RECESSION

If you opened up a newspaper lately, every page tends to highlight the world recession. Ya.. The horror word…. RECESSION… It came to us year 1997 and now, it came to us again, after a decades’ time.

Almost everyone is talking about the global recession. What if it hits badly in Malaysia? Banks are tightening their belt; interest rates soar up high, metal prices being so unstable, and even the gold prices too. Currency are fluctuating madly and yesterday it was 2.1 RMB VS RM , the next day it went 1.89 RMB VS RM. (RMB = Renminbi).

Currently, in my working area, we still cannot see any weird or strange movements about the finance yet. But there is an extreme lack of orders from customers, even though the prices have gone down far lower compared to last few weeks.

Overtime has been cut off, and workers are only working until 5pm, which previously have overtime daily until 10pm. Expenses are still high, and yet customers’ debt aren’t coming in. Cheques are coming, but the dates are further and further. You might receive a cheque in the mail today, and yet, you can only keep that *paper* in your drawer and deposit it after the month of November.

Scariest of all… will be the customers not wanting to pay their debt and *run away*.
A lot of cases happenned when it was in year 1997.

You must be thinking, why I happened to know these since it was a decade ago’s story. I wasn’t even in work at that time.

Well… I could never forget it, in my whole life.

Seeing my father coming back from home, looking worried, talking on the phone finding for a different way out. Looking into my eyes, telling me to stop studying and start working for him in his factory. This was one of the many reasons I was not allowed to continue my studies. I left school at year 2000, which was the time when the days are just catching by, but still financially unstable. I end up taking a small post in the office….. until today.

Me and my two brothers studied in a private secondary school at that time. My father even thought of changing us to a government school so that his cash isn’t that tight. He end up 咬紧牙关 (clench one's teeth and not utter a sound) and we continued in a private school.

Not wanting to say much about recession here. It was not a topic of my favor neither is yours rite. All I wanted to say here is that hopefully Malaysia will get well then and let’s face it together. We need to overcome it together. It will go away… sure it will go away. But when it passes by, face it and be strong.

One last phrase that was told to me by a consultant,

“DURING RECESSION , CASH IS KING ! ”