Keywords: life system; deterministic modules; survival function; system maintenance; open-source declaration
About This Article
This article describes my personal educational and thought structure. My thinking structure sits at the intersection of two phases: a Chinese humanities foundation before age 21, and an English science-and-engineering framework after. In Singapore's education system, I had no access to elite schooling — only the standard path of ordinary public education. It was within these constraints, through decades of practice and iterative experience, that CYSM gradually took shape.
The system can be understood through three layers:
1. Life Events (Signals)
The raw materials of life—moments that appear random or coincidental: the "Credit Gate" photo in 1991, the Physical Alignment at Suntec City, the sparrow in 2025, the inspiration in the kitchen. These are not fate or superstition; they are signals waiting to be recognized.
2. System Processing (Time)
How these signals are processed through engineering thinking: 40 years of maintaining electrical systems, testing systems, building facilities, and automation systems. The right brain detects the light; the left brain builds the lighthouse. When rushed (1994), the system crashes. When given time (27 years waiting for SDGAI), signals naturally align.
3. Long-term Stability (Exemption Power)
The outcome of a system that has been maintained long enough: when failures cannot accumulate, time becomes an asset. This is not a sudden achievement, but the natural result of a system that has remained stable over decades—what I call "exemption power."
My goal is not to achieve success, but to prevent failures from accumulating; when failures cannot accumulate, time naturally becomes an asset. (The "Why" Behind Extracting Certainty from Randomness)
In 1991, I stood before a gate in Malacca that read "Credit Gate" (赊钱门) and took a photo. I was 24, a young man at NEC Semiconductors who knew nothing about investing.
Two years later, I bought my first stock, those were the discounted Singtel shares I bought.
In 2001, due to my frequent consumption of processed foods and excessive concentration on writing my blog online, I failed to process the intuitions and impulses I was capturing, leading to excessive fright, a near mental breakdown, and auditory and visual hallucinations. I was unable to work until, inspired by my mother, I found a part-time job in the vegetable retail department of NUTC-FairPrice in May 2002.
In 2006, I opened a personal CPF investment account at DBS Bank in Singapore and began investing in unit trusts using my CPF and cash, and also started investing in RSP. I officially completed my combat readiness service with the Singapore Civil Defence Force. That same year, I stayed at the Singapore Institute of Mental Health for two weeks and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In 2009, I purchased my first REIT (Suntec), the same year my mother passed away, marking a turning point in my life.
In 2013, my schizophrenia relapsed due to my unauthorized temporary discontinuation of medication. After the relapse, I was admitted to the Singapore Institute of Mental Health for two weeks.
In 2015, my father passed away, marking another turning point in my life.
From 2015 to 2017, I began building my CDP-REITs portfolio.
From 2016 to 2024, I worked in facilities maintenance and management at the Suntec City commercial complex.
In 2021, I woke up feeling unwell and suddenly discovered that my left eye was completely blurry. I took sick leave from work and went to Toa Payoh Polyclinic to see a doctor early in the morning. Later, I was transferred to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital Eye Centre, where I even vomited. At the Eye Centre, I was diagnosed with glaucoma.
After retiring on March 1, 2024 (at age 57), I ceased to "sell" my time for survival.
One year later after that, a sparrow flew into my kitchen. Looking at its effortless freedom, I realized my life’s work wasn't about accumulating wealth. It was about lowering the pressure to participate in a mandatory social system.
This white paper is the "Source Code" of how I achieved that exemption.
Part I: Poetic Metaphors & The Soul of the OS
Before math, there was the "Awareness."
The "Credit Gate" Prophecy (1991): My 25-year plan was essentially "borrowing" time from my youth to buy back the ownership of my future. "The Poetic Metaphor of the Life System" there are a total of 6 photos, one of which also defines why my investment portfolio is focused in Asia, and reduce direct holdings of assets denominated in US dollars.
External Discernment: I avoided career and financial landmines not by calculation alone, but by leveraging my family's "external awareness" to know when to walk away.
The Physical Alignment at Suntec City: From 2016 to 2024, I worked in facilities maintenance and management at Suntec City—the very building that housed my first REIT purchase in 2009. Years later, standing inside a building I partially owned, maintaining its systems with my own hands, I realized: this was not a coincidence. It was the alignment of "ownership" and "maintenance" in physical space. The Fountain of Wealth stood there as a silent witness, and my daily work was simply to ensure the building's "buoyancy" remained intact. This was not planned. Time allowed it to happen naturally.
The Sparrow Signal: A symbol of a system that is light, agile, and autonomous—proof that certainty can be extracted from a random world.
External Discernment: I avoided career and financial landmines not by calculation alone, but by leveraging my family's "external awareness" to know when to walk away.
The Physical Alignment at Suntec City: From 2016 to 2024, I worked in facilities maintenance and management at Suntec City—the very building that housed my first REIT purchase in 2009. Years later, standing inside a building I partially owned, maintaining its systems with my own hands, I realized: this was not a coincidence. It was the alignment of "ownership" and "maintenance" in physical space. The Fountain of Wealth stood there as a silent witness, and my daily work was simply to ensure the building's "buoyancy" remained intact. This was not planned. Time allowed it to happen naturally.
The Sparrow Signal: A symbol of a system that is light, agile, and autonomous—proof that certainty can be extracted from a random world.
Part II: Deterministic Module Breakdown (The Components)
The blocks used to build a life where "Exit Pressure" is zero.
