In Chinese cooking, a basic chilli oil is often made with chillies, oil and Sichuan peppercorns. However, most households would usually add other ingredients such as garlic, onions, scallions, star anise and sesame seeds. By adding a variety of ingredients, it could bring out an even more flavourful sauce.

For those in Malaysia who would rather purchase their own chilli oil than make their own, high-quality chilli oil can be found easily at Chinese Muslim restaurants. Alternatively, you could get it online via most online platforms e.g. Lazada and Shopee.

Pro Tip: You could get a bottle of chilli oil at our Shopee store too! Ours contain no preservatives, MSG or any nasties, and is suitable for vegetarians.

Managed to get a bottle of chilli oil?

Read more to know how to use it in everyday cooking

Use it as a dipping sauce

We absolutely love to use our chilli oil as a dipping sauce and we always have it with dumplings, wontons, dimsum, even spring rolls! Just add black vinegar, ginger, or soy sauce for variety. And if we may add, one of our customers added chilli oil to mayonnaise, so you could try that out too!

Pro-Tip: Try this Dumpling Dipping Sauce recipe by The Curious Chickpea!

Drizzle it on omelettes

The ultimate eggs game changer! Whether you like your eggs: scrambled, over easy, poached, soft boiled, hard boiled, baked, sunny side up; in an omelette, quiche, or frittata, drizzling chilli oil on it makes it a whole lot more fun to eat. Plus it gives you a bit of heat and that extra splash of colour!

Pro-Tip: You could step it up a notch by adding the chilli oil to your eggs! Try this Scrambled Eggs With Chili Oil Recipe for that twist.

Make egg fried rice

Up your egg fried rice game! Why make regular egg fried rice when you can make a spicy version? Substitute your regular cooking oil with chilli oil and fry the rice like how you normally do. This way, you can get all the spiciness without having to add extra chillies in your fried rice!

Make aglio e olio

Need a quick pasta dish? Make a big bowl of aglio e olio! Use chilli oil instead of olive oil to make this classic Italian pasta dish! No extra dried chilli flakes needed. Tasty, spicy and a super quickie wholesome dish!

Pair it with potatoes

Who loves to eat baked potatoes? We do! We often make baked potatoes on days when we want to eat something simple. Adding chilli oil just makes the dish all the more appetising. Quick and supper easy to make, have the potatoes on its own or as a side dish.

Let us know which is your favourite way to enjoy a good helping of chilli oil! More great ways to be added soon, so remember to bookmark this page or follow us on our social media for updates.

When we first started our food business, we started by selling online. Rather than listing ourselves on a marketplace, what we did was we opened social media accounts for our business and just did random posts. Orders started to come in and we thought, hey! We’re on to something!

A month later, we got our first gig. We opened up a pop-up dumplings stand at a state-run marathon event. It was our first time selling to our customers face-to-face and the experience was nerve-wrecking. Honestly, we weren’t really the sales & marketing type and boy did we struggle.

Did that experience stop us? Not at all! Not long after, we joined a couple of pasar malam (night market) and pasar tani (farmer’s market). The pasar malam ran at night (obviously) and the pasar tani was in the morning. It was probably about a couple of months down the road when we eventually got our place at Arked Angkasa, UTM Skudai. We ran our business there for about 2 years and Covid-19 happened.

That was when we made the decision to pivot our business model and go back to selling online, albeit in a more effective and organised manner. Alhamdulillah, the business has been doing well and we’re still going strong.

The question now is would we go back to our place at UTM? Well, we’re fiddling with the idea. But since the students aren’t back yet, there’s still time for us to deliberate over it.

Now that’s a super long introduction, ain’t it?

Today’s blog post is about the many interesting businesses and concepts in Malaysia. However, we’re narrowing the scope to you guessed it, Chinese Muslim businesses. Let’s start with the first one, shall we?

