Paperless law firm is not a new concept. I’ve know many large international to local small firms doing that. In fact, I was trying to help the KL Bar to implement a paperless system.

I still print and photocopy documents. I currently use a worn out second hand photocopy machine, an old printer and a Samsung Monochrome Laser Multifunction Printer (SCX-3405).

The second hand photocopy machine is nothing to shout about. I rented it for RM90 a month. It breaks down once in a while but it will magically heal by itself after a few hours. But there had been times where the machine broke down while I was in a hurry. Thank god for back up printers.

The Samsung printer on the other hand is great. It’s a 4-in-1 multifunction device. I use it for personal and office use.

Surface fit for anything A4 size and below

Quick installation guide. Very, very easy. It’s plug and play!

It can print, copy, scan and fax. I normally use it to scan incoming documents (for archiving purposes). There’s a feeder on top of the printer which allows me to copy numerous documents at one go.

One great function about this printer is that it has wireless printing from mobile devices.

Couple of months ago, my firm had a little disaster.

My roof leaked couple of weeks ago after heavy rain. Many of my documents were damaged by water. Documents printed by the old printer were badly damaged. The ink faded! However, documents printed by my Samsung printer was okay as the ink did not fade.

Other than that, the water flooded my room and consequently my laminated floor was damaged. The power tripped causing a few electronics to short circuit. My Samsung printer was also exposed to the incoming water. Fortunately, it is still working after having a “bath”.

For more information on the Samsung printer, please visit Samsung’s page.

After barely 5 months, my wife and Jessica’s little startup ThinkPartyThoughts, an online boutique partyware store, is now available at Sundays, Bangsar Village II!

Sundays is owned by the Ms Read family who owns Ms Read (well known plus size clothes boutique), Plan B and Ben’s Independent Grocer. Helen Read’s daughter bought their products and was interested in putting their products at Sundays. It’s a big breakthrough for my wife and Jessica as their little startup is just a few months old. Sales have picked up quite a bit. The ladies worked 24/7 to get their products out!

My Thoughts

This handcraft business is quite interesting to me. It’s a tedious job. My wife and Jessica spent a lot of their them putting things together. I help them out sometimes by doing no-brainer jobs like gluing things together. I usually give up within an hour. I could be spending an hour making products worth RM100 (just a rough estimate). However, my time cost for my legal services is about RM700 an hour. Thus, the work didn’t really interest me.

Of course, I have no control over ThinkPartyThoughts’ business but it doesn’t stop me from wondering how can one scale this business to a multi million dollar business. My wife has a book that says handicraft business doesn’t make millions but I beg to differ. So long there is a demand, millions can be made.

I think the most effective way to do so is to outsource the production of the handicraft. It could be to housewives or even our local kampung folks. We could pay them for each piece that they product (e.g 1 – 5 cents per piece). With an endless (rather substantially) supply of ready to sell products, one can have increase their distribution chain.

It goes without saying that distribution chain must be wide. Other than local retailers, I think focus should be given to the foreign purchasers who want to purchase high quality handicraft at a lower price. ThinkPartyThoughts products are in essence “western” products thus it appeals to Westerners too.

Other than that, ThinkPartyThoughts can pivot by offering to their distribution network by selling products of other aspiring handicraft entrepreneurs. The former can charge a commission for each product sold.

Well, easier said than done. Nevertheless, I think following this method the business can flourish faster and easier.

ThinkPartyThoughts has really quite name cards!

Lastly, ThinkPartyThoughts will be at the Markets@JayaOne on 18 May 2013! Details are below!

Time: 11am – 6pm
Venue: Jaya One, Section 13, No.72A,
Jalan Universiti,
46200, Petaling Jaya,
Selangor

It did work for a while but the problem persisted. Few months ago, I decided to go for western treatment and Anna-Rina recommended Optimum Chiropractic & Physiotherapy Centre to me.

The owner, Dr. Lee, took only few seconds to diagnose my problem. My painful heel was due to flat foot! He immediately recommended me to wear shoes inserts with arch support. I also changed my Crocs slippers to Birkenstock slippers which have arch support.