5.61% The Income Engine: This is the power source of the system. By constructing a portfolio of core Asian assets that does not rely on "risking one's life for money," I have locked in a return of 5.61% annualized. It is not for getting rich quick, but to cover the operation of the "low-energy engine," ensuring that the system achieves permanent self-circulation without depleting the principal.
Skill Evolution (1984–2025): A continuous recalibration from ITE Electrical Engineering to a 2025 Specialist Diploma in Applied Generative AI. This ensures my "Human Capital" remains an asset, not a liability.
The SGD 667 Engine: By locking monthly survival costs at a low energy state, I decoupled my happiness from my net worth.
The 15% Buffer: A cash safety net that turns "market volatility" into "visible, tolerable data".
Part III: System Operating Indicator
How the components harmonize into a repeatable index.
The Engineering Architecture Index
Life Mastery ≈ {Total Portfolio Yield (5.61%) x Skill Evolution Chain (Python/AI)} / {Low Energy Expenditure (SGD 667) x Risk Buffer (15% Cash)}
The Autonomy Multiplier Index
Life Autonomy ≈ (Deterministic Modules) x Survival TimeThe Inversion: Most people trade time for security; I lock in security with my system, letting time be the outcome. I don't pursue one-time success; instead, I reduce the probability of system failure. When the probability of failure is low enough, time naturally translates into profit. This is my survival function.
The Foundational Logic of Life Autonomy
Positioning (Lincoln): Clearly assess where you stand, and map the system's safety boundaries.
Self-identification (Frankl): Cultivate an internal compass—through continuous learning and calibration—that does not depend on external validation.
Correct Decision-making (The System): With true coordinates set, extract certainty and minimize the probability of failure.
Conclusion: The real way to reduce risk is not to try to outsmart the market, but to first locate your true coordinates—and live from that truth.
Galileo said: "You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him discover it within himself." These three indicators of CYSM —the Engineering Architecture Index, the Autonomy Multiplier Index, and the foundational logic of Life Autonomy —are not rules designed to "teach" you how to live. They are tools to help you "discover" the operating state of your own life system. Indicators are not judgments; they are feedback. Data is not the answer; it is the signal.
Part IV: Open Source Declaration
Money can be unlimited; lifetime is finite.
If life is running code, I am simply publishing my version so that reality can continuously backtest it. I don't try to be the smartest variable; I just reduce the probability of being eliminated. This isn't a worldview; it's engineering. And the core of engineering is precisely: verifiable, testable, backtestable, and adaptable.
I'm open-sourcing this "white-box" logic that's been running for 40 years, as a sample that will be continuously backtested: as long as the focus shifts from "pursuing returns" to "managing certainty," anyone willing to exchange short-term excitement for long-term stability can reclaim control over their life. If it survives in reality over the long run, then it becomes the answer in itself.
Einstein said that the most beautiful things we can experience are mysterious. I have spent 60 years proving that those mysterious moments (the door to the credit gate moment, physical location at Suntec City, the sparrow, the inspiration in the kitchen) can be addressed with engineering methods, from which we can extract certain truths. This is my life system: responding to the mysterious with reason, embracing poetry with engineering, and placing uncertainty within certainty.
Part V: Order of Thought
I did not encounter the wisdom of these thinkers late in life.
As early as my secondary school days, I came across Galileo Galilei. His words — "You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him discover it within himself" — were the first Western philosophy I ever encountered.
In 1989, upon graduating from ITE, I was deeply moved by Albert Einstein's words about "mystery."
But before I ever encountered Western thinkers, my intellectual roots had already been formed in Chinese literature. Those Chinese books gave me imagery, poetry, and the concept of blank space.
That literary foundation enabled me to understand mystery, positioning, self-recognition, and eventually, structural reasoning.
Later came Abraham Lincoln — I understood "positioning." Viktor Frankl — I grasped "self-identification."
After retirement, I encountered Charlie Munger — and recognized the structural logic within myself.
After completing CYSM, I unexpectedly discovered Wittgenstein. What resonates with me is not that he derived language philosophy in a study, but that he built it from lived experience. Yet his final destination was silence — "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent." He chose to release what could not be said.
My CYSM moves toward operation. Whatever cannot be fully spoken, I let the system verify. CYSM does not need to say everything clearly — it only needs to keep running under real constraints.
Wittgenstein chose silence. I chose operation. This is the most fundamental difference in temperament.
Not a transplant of ideas, but a convergence of structures. Different cultural paths, arriving at a similar engineering-philosophical logic under real constraints.
In addition, he used language analysis and logical critique. I use engineering modeling and system maintenance.
His output was clarity of thought. Mine is the stability of the system.
He paid the price of a lifelong struggle with language and mental exhaustion. I use AI assistance to avoid excessive rumination and prevent my system from collapsing.
I simply spent sixty years turning that logic into a tree that can be publicly verified.
The order of these encounters was not destiny, but causal alignment — each one a signal that emerged naturally at a specific stage of my life system's evolution.
Part VI: System Maintenance Notes (On Patience and Failure)
- Lessons from 1994: Recording the system crash caused by haste.
- Calibration in 2024: Recording the natural closed loop of AI learning after adapting to its inherent patterns.
These two life experiences illustrate that the reliability of a system is never guaranteed by "predicting storms," but by daily maintenance across four dimensions.
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