Go Online & The World Is Your Oyster

Sell your stuff on your dedicated website, social media channels, e-marketplaces or just among your network! When done right, this is by far the fastest and easiest way to get your products known. Though bear in mind that you need to be internet savvy and it’d be great if you’re equipped with the following skillsets: SEO writing, copywriting, graphics designing, video editing, photography, e-commerce.

Don’t have the skills? You could learn as you go along or you could hire people to do it for you. We took the road less travelled and learnt by ourselves. In fact, we’re still learning. Current favourite e-marketplaces are Shopee and Lazada.

Chinese Muslim businesses on online marketplaces: [MY] Ikhwan Ng’s Halal Delight, [MY] Kaijia Muslim Food

Join Your Local Pasar Malam & Pasar Tani [Night Market & Farmer’s Market]

As far as we know, some pasar malam is run by the local authorities, private companies and NGOs. So at our place, the local authorities are the Johor Bahru City Council (Majlis Bandaraya Johor Bahru) and the Municipal Council of Bandaraya Iskandar Puteri (Majlis Bandaraya Iskandar Puteri). On the other hand, the pasar tani is run by FAMA (Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority) – a statutory body under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries.

Applying for the license is fairly easy. All you have to do is to submit the application form, along with supportive documents to the respective authority. Based on our findings, the fees for pasar malam and pasar tani run by local authorities are relatively inexpensive as compared to the ones run by private companies and NGOs.

Build A Physical Presence With Brick & Mortar

The traditional way of doing business. Not much explaining is needed. Once you’ve identified a suitable place to establish your food business, just sign the agreement and you’re good to go. Some places fetch a higher rental price, some places are more affordable. Some places have higher footfall, some places the footfall is pretty much non-existent. Commitments are high – rental costs, overhead costs, utilities costs etc. Hence, proper due-diligence is needed before you get into this.

One way of making sure you’re not going way too deep is to just start small at first. Rent a small unit, keep your costs low or at a minimum. Once you’re in a more established and comfortable position, you can begin to scale-up. Time to look for a better, bigger, yet still manageable place.

Chinese Muslim businesses with their own outlets: Mohd Chan, Amber Chinese Muslim Restauran, Salam Noodles

Fancy Food On Wheels? Get A Food Truck!

One of of our friends own food truck and we have to say we sometimes feel envious of him. Maybe it’s the whole childhood memory of running after the ice-cream truck. Maybe it’s the memory of buying snacks and tidbits from the Chinese uncle’s groceries-on-wheels truck. Memories aside, a food truck is the epitome of convenience. Everything is loaded in the truck and business starts the moment you park it at your designated place. Plus it helps in marketing too since you’re driving allover the place. People are bound to see your truck and your brand.

Would we ever get a food truck of our own? The answer is yes, but that’s purely our childhood memories speaking out loud. Our current business model is not catered for a food truck, but hey, things can change.

Events, Parties, The Works Pop-Up Stalls!

Most events would have food pop-up stalls and this is a super way to meet the crowd. What kind of events are we talking about? Concerts, exhibitions, weddings, sports days, marathons, school graduations, art festivals, cosplays, in short, if the event has the potential to bring in a crowd, it’s probably worth a second look. Better still to join events that bring in your targeted customers.

Examples of events we joined in the past were the Chinese New Year Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Since we’re selling Chinese Muslim food, it makes sense for us to join Chinese-related festivals to spread awareness about Chinese Muslim. We’ve also joined Ramadan events because our target customers also include Muslims who are looking for Chinese Muslim food.

That wraps up our blog post for today! Do you know of any other interesting Chinese Muslim businesses and concepts in Malaysia? Let us know in the comments section. Have a good day!

We’ve been in the food business for quite a bit and we know how hard it can be to get customers. It can get a lot more difficult if you’re the new kid on the block, with not much experience and connections. However, once you get that first customer, you’d somehow rather develop a a mix of emotions while waiting for the next customer. There’s excitement, there’s anxiousness. Can’t quite describe the feeling.

