismissed his claims to the inheritance last year.

The preliminary inquiry revives one of the city’s most colourful and high-profile legal sagas.

The case of the eccentric billionaire widow and her alleged younger lover created a media frenzy, says the BBC’s Julianna Liu in Hong Kong.

Mr Chan had tried to persuade judges that Ms Wang had left her entire fortune to him but a court ruled in favour of a charity run by Ms Wang’s siblings, Chinachem Charitable Foundation Ltd, whose claim to her estate rests on a will from 2002.

The Hong Kong government has accused Mr Chan of forging the will he used to claim Ms Wang’s estate.

He wants to stop the trial, saying the document was destroyed by forensic tests.

Such is the importance and complexity of the case that the government has brought in a specialist barrister from London to lead the prosecution, says our correspondent.

Ms Wang, who was 69 when she passed way, was known for her pig-tails, short skirts and colourful dress sense.

She was the widow of Hong Kong industrialist Teddy Wang, who disappeared in 1990 after being kidnapped.

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The Al-Awl doctrine

Posted on 9 May 2012 by ssquah

This is something meant for Islamic estate planning: the doctrine of Al-Awl, where the total sum of the fractional distribution of a Muslim deceased’s assets to the heirs, according to the Faraid, does not add up to one. The Doctrine of Al-Awl then applies, where all the shares are decreased proportionately.

Although I had undergone a training on Islamic Estate Planning many years ago from as-Salihin Trustees Berhad, I have to base this post on explanation obtained from an on-line forum. You can read it here too.

As an example, if the distribution of property is among a husband, mother, daughter and son’s daughter, their shares will be: Husband 1/4, Mother 1/6, Daughter 1/2, Son’s daughter 1/6. Total Shares = 13/12. Since the share distribution is more than what’s available, the Doctrine of Al-Awl shall apply.

Al-Awl only occurs when there are improper fractions. Typically, improper fraction only occurs when the denominator is 6, 12, or 24.

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Passport to bad English

Posted on 17 April 2012 by ssquah

This story appeared in the Free Malaysia Today website on 15 April 2012. It simply accentuates the depths which the Federal Government have sunk to in their command of the English Language.

PETALING JAYA: Hundreds of thousands of Malaysian passports may be riddled with English grammatical errors.

The mistakes can be seen in the last two pages of the latest edition of the passports, where a notice and cautionary note are printed.

These errors found there, which include an incorrect use of English, are as follows:

“This passport is valid to be used according to its approved validity period. The passport must remain valid for at least 6 months before the date of any journey abroad.”

“This passport could not be amended and is not transferable to any party other than the holder.”

“In the event of the lost of the passport, a police report should be lodged immediately and prior to making any deals at the Immigration Department or the Malaysian Embassy, High Commission or Consulate abroad.”

“A Malaysia citizen who has become or holding any foreign citizenship could be revoked of his/her Malaysian citizenship.”

“The holder’s passport photograph should be replaced if the holder’s looks and features have visibly changed.”

“This passport contains sensitive electronics. For best performance, do not bend, perforate or expose to extreme temperatures.”

It is believed that errors occurred due to a direct translation of the Malay texts on both pages to English. Previous passport editions only have the Malay text printed on the last page.

FMT was first alerted to the mistakes through an anonymous passport holder, who recently received his copy from the Shah Alam Immigration branch.

“I usually let bad grammar go, but this is a passport we’re talking about. It’s not just some internal memo or website notice.”

“Malaysians are going to use this document overseas as our identity, and honestly I can’t accept such incompetence,” he told FMT.

Immigration owns up

When contacted, Immigration Department director-general Alias Ahmad admitted that the passports were rife with these errors, and promised to do away with them.

“We take note of this, and in the next issue we will make amendments,” he said.

Citing a lack of statistics, he added that he did not know how many passports had been printed with these errors. FMT understands that the numbers could very well be in the hundreds of thousands.

Alias said that Immigration issued close to 200,000 passports every month, and about 2.2 million copies in total last year.

As such, he said that it would be very expensive to order a recall of the erroneous passports.

Alias was also coy on how Immigration allowed this edition to go through without stringent checks.

“I need to check [how this happened]. Maybe they were printed before I came in [as director-general] one year ago,” he said.

