How to become very rich in Malaysia

This is worth sharing. It make a lot of sense & it is from

P. Gunasegaram is managing editor of The Star. He thinks it is high time we changed the way we did business

Connections and the ability to flip assets can get you going places
If you have ever wondered how to get rich in Malaysia – fabulously rich and very quickly at that – here’s a model that you might want to look at very closely.

Not easy to do but if you do have a couple of projects in the bag, it will set you up for several lifetimes.

First you need connections – strong ones, the higher the better and if it goes right up to the top all the better.

You need this because you need to convince the powers that be that your projects are good.

But you might ask if your projects are so good, why do you need connections? Why don’t you just go out and execute?

Good questions, those. Here’s the answer - you need the state to give you something to do the deal that will help the nation.

Still can’t figure it out? See, it’s like this. You want to help the country, right? The country needs say a port. But you can’t build a port just like that. You need land to build a port.

You tell the state or federal government you need land – cheap land, preferably free to build the port.

Or to take another example, you want to help the country by building a power plant. But look, you need land too and not only that you need the power to be sold. So you want an agreement – an iron-clad one to sell the power to Tenaga Nasional and to pass through all costs.

You see, that’s your reward as an entrepreneur – you get someone else to build the power plant, they guarantee the performance of the plant and someone else guarantees to buy your power and pay for all your costs. Nice deal? You bet. Billionaires have been made that way.

Or you may want to start an air hub. If you are persuasive enough, you can even convince the government to compulsorily acquire the land and sell it to you cheap. Once you have cheap land, lucrative contracts and concession agreements, the sky’s the limit.

Let’s take it a step further. If you want to realise the value of all of these things that you have and still keep control of them, it’s nice to have a listed company into which you can inject them.

Inject one asset for shares and you gain control of the company.

And then inject others over the years for cash, taking the money out of the company. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

Do it right and get a flow of assets to inject in (you can do anything with discounted cash flow valuations – just change the discount rate, and presto, the value changes!), and you get a tidy flow of profits and cash into your personal accounts over the years. I mean a really tidy flow.

Just how much can you make this way, you ask? Why don’t you take a guess first? Did you say RM500mil? Guess again. RM1bil? How about five times that and you may be getting into the right order of magnitude.

One Tan Sri S M Albu actually made some RM4.5bil that way - actually more because he still controls the listed company. (MMC’s latest RM1.7bil deal irks investors7) We are not saying he is the only one, which makes your chances of joining the ranks better – if you are connected to high places that is.

But then again, if things change – and that’s still a big ‘if’ – you might not find it so easy anymore.

茶为道 酒为魔

茶为道，酒为魔。
茶能使人修心养性；酒则使人丧心病狂。
茶能使人变得神圣和伟大；酒则使人变得邪恶和卑鄙。
茶能启智，使人变得越来越聪明；酒则至愚，使人变得越来越痴呆。
茶能强身健体，增强生命力；酒则反之，使人失去对疾病的抵抗力。
茶使人变得尊贵典雅；酒则使人大失风度。
茶能培养人的高风亮节；酒则使人变得厚颜无耻。
茶不断地给人带来福音；酒则一再给人带来灾难。
茶友令人欣慰；酒友令人烦恼。
劝茶的人，多为至交；劝酒的人，多为对手。
劝茶的人，你尽可放心；劝酒的人，你千万当心。
一生中，多几个茶友，是你的造化；一生中，多几个酒友，是你的不幸。
传说，酒与茶，皆始于尧，有人为讨好尧帝，酿酒敬上，尧饮后兴奋，知此物能乱性误国，下令把酿酒的人杀了。可见尧帝的圣明，非常人所及。
在胶南观音茶厂的墙壁上，始终保留着这样九个字："茶为道！酒为魔！烟为毒”.