One thing’s for sure, the moment you have customers it’s important for you to take care of them and make sure they’re getting their bang for the buck. That makes a lot of sense since they’re paying for your service and products. Another reason is if they’re happy with you, they might recommend you to their circle of influence. That free word-of-mouth marketing could make a huge difference to your business outcome, not just for the day, but for many years to come.

Just how do you take care of your customers?

We think you’d probably figure it out by now that one of the ways is by appreciating them. In today’s post, we will list down five ways on how you could take your customers’ experience to the next level and make them feel like they’re the most amazing people in the whole wide world. Okay, okay, that may be a tad bit over the top, but we’re sure you get our point.

1. Discount Codes, Vouchers or Coupons

Everybody loves a good discount. Every now and then, send your customers a discount code, voucher or coupon. Could be for their next purchase, free shipping, or anything that floats your customers’ boat. Here’s an example from Shopee Malaysia.

Pro-Tip: Some examples would be you could give a new product launch discount code, a birthday discount voucher, or a discount coupon for a fast-selling item.

2. Complimentary Gifts

As much as people love discounts, people love free items too! Now, if you’re in the food business, the best complimentary item would have to be a small pack or bottle of one of your products. Feeling generous? Give more than one item!

Pro-Tip: The complimentary gift could be a new product, a slow-moving product, or just anything that you want more people to buy from you.

3. More Free Gifts, But Still Related To Your Business

Maybe your product isn’t the kind that can be given away in small quantities. What’s the next best solution? Well, instant noodles businesses can give pocket tissues or a pair of chopsticks. These are handy gifts, considering you could always use a pack of tissues or chopsticks when you eat instant noodles. In fact, your customers could use the gifts in other situations too.

Pro-Tip: Give a free gift that is related to your business, so that whenever your customers use it, it could remind them of your business.

4. Even More Free Gifts, Totally Unrelated To Your Business

In this case, just about anything under the sun can be given as a free gift. We’ve lost count of how many times we received free dishware just because we bought some washing detergent. We’ve even gotten a face mask for buying a hotpot soup base.

Pro-Tip: We recommend giving something practical or that can be used often.

5. The Gift of Friendship

Sounds cheesy, but this is the real deal. Nothing, and we have to emphasize this again, nothing beats the gift of friendship. Over the years we’ve become friends with quite a number of our customers. Some of them have been with us since the first year we started our business and they’re still supporting us now. There are no words to describe how thankful and grateful we are of them.

Pro-Tip: Ask their well-being, send them festive greetings, in short, be a friend.

Have you been giving gifts to your customers? We’d love to know more about it. Let us know in the comments section!

The infamous bakkwa. It has so many names. Some call it dried meat, some call it sliced meat, some even call it barbecued meat. In case you’re not familiar with it, bakkwa is traditionally made of pork, beef or mutton. These days, it has become much easier to find halal bakkwa made of halal beef or chicken in Malaysia.

How does it taste like?

Well, we love the sweet and slightly salty version. Haven’t tried other flavours though. The texture of the bakkwa in our opinion is similar to jerky and it’s nice to eat it as it is or with bread. Sometimes we cut it into smaller pieces and add it to our fried rice.

Wait, you mentioned there’s halal bakkwa in Malaysia?

Yeap! And this is where we move on to the part where we highlight how or where you can find halal bakkwa. We did some digging around and found not one, not two, but five places where you can get your halal bakkwa fix!

Enough chit-chatting. Let’s get started, shall we?

Ikhwan Ng’s Halal Delight

A Chinese Muslim seller who provides authentic Chinese traditional foods which is certified Halal by JAKIM.

This is where we get our bakkwa supply. We bought from Brother Ikhwan once and we just stuck to buying bakkwa from him. Perhaps now that we know there are other sellers out there, we should give them a chance and try their bakkwa too.

Available products: Ikhwan Ng Halal Delight-Ayam Salai/Halal Bakkwa/Dried Meat:Manis Madu ORI 1KG, Ikhwan Ng Halal Delight-Ayam Salai/Halal Bak Kwa/Dried Meat : Manis Madu ORI 500G, Ayam Salai/Halal Bakkwa – Black Pepper 500gm, and Ayam Salai/Halal Bakkwa – Black Pepper 1KG.