I’m glad to report that the problem is gone! I also got Dr Lee to sort out a muscle tear on my shoulder. He got it fixed within a few sessions. But it did costs me a bomb to fix my muscle tear – first session was RM150 whereas the remaining sessions cost me RM100.

Address
M-1-12 Plaza Damas (Hartamas Shopping Centre), 
Sri Hartamas,
50480 Kuala Lumpur

Website: http://www.chiropractormalaysia.com

Before the fireworks started to go off, my Eastside hengtais came to my house to play card games. I must say that my luck is pretty good this year. While playing BlackJack, I had 21 points three times consecutively.

As usual, my family had a low key reunion dinner. We had our reunion dinner at Padi House, Seri Petaling. On the next day, we had dinner at Secret Recipe.

My sisters Anna and Jenny organised a steamboat dinner at Anna’s place. My niece, nephews and grand nephew were there to join us too.

We had a day trip to Mentakab on the second day as my parents in laws were there to visit other relatives. The traffic to Mentakab was okay but it was extremely jam the next day.

Not my tyre shop!

On the same day, we made a trip to Sg. Pelek, Sepang. It’s a small town located near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. One of my wife’s relatives had an open house and I must say it was a culture shock for me. This relative took over a park, erected a tent and hired performers to sing and dance on stage!

Wife’s aunty brought Rocky a long for the trip

On the 3rd day of Chinese New Year, my wife and I had a little open house and invited my friends from the West side (we refer friends who live in PJ as Westside while those who live in Old Klang Road, East side). We served them snacks and coffee. We ended the evening with card games.

Sui Lin (in cheongsam) was back from Sydney for Chinese New Year

Who can forget about our Prime Minister’s controversial angpow?

This Chinese New Year also marked the death of Timothy Tan’s father. He was not well and subsequently succumbed to his illness. My hengtais and I used to see him every Christmas as we would go to his place for Christmas dinner.

Speaking about tradition, I made sure that I attend En Peng’s Pai Tin Kong session at his house on the 8th day of Chinese New Year. I’ve been attending it since high school and I thought I shouldn’t miss it at all. But the attendance by the gang was rather poor. Only me, my wife, WK and Kiang could make it. Nevertheless, I am glad that I attended it.

Long red firecracker for the year of the snake

Although it was a quiet Chinese New Year, it was an enjoyable one. I hope the year of the Snake will bring joy, happiness and wealth to everyone. HUAT AH!

Dining in the Dark KL is operated by Werner’s and it is located on top of Werner’s at Changkat Bukit Bintang (parking is terribly expensive but try Radius Hotel). The interesting bit is that the manager and waiters of Dining in the Dark KL are blind! Our waiter, Darius, guided us to our table in total darkness. We had to hold on to him.

Once we are seated, we were served with a three course meal which remained a secret after the whole session. A session last about 2 hours. You can eat with your hands or utensils. I hate eating with my bare hands hence I ate using my utensils all the time. It’s tough eating with your utensils in total darkness!

My eyes were quite uncomfortable throughout the session. I guess I’m not used to total darkness.

I must say that the food is not bad. I wasn’t expecting it to be tasty. Sorry, no pictures of the food as we were required to surrender our phones before going into the dark room!

But here’s the menu. You won’t know what you will be eating until the end of the session. If there was a cockroach on top of your food, you wouldn’t know too :D

Also, the menu changes from time to time. You can tell them to cut out certain stuff if you have allergies or certain preferences. You are also required to come on designated time. They don’t want people walking in and out throughout the session.

Lastly, one of the best parts of this experience is to be able to speak with people who have vision disability. They are just like us. I am told that Werner’s had made efforts to hire blind people to work with them to give them a better life. Kudos to them.

Map

View Larger Map

Address
44A & 46A changkat bukit bintang
50200 kuala lumpur . malaysia
Tel: + 603 2110 0431
Fax: + 603 2145 1375
Reservation: + 6012 251 5797

Website: http://www.dininginthedarkkl.com/

However, the National Chinese museum located next to Tienanmen Square was excellent. There were plenty of artefacts but unfortunately, the English translation is lacking. I wish I know Chinese better!

Tight security at the Museum. Body search before entering!