He added that Immigration “engaged” with the National Institute of Translation over this matter.

These errors are not the first time the Malaysian government has been caught with its pants down over poor use of English.

In January this year, a page on the Defence Ministry’s website detailing official dress codes was littered with poorly-translated English text.

This included confusing dress directions such as “bersongkok bersamping dark” and “tight Malay civet berbutang three”.

The page also had this to say about dress codes on particular days:

“Public officials are not in uniform must wear long-sleeve batik shirt with collar/mongoose fight made in Malaysia on every Thursday and also when attending official functions that do not require the use of certain types of clothing.”

The ministry has since removed the English translation.

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Essential not to lose the customer service touch

Posted on 2 February 2012 by ssquah

For 20 years of my working life, I was attached to the Ban Hin Lee Bank in Penang. Sadly, this bank does not exist anymore. At the turn of the millennium it was swallowed up by Southern Bank in a merger which caused a lot of distress to the Ban Hin Lee Bank staff. Ironically, Southern Bank also does not exist anymore as in turn, it had been bought up by CIMB.

But all this is not the reason why I’m writing this post. What I want to say is that at Ban Hin Lee Bank, we worked up one of the best business-to-customer relationships ever seen in the banking industry. All the customers of the bank were truly appreciative of the staff’s efforts to serve them. Visibly, there were the counter staff. Invisibly, the backroom staff were trying their best to meet customers’ expectations for the bank as a whole.

Sadly though, this simple but essential business strategy is lost on modern-day companies. We don’t have many companies who value the goodwill that they can build up with their customers. But maybe they do, but the top management’s efforts are being stymied by their employees who work for them.

As an example, I’d want to say that I haven’t had a 100 percent satisfaction dealing with Mastery Academy in Kuala Lumpur. Mastery Academy is owned by Joey Yap who is perhaps the most renowned fengshui consultant in this part of the world. I have outstanding with them two more Bazi consultations that I want to conclude as soon as possible. I’m sure that they would also want to close their books as quickly too. However, getting in touch with the right persons have been problematic. Telephone calls not getting replied, messages left on their website not getting the attention. So in desperation – one last act if I may call it – I emailed the top guy himself. To his credit, he does read his emails often enough and I had the company call me back within 50 minutes of giving my feedback! Here’s the email I sent him:

Dear Joey,
Although out of politeness I will wish you a Happy Chinese New Year at this time of the year, this is not exactly a standard CNY email to you. This is actually a feedback which I want you to read.
When the Fengshui For Life programme was held in Penang last year, I had signed up for four Bazi consultations for my family. Two have already been completed while the remaining two are still outstanding. I am not very mobile outside my base of Penang and have always been waiting for the opportunities when the team from Mastery Academy come up to the island. I do realise that it will be far easier to visit your office and get them done in Kuala Lumpur but my travels to KL are very, very infrequent.
Now, knowing that you are coming to Penang this Feb 12 with your team, I had contacted the Bazi people at Mastery Academy as long ago as mid-December to arrange for the other two consultations. I was told by Kevin that they would look into it and get back to me. BTW, I had also spoken with Jenna on this matter several times earlier.
My beef is this: until today I haven’t received any reply from Mastery Academy, verbally or by text. How tight a ship is being run by this company? Just this Monday, I tried sending a note through the webpage, hoping for someone to pick up the message and relay it to the relevant person. All I got back was an automated message which you can read below. Getting in touch with me very shortly? I had hoped so. But as it turned out, I was mistaken.
Then this morning I telephoned Mastery Academy and asked to speak to Jenna. Was told that she was on the line. So I left a message requesting for her to call me back. She must still be very busy on the telephone because sadly, four hours after calling the office, my mobile hasn’t rang.
I am a retiree. I retired from a service industry more than two years ago. We didn’t need to be told by our top management that, one, all customer inquiries must be attended to as quickly as possible and, two, the customer is always right. We didn’t need to be told; we knew it by instinct. Accordingly, we built up one of the best business relationships with our customers. Unfortunately companies today have lost sight of this business strategy.
I am sorry if this is not the flattering email that you would wish to read from your fans but it is important that you should know exactly what is happening to sabotage all the good work you have done. Again, Happy Chinese New Year…
Regards
SS Quah
Penang, Malaysia
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Tommaso the cat inherits from owner

Posted on 14 December 2011 by ssquah

It is not often that one hears about people dying and leaving all or part of their fortunes to animals. Usually when such stories come to light, we hear that it has happened in the western countries. Less so in the eastern countries, but not that it doesn’t happen, of course. Over here, unless the person is destitutely poor, there is usually someone in the family to look after him, grudgingly or otherwise. It’s part of our culture to look after our elders in their old age. But not so in the West where children are very likely to move elsewhere and leave their old folks behind. It’s their concept of “freedom.” That’s when loneliness sets in, especially when a partner passes away eventually.