Related: [MY] Ikhwan Ng’s Halal Delight, [MY] Ikhwan Ng’s Ready To Eat Halal Bakkwa, [MY] Mooncake Ikhwan Ng’s Halal Delight and News: Ikhwan berdakwah melalui ‘bakkwa’.

LoLiLi’s Delights (HALAL food)

Traditional Chinese Food by the 2 Chinese Muslims; Bakkwa, Bakchang, Lupcheong, etc

A family member tried their bakchang before and said it was pretty legit. Maybe we should try their bakkwa one of these days.

Available products: HALAL Chicken Bakkwa (SLICED MEAT) PRE-ORDER FOR 10 FEB and HALAL CHICKEN Bakkwa (COIN-shaped) PRE-ORDER FOR 10 FEB.

Ikea

Ikea has halal bakkwa? No kidding! Apparently they started having it last year and we were totally clueless about it. If you’re unable to head to Ikea to get a box of their BBQ Chicken Dried Meat, you could probably order via the Shopee link below.

Available products: IKEA BBQ CHICKEN Dried Meet (HALAL Bak Kwa) {READY STOCK}

Related: IKEA Brings Back Halal Bak Kwa, Pineapple Rolls, And More For Chinese New Year! and Make your home feel extra-festive with IKEA

Dendeng Cik Midah

Oh hey, dendeng! We never really thought that dendeng is similar to bakkwa, but that’s probably because the dendeng that our family makes looks and tastes nothing like bakkwa.

We’ve never tried Dendeng Cik Midah, so do let us know if it’s remotely similar.

Available products: Dendeng Bak Kwa HALAL (LEMBU) 200g – (Original / Spicy / Honey) Dendeng Singapore Kahwin Bak Kwa by Dendeng Cik Midah, [SALAI / SMOKE] Dendeng Bak Kwa HALAL (LEMBU / BEEF) – Dendeng Singapore Kahwin Bak Kwa by Dendeng Cik Midah, Dendeng Bak Kwa HALAL (AYAM) 200g – (Original / Spicy / Honey) Dendeng Singapore Kahwin Bak Kwa by Dendeng Cik Midah, HALAL Dendeng Bak Kwa (Beef) 200g – Pedas Szechuan (Spicy) Dendeng Singapore Kahwin Bak Kwa by Dendeng Cik Midah and HALAL Dendeng Bak Kwa (Beef) 200g – Madu Tualang Asli (Honey) Dendeng Singapore Kahwin Bak Kwa by Dendeng Cik Midah.

Random Seller

And we found another halal bakkwa seller on Shopee. We’re pretty curious about it because the packaging looks amazing. Let us know if you’ve tried this too.

Available products: Halal Homemade Bak Kwa (daging salai)

That sums up our post for today. Have you bought your Chinese New Year gifts for family and friends yet? Well, you could consider giving them a pack of halal bakkwa. Trust us, they’ll love you for it.

We’re still here! Thought we’d do a quick post about our first week of Jan 2021. We’d most probably do this kind of posts on a monthly basis. Let’s just see how it goes, alright?

Kuala Lumpur Orders

A lot of things happened this week. One of it is we’ve been receiving orders from Kuala Lumpur buyers and we’ve been busy delivering those orders.

Chinese New Year Products

We’ve also been busy coming up with new Chinese New Year goodies. These are slated to hit the market mid January, insha’Allah.

Work With Us

Plus we’ve been working on the possibility of getting our products sold in a couple more places. Related: Our 21 for 2021 Bucket List

We’re still discussing on the technicalities and yes, we’re still on the lookout for more people who’d like to use or market our products.

Just contact us for deets and we’ll contact you soon for further discussions.

That’s about it!

Oh, One Last Thing…

Before we forget, pictured above is our Guoba Snacks packed in little cute containers.

These make great door gifts, wedding favours, party favours, and even corporate gifts! All you have to do is to tell us your needs and we’ll jazz it up accordingly.