My favourite exhibit at the Museum. A picture of a thousand years old logo. It was used as a trade mark!

China’s first postage stamps circa 1878.

After our museum tour, we took a stroll to the Forbidden City. It was extremely cold and the roads were covered with snow and ice.

It was packed with people although the place is massive. We could hardly take a decent picture.

The white parts on the wall are ice.

Due to the size of the Forbidden City and the lack of time, we rushed from hall to another hall. There were hardly anything to see but Jack brought us to a small Puyi (last emperor of China) museum in one of the small courtyards of Forbidden City.

Frozen money in a pond

I was told that it takes about a week to explore the entire place. Further, many of these places are restricted. I didn’t enjoy the tour to the Forbidden City. The walk almost killed my feet too.

Ice canal!

On the last day, I bought a book by Li Shuxian, Puyi’s fifth and the last wife, titled “My Husband Puyi: The Last Emperor of China”. It’s a book about Puyi’s life after Emperor and prison in the eyes of Li Shuxian. I was hoping to read more about Puyi’s life as the last Emperor of China. However, it was mostly about Li Shuxian’s love story with Puyi.

“The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting” has all the story about Puyi and the Chinese Royal Palace. I would highly recommend anyone that wishes to know about the life at the Chinese Royal Palace.

This time round, I stayed at Value Hotel Thomson, Balestier Road, Novena. It’s a decent hotel except that my room has no windows.

Restaurant next to the hotel. Anal Fin anyone?

The event was attended by over 700 tech startups and investors coming from many parts of South East Asia, and even Taiwan, China and Japan. I was amazed with the amount of expats in the Singaporean startup scene. Many of them have planted themselves in Singapore to start their business.

The 2-day conference had 100 over start up booths (mostly with very small booth – just enough to put a laptop). The booths were always packed with people. Melissa and I went to almost each booth to ask them what they do and exchanged name cards with them. Approaching people at the booths seems like an effective way to network for me. It’s easier to talk to some strangers standing by the side minding their own business.

Stefan Jung of Rocket Internet. Rocket Internet is an international online venture with more than 100 over market leading companies in 40 over countries. They own Zalora in Malaysia.

Of all the startups exhibiting at the booths and/or presenting at the event, these are my favourites:-

Kwix – a Singapore startup with an app that allows you to order your food via your mobile phone while you are in a restaurant. The kitchen will be notified of your order. No need for waiters!
Spaces.sg – a Singapore startup with a portal that finds and books meeting and party venues in Singapore .
LoveBytes – An app that allows a couple to share things and document the relationship eg how many days together!
Shiroubu -a Japanese startup to connect travellers and tour guides. Anyone can be a tour guide!
Social Happen – a Thai startup with an app that gets users to do certain tasks when they are at a merchant’s premises. If the user completes the task and clicks on a button on the App, the user will be rewarded a gift from a vending machine.
PiktoChart - Malaysia startup with an app that helps people to build infographics fast and pretty. They got a really cute name card!

Lots of Buttons – A Hong Kong e-commerce that sells craft buttons at 50% of retail price. They have 25,000 buttons for sale!
Xunta.cc – Founded by Sense Luo, Xunta.cc is a China start-up dating website for gays. It’s interesting to note that 30million Chinese are homosexual. That’s like the whole of Malaysia!

One interesting feature of Xunta is that it allows gays to exchange name cards. The name card has a unique code for each user. With the code, the recipient can locate the other person on Xunta.

According to Sense Luo, 60, 000 gays have signed up with Xunta without promotion. The 7 person team’s target revenue is USD700,000 per year. Sense says 6 people in their team are gays.

The event had excellent speakers from the regions I mentioned just now. Some are successful startup owners and some work for well known brands such as AirBnB and Twitter. Here are some points I picked up throughout the talk:-

PropertyGuru
PropertyGuru co-founder, Steve Melhuish is a British who travelled around Asia for 6 months before settling in Singapore.

He found that there was a void in the property industry in Singapore when he came to Singapore. With this void, he created PropertyGuru with some friends. But PropertyGuru had 3 competitors within few months of operation. The founders did not draw any salary for the 1st and 2nd year. Hardest challenge initially was to get property agents to advertise on the Internet. Property agents were using traditional media for a long time.