Maria Assunta was the wife of an Italian property tycoon and she had inherited her fortune from her husband after he died. Her wealth included stock investments and a large portfolio of land and properties in Rome, Milan and Calabria. But for all her millions – which her lawyers finally valued at USD13 million – she was lonely in her old age. Being childless, she lived alone, looked after by only her nurse, Stefania.

Less than four years ago, Assunta picked up a black stray cat from the streets of Rome and started caring for it. Here, at last, was an opportunity for her to fill up her loneliness. Assunta really doted on the cat.

But she knew that she was already old and frail. When her health began to fail two years ago, Assunta began to seek out a way for her beloved Tommaso (that’s the cat’s name) to be properly cared for after her death.

According to one of her lawyers, Anna Orecchioni, Assunta who died two weeks ago had become very fond towards the nurse who assisted her. “We are convinced that Stefania is the right person to carry out the old lady’s wishes. Stefania loves animals just like the woman she devoted herself to right up until the end.”

The lawyers said that Assunta left the fortune to Tommaso in a will she wrote and deposited with them in their Rome office in October 2009. They explained that under Italian law the cat was not entitled to inherit the money directly and as such, the will asked for the money to be given to a “worthy animal association, if one could be found”.

She added: “We had requests from several organizations but we didn’t find any that we thought suitable.” As they were unable to find a satisfactory association to look after Tommaso, Assunta then decided to leave all her money to the cat through her nurse, Stefania, who had cared for the old lady until her dying day.

Stefania told the newspapers that she had no idea of the woman’s incredible wealth. “The old lady suffered from loneliness,” the nurse said. “She looked after that cat more than you’d look after a son. I promised her that I would look after the cat when she was no longer around. She wanted to be sure that Tommaso would be loved and cuddled. But I never imagined that she had this sort of wealth. She was very discreet and quiet. I knew very little of her private life. She only told me that she had suffered a lot from loneliness.”

The nurse now lives with Tommaso and another cat in an undisclosed address to avoid con artists and potential kidnappers.

Tommaso is placed third on a list of wealthy pets behind Kalu the chimp, whose owner left him USD80 million dollars, and Gunther IV, a German shepherd dog who inherited $372 million dollars from his father,  Gunther III,  the beloved companion of an eccentric German countess. Real estate magnate Leona Helmsley famously left USD12 million to her little dog Trouble, although her human descendents contested, and Trouble’s pot was cut to USD2 million.

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Dying without a Will

Posted on 19 November 2011 by ssquah

Here’s a story from New Zealand about a parent’s agony to withdraw the money from their deceased son’s bank account. It was a long procedure culminating in them having to get a statutory declaration. Question: Do we need to go through all this hassle of even proving that we are the rightful parents of a deceased child? Please read on:

“It’s absolutely amazing,” a relieved Mrs Nilson said.

The Te Kauwhata couple had been trying to prove their identity and that of their dead son so they could access the money the 17-year-old had saved through the National Bank KiwiSaver Scheme.

To have the money, about $1500, released the couple were required to send a statutory declaration because their son did not have will.

However the Nilsons spent months trying to prove their identity, sending birth and death certificates for Shaun, their driver’s licences, passports, a verified marriage certificate and finally the declaration.

All the while they had been struggling to come to terms with their only son’s death.

Shaun was killed when he was a passenger in a car that crashed into a powerpole and tree in Hamilton’s Heaphy Tce on May 28.

The driver, Levi Elliott, who was then 16, was sentenced to three years’ jail for manslaughter in the High Court at Hamilton on Thursday.

“For me it’s only $1000 or $1500, it’s no real biggie,” Mrs Nilsonsaid.