That’s all the updates we have for Jan. Let us know how your first week of the year turned out for you!

It’s the last day of 2020! Admit it, you can’t wait for 2020 to end. As exciting as that sounds, we have something even more exciting to share. We bring you our top 10 stats!

Top 10 2020 Posts

1. The Ultimate List For Mee Tarik Restaurants In Malaysia
2. List: Chinese Muslim Restaurants In Negeri Sembilan
3. [MY] Lamb Shepherd Chinese Muslim Cuisine
4. [MY] Kedai IPOH IPOH AJERR
5. [MY] The Khan Mongolian Restaurant Halal Buffet BBQ Steamboat
6. List: Chinese Muslim Restaurants In Putrajaya & Cyberjaya
7. [MY] Botanica DIM SUM
8. [MY] Canning Heritage
9. List: Chinese Muslim Restaurants In Melaka
10. [MY] Chopsticks By Muhammad Oon

Finding it hard to believe that we published 132 posts throughout 2020. That’s a huge leap compared to the 42 we did in 2019. For 2021, we plan to publish 60 to 120 posts. Bring it on!

Top 10 2020 Countries

1. Malaysia
2. United States
3. Singapore
4. Indonesia
5. China
6. Pakistan
7. United Kingdom
8. Canada
9. Australia
10. Germany

Massive shout-out to all our readers! We can’t thank you enough for visiting our website and reading our posts. This means a lot to us and we’d definitely strive to create better content and increase our readership for the coming year.

Top 10 Search Terms

1. chopsticks oon ttdi
2. ikhwan ng
3. samir mee tarik
4. restoran china muslim serdang
5. lamb shepherd restaurant chinese muslim cuisine kuala lumpur
6. botanica dim sum balik pulau penang
7. chicken duck restaurant kota warisan
8. canning heritage
9. mee tarik warisan
10. assalamalekum 麻辣嗎

The choice of search terms are pretty legit, with nothing out of the ordinary. For a moment we thought we’d get some odd, quirky search terms.

Top 10 External Links

1. www.facebook.com
2. meetarik.com
3. shopee.com.my
4. www.wasap.my
5. homst.com.my
6. mohdchan.com.my
7. halaldelight.blogspot.com
8. puteripanpacific.com/kai-xuan-restaurant
9. klt.com.my/en
10. malaysiadimsum.com

Not bad. There’s definitely room for improvement. In retrospect, we plan to include more links in future posts.

That concludes our stats sharing for the year. Since there’s still a few more hours to go before we close the chapter for 2020 and give a warm welcome to 2021, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for supporting us this far and we hope you’d continue to support us for many years to come.

May the year 2021 bring you more love, success, happiness, and blessings. Stay motivated and hopeful even during the darkest days. Take care, stay safe & we’ll see you next year!

Let’s face it, we’re not really the type to come up with New Year’s resolutions. You can even say we’re the wing it type. We just go with the flow, improvise and learn to adapt to new realities. So what’s with this list? Why have we decided to come up with it for 2021?

To put it simply, we got inspired after reading Grethen Rubin’s ‘If You Don’t Want to Make a New Year’s Resolution, Consider Writing Your “21 for 2021” List‘ and Suraya’s ‘My 21 for 2021 List: Money, Work, Learning, Health, Relationship and Misc Projects Goals‘ posts.

Plus we thought, there’s no harm in trying it out. Maybe we can benefit from it and could eventually adopt it annually. A list would also mean we can keep track of things and look forward to achieving the next item on the list. It would also be fun to see what we can pull together and strive to accomplish by the end of 2021.

Without further ado, here’s our 21 for 2021 list.

Our Chinese Muslim Food Business

What we hope to accomplish to further improve our business efficiency and performance.

1. Produce 5 new products to be sold on our Shopee store
2. Write 5 to 10 SEO-focused blog posts a month for our website.
3. Form partnerships with 5 resellers and distributors for our products – Contact us here for deets!
4. Work on social media marketing.
5. Collaborate with food businesses – content creation, product development.
6. Complete and launch our festive products line.
7. Automate our small business.