Today they have 24, 000 property agents. Revenue for the year 2012 is not published but Steve revealed its 10 over million. They have expanded to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

However, Steve said he regretted expanding 2 other countries too fast as it stretched their resources. Before that, they had only 1 country to manage but now they need to focus on four.

Steve advised that entrepreneurs to build depth in home country first before expanding to other countries. He revealed that PropertyGuru’s next target is Hong Kong and they are starting IPO this year.

Lastly, Steve also advised entrepreneurs that if they believe in something, just do it! Take risk, believe in yourself and be passionate.

AirBnB

One of my favourite tech companies, AirBnB has set up an office in Singapore early last year. It is valued at USD1+ Billion now. AirBnB is social website that connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay.

AirBnB relies on word of mouth to promote. They had 3 million bookings in 2012 and have loads of hosts in Bali, Koh Samui and Phuket listed on AirBnB.

Sometime in 2011, a AirBnB host’s home got thrashed by a user in 2011. With this incident, AirBnB introduced safety measures to verify users.

Notwithstanding the horror story, AirBnB brought fortunes to many people. A Cambodian AirBnB host charges USD16 per night and he uses that money to fund 5 of his brothers’ education.

We also managed to pick up many interesting facts about specific markets. In Vietnam, there are 91 million people. 95% of 15 – 24 years old are connected to the Internet. They have cash on delivery culture in Vietnam. E-commerce operators have to deliver products to customers before they pay.

In South Korea, you should launch an Android App 1st instead of iOS because the former leads in South Korea. Also, in Korea, you can send offline gifts using bar codes. Recipients can redeem gift at merchant’s outlet eg coffee.

Barrier to entry is pretty low in Singapore. It’s easy to set up and do business. However, it is difficult to do so in places like Indonesia and India.

You can get more tweets by checking out the #startupAsia hashtag or read TechinAsia.

Kee Lock Chua‘s analogy on taichi and copycats was a great eye opener. He said one can copy a taichi move but it is nothing unless one execute the correct breathing. Same like businesses. One can copy your business model but it is no use unless he or she understand how it actually works.

I had to leave early on the 2nd day because I had to give a talk organised by the Singaporean law firm. It’s actually my second time with them. The last round we had 60 over people but this time round we had 200 over people! Singapore has just passed their own data protection laws thus many people are interested in this topic. I’m glad that I got the opportunity to speak to their clients on the Malaysian perspective. 

It looks like this year is going to be a journey on data protection and startup related matters. Hope it turns out well!

My office in 2012. It still looks the same.

I am glad to report that our firm was profitable last year. I think we own it to the way we operate. We ran a very lean operation.

Instead of paying for renovation, rental and rental deposit, we operated from home. We did not have a physical office but a virtual office to take our mails and calls which costs us about RM1000 a year. Also they will log all our incoming mails and calls thus eliminating administrative tasks. We also do not need to hire a secretary or staff to sit in the office to take calls or mails.

We also did not invest in a library because we have been specialising in our field for years. We have the basic case laws and legal precedents. I utilised my Dropbox as my legal library. I’ll scan whatever hardcopy precedents and cases and store them in my DropBox and arrange them based on subject matters. Each file has keywords to remind me of what the case is about.

We operated a paperless office. With a paperless office, there was no need to purchase folders, paper, stationeries and even shelves. We eliminated many administrative work such as printing and filing the documents into their respective files.

We did not invest in many software. We use Gmail as our email client. I did also use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client but only to backup my emails.Someone asked me whether it would be secure to have my mails hosted by Google. To me, Google has unlimited resources to secure and protect their network,  what can a small law firm like us do to protect ours?

I didn’t even purchase Microsoft Office (until recently) as I find that Microsoft Starter (pre installed word processing software provided by my Samsung Ultrabook). I explored numerous software to see whether it suits our practice. Cheng Soon of HackersMonthly recommended that I try Zapier, a website that synchronises web Apps. I managed to synchronise deadlines posted on a Google Doc spreadsheet with my Google Calender. It saves me the trouble of keying in data twice.