“But if I was a widow and it was major and I was an older lady, I’d have given up.”

She said the fund was almost put in the “too hard basket” because of everything else they were trying to deal with after Shaun’s death.

As well as carrying on for their surviving child, 5-year-old daughter Laura, the Nilsons were struggling to sort out finances when Mrs Nilson, a self-employed swim coach, stopped working after the crash.

A spokesman for KiwiSaver provider OnePath said it was pleased to have resolved the situation for the family.

“It must have been very frustrating for them in terms of the delay considering their circumstances.”

He said that by law the trustee needed the statutory declaration to finalise the estate requirements which included the age of the dead person, the value of the investment, whether they left a will and who was administering that estate.

“In this instance there was a confusion in the documentation between who the funds were going to be released to since we were dealing with a solicitor at the time.”

The spokesman said that without a will the provider was responsible for ensuring it was releasing the funds to the right person and on this occasion it took longer than usual.

“But the most important thing is we were able to process this as soon as we received the correct and completed statutory declaration and that finalised our deceased estate requirements.”

A Financial Markets Authority spokesman said people having trouble getting KiwiSaver funds released early could complain about the process or length of time it took to Financial Services Complaints Ltd, a disputes resolution service, or to the authority itself.

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Counting your blessings

Posted on 17 November 2011 by ssquah

Do you remember the story of a man who complained he had no shoes until he saw a man with no legs? Only then did the able-bodied man appreciate what he had and stopped all his complaints!

I’ve a similar story to tell about the workplace. Many employers are unaware of the lengths that some of their staff go through just to earn a living. There was one chap who worked as a driver to a managing director in a big company in Shah Alam. However, he lived a long distance away and had to commute by public transport. Well, you know the inconveniences of public transport. What is supposed to be an eight-hour working day can stretch to 10 hours or more by the time he returned home.

So one day, this managing director decided to visit Kampung Kuantan after dark to watch their famous fireflies. All of a sudden, he came across his driver who was passing by on his motorcycle.

Only then did the executive realise the distance that his driver had to travel daily from his home to Shah Alam and back, in all sorts of weather conditions, just to drive him to work. He could not change his driver’s circumstances but from that day on, he learnt to appreciate the driver’s services more.

The moral of this story is that it is important that we should be sensitive to the people around us and see things with our heart and not only with our eyes.

These days, there are many interest groups and non-governmental organisations that seems to pop out of nowhere to comment on current issues. Often, their views are skewed and highly predictable. Public debate becomes a cacophony of noise and nothing meaningful emerges to help solve the problems.

We will never see the full picture if we have a blinkered view of life and look at things from our own perspective. We need to step back in order to move forward. That is why I feel it is important to look beyond ourselves and imagine what it is like to be in another person’s shoes. Only them can we progress with our lives and nation.

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Inheritance scam

Posted on 9 November 2011 by ssquah

I was going through the Spam folder of my email account today, planning to delete all the messages that had accumulated since 8 Oct, and was not particularly surprised to see more than 900 of them caught in the spam box.

Yes, my email provider has done a pretty good job to sieve out these messages from the bona fide ones.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a second thought before deleting them forever from my email account but I had just noticed an interesting story from a New Zealand newspaper about how a lawyer was duped in an Internet scam. So I went looking deeper into my Spam messages.

Without going into details, I would hazard that more than 70 percent of these spam messages were scams of one type or another. Among the most popular was still the inheritance scam. A long time ago, it used to be letters received through the postal services – it still puzzles me how those African scammers managed to get hold of my postal address some 30 years ago but I did receive one or two – but now, every scam is delivered through emails.

Worse, it is no longer the Africans at the centre of the scams. A good proportion are starting to come from China. The Chinese scammers, it seems, are just as notorious as the Nigerians at this game.

The one rule of thumb that I always practise is to ignore all such emails. Nothing is free in this world and don’t expect to be the sudden beneficiary of a windfall from an unexpected corner of the world. It’s all a, repeat after me, a SCAM.

Anyhow, here is the story from the newspaper in New Zealand.

A retired Rotorua lawyer and his client were shown pallets of cash in Amsterdam as proof of a $27 million inheritance but the pair were instead duped in an internet scam, a court has been told.

John David Rangitauira, 59, is on trial in Rotorua District Court after pleading not guilty to four charges of obtaining by deception and an alternative charge of theft by a person in a special relationship.