Our Community – Family, Friends, Buyers, The Public

What we hope to give back to the community in return for their support and encouragement.

1. Continue to educate the public on Chinese Muslim food. Related: How To Know You Are In Love With Chinese Food?
2. Provide support to Chinese Muslim food businesses in their business endeavors. Related: Hello Al-Amin Xinjiang Muslim Restaurant!
3. Fulfil interviews on entrepreneurship.
4. Assist students in their entrepreneurship subject.
5. Gift in-kind gifts and donations on a monthly basis.
6. Teach and share simple Chinese food recipes. Related: Recipe: 酸辣凉拌黄瓜
7. Translate content in Chinese to English for easier understanding.

Our Personal Development

What we hope to achieve to become better versions of ourselves.

1. Read 10 books, reflect and apply.
2. Attend 2 courses and put the knowledge into practice
3. Increase our language proficiency – Malay, English & Mandarin Chinese.
4. Travel to the countryside once a month.
5. Grow our own food in our garden – from garden to table and back to the garden again.
6. Schedule family time at least once a week.
7. Automate our savings and investments.

Want To Make Your Own 21 For 2021 List?

Just do it! The number 21 may seem daunting at first, but once you’ve got it started, the ideas will come pouring in. Also, there’s no one way of doing it. Here are a few approaches you could choose to adapt:

1. The 21 for 2021 You List: A list that’s all about you – what you want to get out of your personal life, family & friends, studies, work, and/or your business.
2. The 21 for 2021 You’ve Had Enough Of List: A list based on things you’d like to stop doing, like a particular habit you’d like to quit, a behavior you’d like to work on, or paying off that debt.
3. The 21 for 2021 Giving Back List: A list of things you’d like to do for others. Simple things like opening the door for someone, paying a meal for a friend, or feeding a stray.
4. The 21 for 2021 Habits I want to Adopt List: A list of good habits – eat more vegetables, intermittent fasts, take regular walks, read more books, or track your expenses.
5. The 21 for 2021 I Got This List: A list of things you’d like to learn, like a new language, a new recipe, sewing, anything that you’ve always wanted to learn yet somehow never got to it.
6. The Ultimate 21 for 2021 Mix Of Everything List: Combine the previous 5 lists and create your own master list.

Our last tip is to write an achievable and manageable list. However, don’t fret if you don’t manage to achieve all 21 items. The whole idea lies in the process and the fact that you’ve tried your best at it. Enjoy the process of doing each item and reflect on your progress. The end result is a bonus.

Now there’s still a couple more days before we welcome 2021 and more than enough time for you to come up with your list. Once you’re done with it, share your list with us and don’t forget to link us back!

2020 didn’t quite turn out the way we expected it to be. Some had to face bigger challenges and obstacles compared to others, while some are able to overcome those challenges and come out far stronger than before. Then there are those who are still struggling to stay afloat.

Despite all this, it’s fair to say there are still many things that are worth celebrating. Before we welcome 2021, let’s take a little of our time to reflect on what are some of the things we can be thankful for.

We got out of our comfort zones

Taken from Reflecting on 2020: lessons learned in an extraordinary year, Lu-Lyn Chang, co-founder and chief marketing officer, Bray Leino Splash, Singapore said,

“Embrace the change, try something new. While the pandemic brought on many challenges, it also presented us with the opportunity to get ourselves out of our comfort zones to try new ways of working and playing. It was therefore a total delight to see our people rally together to go on ‘virtual walks’ as well as learning quickly how to conduct our first livestream event in China. This has really brought home that adage, ‘tough times don’t last, but tough people do’.”

Some of the new things we did was to open an online store and came up with products that could be sent via courier services. On a personal level, we took up gardening and online classes.

