fishing for gold....

Business in Asia is a family affair, and the most accurate picture of an Asian economy remains a diagram of an extended family tree connecting clans that make things to those that finance them, with dotted lines sometimes leading to the government (which often has an incestuous structure of its own). The payoff for decades of consanguinity has varied, of course, from nation to nation. For more than 30 years, the impoverished Indonesian archipelago was run as a mom-and-pop operation called Suharto Inc. In contrast, South Korea's economic miracle was engineered by some 30 ambitious conglomerates called chaebols, almost all family controlled, while the commercial drive of industrious Hong Kong and Taiwan emanated from anthills of small, adroit family shops that promiscuously abandoned products and premises whenever better opportunities came along.

Today, the majority of Asia's publicly owned companies are still family controlled—and the manner in which control is exercised can often be boiled down to one sentiment: a family business is the family's business. For decades, boardroom positions and top jobs at such companies have been passed down from fathers to sons and daughters, not to professional managers outside the clan. Profits have been used to shore up a sister (or cousin) company, instead of going to shareholders. A banker eager to lend to family concerns from Kuala Lumpur to Kyoto has been happily able to dispense with the borrower's balance sheet and P&L statement, which often concealed more than they disclosed. But he ignored at his peril the current blood pressure of the "Old Man" or the risk of antagonizing Wife No. 2 by getting too chummy with No. 1 Son.

But if you talk to the patriarchs and scions of the families that own Asia, they'll tell you that it is no longer business as usual. For the past several years, they have increasingly come under fire for inefficient, outmoded and nepotistic practices. One of the outcomes of the 1997 Asian economic crisis was that the once revered taipan became closely associated with crony capitalism, and crony capitalists—that cloistered business-government cabal that parcels out national economic spoils to a privileged few—got a heavy dose of blame for the region's collapse. Today, free trade, looser controls of capital flows, the information explosion and global competition are making it harder for family businesses to carry on like secret societies. Asians are more suspicious of concentrated economic power, no longer willing to take on faith the wisdom of their socioeconomic superiors. Shareholders are demanding "transparency" and genuine financial data, and that publicly owned companies be run for the benefit of all stakeholders, not just those who share genes. "The rules of the game have changed," says Jamie Allen, secretary general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association in Hong Kong, a nonprofit organization that monitors the behavior of Asia's company managers.

oh absolute complete bull-honky.  It may very well be true that some power has shifted away from the age old "my word is my bond" lineage traditions of business, the new generation has been groomed, even ever so slightly (amongst the spoiled and drug crazed off spring), to adapt into the new millenia of business practices, and credit is not given enough to the founding expansionist ceo's still at the helm, their ability to assimilate their companies into a position to once again monopolize a strong foothold of the market for the next 100 years.  I've seen it, I've revelled in it and friggin A, I want a piece of it.  The latter half of last year, I spent mostly with my aunt in Singapore and Indonesia disparate differences in country status but not in top heavy wealthy families as one is linked parastiticly to the other (you guess which one is which).   And so, marrying into a good family is a constant ultimatum, more so because my cousins were all getting married/engaged....so as I left at night to head out to the clubs, or the ONLY club (ZOUK), the phrase we used in chinese was for me to go out fishing for GOLD. 

and so i correct my previous post "all u need is love?....all you need is money..." (maybe tomorrow i'll write about how all you need is LOOKS)

in all honesty, even as a strong minority in the united states, we as asians do not do particularly well in its pop culture with a select few being arbitrarily chosen as the exotically famous while the overall demographic doesn't appeal to the masses of white folk -- as this all may change in years to come, deemed by many a comedian that the world will be one big mix of beige and slanty eyes (1.1 billion is undeniable), from my perspective the place to scooorrrrreee is asia....go back to your home countries as aspire for rockstardom there....i pretty much have to blame this last paragraph on youtube.com, partly due to hefty insomnia, i watched a bit too many chinese mtv's last night hence leading to this "i want to realistically be a rockstar, or settle for pop stardom"...gawd i'm almost 25, am i that big of a loser?  yes alex, it's time to get a job.

maybe because as competitive as i am, i am even more envious/jealous of other things/other people, it's trully a bad trait to have and it's one that takes a lot of deep breathing and introspection to slowly change, and the one instance where i realize its to the point where it's RIDICULOUS is the fact that i feel that way when watching tv....this isn't even about being obnoxiously pompous, it's a mixture of regret and jealously wanting to 'delta' things the way they are on TV....oh man, what pop media has done to me......and whats to blame?

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fly to the sky - missing you

Gabe - 彈錯

tension - love ATM

周杰倫 - 簡單愛

周杰倫 - 月的蕭邦夜曲

park jin young - nu eh dui eh suh

AUDIOSLAVE - BE YOURSELF

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hahaha..."you had a job and you quit to be a FOB" ...HAHAHA....that cracks me up.