Instead of subscribing to the legal information providers, I built a search engine called FCL&Co Unreported Case Laws search and a Statute Search using Google Search engine to plow through the Court’s and Attorney General’s Chambers’ websites to find unreported cases and statues.

I also subscribe to free legal updates by legal information providers and if I get anything relevant, I’ll look for the source on the FCL&Co Unreported Case Laws search to find it or call a friend for a copy. I also started an eGroup of Intellectual Property law practitioners to share information. With that, I was able to access many IP judgements of many IP practitioners.

My motto was, “If I can find an alternative for it,  I won’t spend money on it”.

As my partner and I work separate offices, we used Google Docs to collaborate documents such as Masterlists. It is good because I can access the files through my laptop, PC and mobile devices.

The abovementioned things we did saved us few important things. We saved real estate space and time. Without the physical things lying in the office, we have plenty of space. Commuting to the office is a thing of the past. Administrative time and costs were eliminated thus leaving us with spare time to do marketing. Writing articles (and publishing it on my blawg) is one of my favourite marketing methods. It gave me publicity and raises my portfolio. I was able to secure a number of multinational, public listed and large corporation as our clients.

On another note, I co-founded a start-up called “DocuDeer“, a sample legal agreement and documents providers. It is still in beta stage and we are still adding more documents. We started this venture as we found that Malaysia lacked sample legal agreement and documents. Most of the stuff we find are from overseas and thus not useful or not applicable to Malaysian lawyers and businesses. Please tell your friends.

That is all I have to report for now. I wonder how it would be like when I write the 2nd FCL&Co anniversary blogpost.

To many more years of FCL&Co!

Before I go into detail on our trip, I thought of sharing some information and tips on getting into China. A visa to enter China is required for Malaysians. One can apply at the Chinese Embassy at OSK Building. You can complete the visa application form online or get the form from the office. I would recommend that you complete the form online and book an appointment with them to submit your form. If you don’t, you would need to line up at the office. The queue is quite long. An appointment takes less than 5 minutes. The visa application is quite fast, just submit your form, supporting documents (ie itinerary, air ticket and accommodation) and your passport. You can choose your processing time. I choose the regular time which is 3 days.

Alternatively, you can get a runner to do for you. Our travel agent said it costs RM60 per person.

We used the services of a tour agent. It was about RM4000 for both of us for 6 days (flight not included). The tour includes the usual tourist areas such as Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. There are of course cheaper packages out there but you’ll probably be brought to some low end restaurants, stay in cheaper hotels or have more market visits.

We wanted to skip the compulsory market visits (tour includes bringing you to shop at certain places ie tourist traps). But to do that, we need to top up around RM500. We decided not to pay such exorbitant amount.

We were fortunate that the staff at the shops that we went were not pushy or aggressive. I was told that some of these shopkeepers will force you to buy something from them. Some even to the extend of blocking the exit!

Yes, the air was this bad!

Our tour was a private and English speaking tour. It was just us and our guide, Jack and our driver (can’t remember his name). Jack is a nice and accommodating Beijinger. Although it’s supposed to be an English speaking tour, Jack did most of it in Chinese – Beijinger Mandarin to be exact. I couldn’t understand most of it due to his strong Chinese accent. He couldn’t understand our Malaysian accent as well. Reminds me when I met my Finnish friend in Finland. We couldn’t understand each others’ English when we met at his house. We had to go online at his house so that we can speak on the net.

Beijing was cold. We came at a time where pollution was at its height. I couldn’t make out whether the sky is misty or covered with smog. We couldn’t see the sun most of the time. We came at a time where Beijing’s air pollution was at its height.

It snowed on the second day. Although the road was covered with snow, it wasn’t as thick as Oulu’s snow.

We stayed at Crowne Plaza, Wang Fu Jing. It’s a nice hotel located a few minutes from the shopping centres of Wang Fu Jing. Their service is good and there’s WiFi at the lobby. WiFi is accessible from our room but we need to pay for it. However, there were a few days where we could access it for free.