We took time to smell the flowers

In the 5 Lessons we can learn from Covid article, Anne Converse Willkomm, the Assistant Clinical Professor of the Department Head of Graduate Studies of Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel University wrote,

When the stay at home orders began, I noticed a number of posts on Facebook, friends commented, as did colleagues, “I’m hearing more birds chirping” or, “The sky seems much bluer.” We were forced to slow down and this allowed our brains to absorb the world around us. I don’t think there are more birds, although we do know that our worldwide collective stay-at-home order reduced carbon emissions by 17%. For some, the skies were clearer and bluer. My point is to take time to smell the flowers, enjoy the natural world around us, take it in, and let it sit with you. Perhaps in a small way, it can help us cope with the mental health effects of dealing with the coronavirus.

We can’t tell you how much we agree with this. The lockdown period gave us the chance to reconnect with nature and appreciate it better. We spent time in our garden and started noticing the birds and the little creatures. The air somehow felt fresher too. Now? We’re still spending time in the garden and it has become an activity that we look forward to doing each day, regardless how hectic our schedule can get.

We needed less stuff than we think

In her article Five Lessons to Remember When Lockdown Ends, Jill wrote,

It’s pretty clear that we don’t need so much stuff or as many conveniences as we’ve become accustomed to. The basic essentials—food, clean water, and good health, for example—are much more important than having a manicure or buying the newest computer. Given how many of these consumer items and activities negatively impact the health of the planet, it makes sense to rethink our priorities and consider skipping some to allow everyone to have the basics for survival.

Luckily, our well-being isn’t dependent on consumer products. Studies have found that kindness and generosity make us happier than pampering ourselves or buying ourselves stuff. It may be hard to believe; in fact, researchers often find that people underestimate the impacts of giving to others on their happiness.

But it’s true: We will likely be happier and create a healthier society if we can consume less and give more.

We absolutely agree with this! We noticed we were able to make do with what we have and this has definitely helped to keep our expenses in check. We’ve also been on the receiving end for so many things throughout these past few months and it brought us so much joy and happiness! We’ve recently started to give back and loving every bit of it.

We can adapt

An important point shared in the 4 Lessons learned during the Covid-19 crisis article,

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has been uncharted waters for the entire global community. Everyone, from governments and companies to individuals, has had to deal with a new reality and with an inevitable negative impact on the economy. While we have hit pause on most of our business-as-usual activities, we quickly adapted to the new reality in all aspects; as a brand, employer and service provider. We immediately activated a WFH policy for all Beat employees, we closed our Driver Centres, we helped local authorities and hospitals to transfer medical staff, we provided our passengers and drivers with resources and tips to protect themselves, we adapted our product to the local dynamic needs. 

Yes, yes, yes! Adapting takes time. Some are quick at it, some are still working on it. But at the end of it, we somehow rather will manage to adapt. That’s what makes us unique. Knowing that change is real and that come what may, we can find a way to adapt to the changes.

This will pass

Susan Guillory, from AllBusiness shared in the 5 Lessons Small Business Owners Should Learn From The Coronavirus Crisis,

I tell myself this every single day. Things suck right now for most of us. Many of us are stuck at home with kids who are climbing up the walls. We might not know how we’ll pay next month’s bills. We’re even limited in being able to get out and enjoy the great outdoors if it puts our health in jeopardy.

But this will be over soon. Think of those who survived the Great Depression. Or World War II. Or 9/11. Name your devastation, and they all have one thing in common: eventually things got better. Yes, the trauma and financial impact may live on longer, but we will survive this. We’ve just got to keep positive and know that good things are coming.

2020 will soon become another distant memory. It’ll be another topic of discussion that we’ll talk and reminiscent from time to time. The pain, the struggles, and the problems we had to face would eventually be a thing of the past. In time, we may speak lesser of it, or even forget it. Whatever you’re going through right now, know that the way forward is to keep moving forward. Take it a day, a moment at a time. Better things are waiting for you. Embrace it when it happen.

We’d love to know what are the lessons you’ve learned from 2020. Do share in the comments sections. As for 2021, let’s aim to be a little more kinder, compassionate, and thoughtful, shall we?