He stood to make $6 million from the $27 million inheritance offered to Jennifer Taukamo in an email from “Central Bank” and flew to Amsterdam where the pair were shown “heaps” of money, which came out on pallets, the court heard.

However, when Ms Taukamo fell ill she gave the lawyer authority to act on her behalf. When the overseas contacts began demanding money to clear the inheritance, Rangitauira borrowed from Westpac Bank but also allegedly used $338,000 from a Maori trust that he chaired. The $27 million promised to the pair never arrived.

“It will become apparent that they [Rangitauira and Ms Taukamo] were duped. They were scammed. This was all just a have,” Crown Solicitor Fletcher Pilditch told the court.

Mr Pilditch said Ms Taukamo received the inheritance email and approached Rangitauira as she needed a lawyer to help her. She had never met Rangitauira, who at that time owned Rotorua law firm Rangitauira & Co. Rangitauira stood to make $6 million from the inheritance.

Rangitauira was also chairman and lawyer for Te Houoterangi Trust, which owned 25ha planted in pine.

Ms Taukamo told the court she and Rangitauira flew to Amsterdam where she was shown “heaps” of money on pallets. She said she was told the money needed cleaning and she was given a $100 note and was shown a chemical to clean the cash.

The pair returned without any of the money. Two weeks later, Ms Taukamo had a heart attack and stroke. She said she gave Rangitauira the authority to get the inheritance. Demands for money were made by the overseas contacts in order to clear it.

Rangitauira borrowed from Westpac, saying he needed the money to buy property overseas. He was loaned various amounts which he then banked into accounts overseas. He borrowed a total of $506,000.

In 2006, the Maori trust made $414,000 from harvesting trees and $100,000 was given to the trust’s 513 beneficiaries as dividends.

In July 2007, Rangitauira wrote to his fellow trustees telling them there was $340,000 left over and it was in a bank earning 4.5 per cent interest but he could invest it to earn 7.5 per cent interest.

He created a document for the trustees to sign for money to be invested to earn the higher interest but used $338,834.48 to meet the demands for the inheritance. He transferred the cash in nine lots between October 2007 and February 2008, the court heard.

The alleged offending came to light when Rangitauira’s accountants needed information about money going overseas. Towards the end of 2009, Rangitauira told the trust the money had been lost and he would stand down.

The first the trust knew about what the money had been used for was when trustees were approached by the Serious Fraud Office. The offending is alleged to have happened between April 2005 and February 2008 at Rotorua and elsewhere.

Defence lawyer Jeremy Bioletti said Rangitauira had been systematically defrauded over a long period.

“That situation is a modern problem because of the use of the internet. What you are going to have to assess is the state of mind of a person who themselves is being defrauded or deceived or by deception induced to send money overseas to people who are plainly criminals.”

No one was foolproof, “whether they are a truck driver or solicitor or the winner of MasterChef, it makes no difference”

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Falsified signature

Posted on 31 October 2011 by ssquah

Let’s not speculate about whether the signature on the document was forged or not. For all you know, it might have been perfectly executed. But on the other hand, it could have indeed been a forgery.

At the centre of this legal dispute in Muar, Johor, was whether a signed marriage certificate was valid or not. The High Court there said that the document was invalid because of a questionable signature. And because of that, there were repercussions.

But the real moral of this story is that you don’t have to be a millionaire before you get your Will written.

What happened was that this woman, Kuan Siew Yen, had filed a claim to the estate of Tan Chin Shing at the High Court. Tan was 43 years old when he died in 2005 without having written a Will, and Kuan had wanted to prevent his elder brother from administering the estate of the deceased.

She claimed to have been married to the deceased and had submitted a marriage certificate purportedly issued through an assistant registrar at the Muar Chinese Chambers of Commerce.

However, the judge hearing the civil suit rejected Kuan’s application as the marriage was false. According to the judge, the marriage could not be legal as the signature of the assistant registrar differed on the marriage certificate and Kuan was unable to produce her two witnesses to her marriage.

The judge also allowed Tan’s elder brother’s counter suit to declare Kuan as not being the deceased’s legal wife and thus, could not stake a claim to the estate.

The news report as it appeared in The Star newspaper appears below.

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