Wang Fu Jing is a well known shopping district of Beijing. It’s filled with massive shopping centres. Many of them reminded us of One Utama and Mid Valley. Big Western brands are here and prices are almost the same with Kuala Lumpur. Even food prices are about the same.

Wang Fu Jing at night

St. Joseph’s Church, Wang Fu Jing

Dance!

On our first day, we ventured into a restaurant called Tianjin GoBelieve Steamed Stuffed Bun (yes, Go Believe!).

It serves dumpling and porridge. Their steamed pork dumpling was okay – the meat was a bit mushy. Can’t tell whether it’s cooked or not. Porridge on the other hand was bland and watery. It comes in two colours namely yellow and brown. It didn’t taste good to me but the locals seem to love it.

We also roamed around Wangfujing Snack Street to check out their common and exotic street food. They served things like starfish, scorpions and snails.

Snails. Mum once told me that she had to stop a bunch of Chinese students from eating some snails they found at the drain. Now I know why they caught the snails cause these snails look like those we have at home!

Seremban crab stick – I don’t think we have this in Seremban!

The best place we tried so far was a place called Grandma’s Kitchen. It’s located in a shopping centre. The queue to get a place is incredible. It was extremely long. We took a number and we were told that we will be called in 1 1/2 hours time!

Whenever someone’s turn is called, the shop will announce, “Mama chiao ni che farn leee (Mama is asking you to come and eat!).

Food was pretty good. Our tea cooked chicken and organic cabbage were great.

On our last day, we wanted to try Grandma’s Kitchen for lunch. Unfortunately, it was packed with people again. We went to another place nearby called Xiang Yuan Spicy Food.

Again I managed to meet up with some Chinese lawyers. This time round was Gloria and David of a reputable intellectual property firm in Beijing. I met Gloria when I attended the INTA conference in Berlin. They brought us to a nice fine dining Chinese restaurant in Wang Fu Jing.

Overall, the trip was great. I wasn’t expecting much of China but it was an eye opener. I would certainly go back to China again to check out other parts of China!

As some of you may know, I was appointed as the co-Chairman of the Kuala Lumpur Information Technology Committee last year. It’s a sub committee of the Kuala Lumpur Bar and our role mainly involves technology matters from organising events to maintaining the KL Bar website.

I was appointed as the co-Chairman because only a committee member of the KL Bar can head a sub committee. Zizao was my co-Chairman as he is an elected committee member of the KL Bar.

However, this year, Zizao has to sit on another committee thus leaving the sub committee without a committee member. The new Kuala Lumpur Chairman Dipen asked me to stand for election at the Kuala Lumpur Annual General Meeting (AGM) so that I can be elected as a committee member. I was hesitant initially as running for positions isn’t my cup of tea. The last election that I stood for was when I was in primary school. We had to vote for a class monitor and I didn’t get voted (obviously).

When Dipen told me that there won’t be more than 10 people running (there are only 10 spots in the committee) and I do not need to give any speech asking people to vote for me, I agreed to run.

But on the day of the AGM, Dipen told me that there will be more than 10 people running. I told Dipen that I’ll withdraw and let the others run.

I told a few friends that I “may” be running but subsequently told them I’ve withdrawn. Further, I could hardly see anyone I know in the hall. I probably know about 20 people out of the 200 over members. I thought I was doomed to fail because I did not do any campaigning nor ask for support.

Richard Wee was my proposer and Zizao was my seconder. As soon as I decide to withdraw, I messaged Richard on WhatApps informing him that he doesn’t need to nominate me.

But when the nomination opened, Richard raised his hand and nominated me! He didn’t see my WhatApp message!

It would be disastrous to go up on stage to tell everyone I’m withdrawing hence I started preparing my speech in my mind.

When it came to my turn to speak, I announced that I am the KL Bar Information Technology co-Chairman and what I’ve done last year i.e. the revival of the KL Bar blog and our involvement in the Internet Blackout Day.

An hour later, they announced the winners. I got the 6th highest vote and I’m in the committee. I thought I wasn’t going to make it!

Subsequent to the election, I was appointed as the Chairman of the Information Technology & Publications Committee.

I must thank those who voted for me. I will do my best to serve the KL Bar and its members.