I think running is a great way to start your day. I would know, I just did it today! My Primary School friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go jogging at the Lakeside Park. There’s this new (ok maybe not so new) park at the Lakeside area (Lakeside MRT), part of the ongoing process to link up all the parks in Singapore. Hence there’s running and cycling tracks built there.

So I agreed and I went down. We ran from the start, then into Chinese Garden and ran to Japanese Garden before looping back to Chinese Garden and my friend wanted to climb the 7 Story Pagoda. For a moment I thought he wanted to run up there, and I was bracing myself for it. Then, at the foot of the Pagoda, he said “Yes we made it”. Oh. Haha. Thankfully we didn’t run up because I think that is quite sick and we were quite tired. I am not sure what’s the distance I ran, but I doubt it’s very long. Perhaps we should increase the distance next time.

But I must say it felt good. It’s nice to run with a friend too. We walked out from Chinese Garden, and he bought a drink. I didn’t bring money, so I didn’t get any. But I tell you, it felt simply shiok when I returned home and drank juice. Even juice tastes super shiok. Next time I will bring money and get an isotonic drink to replenish my salts.

The best thing about a run is the shower. A nice long warm shower for me (maybe you would like it cold) really makes me happy.

But I have no idea why, after a run, I would feel disciplined and want to work. For the past few days I have been slacking and not working. My target for launching the second version of NextTutor is tomorrow, but I am afraid I cannot meet the target. But latest would be this week I guess. For now, I have to work!

“How Starbucks Saved My Life” is a real story of Michael Gates Gill written by himself, in short, something like an autobiography in the form of a story. It’s about how Michael has gone from a huge salary in a successful advertising firm to nothing at all. At the same time, he had an affair and got divorced, and his life just seem totally screwed.

He got a way out of the whole mess when an African American came up to him when he was drinking his coffee at Starbucks, and asked him, “Would you like a job?”. Although he is a white man, Michael said “Yes” and an interview took place.

The story is about how he started off from nothing, and then becoming Starbuck’s partners (which is the better name of workers) in one of Starbucks many stores. From being a wonderful cleaner at Starbucks to challenging his fear of the cashier counter, from calling out the drinks in correct order to making the drinks himself, Michael learnt many life lessons and became a happier person, even though he isn’t earning as much compared to when he was at the advertising firm.

He learnt to overcome his fear of counting money and went from 5 dollars loss at the end of the day to a few cents of loss. He learnt some customer relations, that you never deny anyone the toilet, whether he or she is a Starbucks customer or not, or chase anyone away during closing time. Through his chats with customers when he is at the cashier counter, he made many new friends and enjoyed the daily chats as he sees them everyday and knows what coffee they want, decaf or not.

It’s a story of how he picked his life up together, and even managed to get his children to forgive him and come to see him at the store. Eventually he became a Coffee Master and he gets to brew coffee once every week and give free samples of brewed coffee to anyone walking by any Starbucks store. Coffee Masters have to be trained and they have to be able to be really good with the different versions of coffee, the taste, their histories, etc.

In short, this books tell us how Starbucks key principles and treatment to partners and customers alike are lessons we should all learn in life. I guess that is the reason why there are so many Starbucks books written about its management and policies.

This is a great book to read. Trust me.

More Links:
CBS News
Buy From Amazon

How long will you wait for your ad earnings cheque to arrive? 1 week? 1 month? 2 months? Well, to me, the best would be to get the cheque within 1 month. After all, we have to give a little time for the staff to do the processing. But two months?

I understand that it seems to be the norm for most people who are cashing out their ad earnings, but it is pretty frustrating to know that they are grossly inefficient in their job. I’ve been talking about Nuffnang and how they don’t seem to listen or respond quickly to customer satisfaction. But now the problem is Advertlets take their own bloody sweet time to pay me my ad earnings.

That’s not the main problem though. I just wish that I can at least know when my cheque will arrive. Making me wait this long (since 4th of May), and the whole status is listed as ‘Unpaid’ doesn’t make my life easier. Sometimes you want to get a little money to spend, or satisfy a particular craving, but at this rate my craving will probably end before the money arrives. In Advertlets, there is supposedly different statuses like processing, and according to their website, processing takes 1 – 2 months, to determine click fraud and stuff. But my status is still at ‘Unpaid’. It’s not even processing! Should I be waiting for another 2 months? That’s totally inefficient! I really hope there’s a good explanation for all these, after all, i’m not the first person to think the duration is too long.

Many people have complained, and I guess when you see that your customer is not satisfied, you should do something to check. There is not much checking needed for me for click fraud. Hell, most of my earnings are through visits and not clicks anyway.

So what if their company is from Malaysia? I think it’s time for them to decide if Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble. If Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble, set up a Singapore office to process the cheques faster. Hell we can even go down and collect the cheque and save on postage fees.

Seriously, I think the only credible ad agency amongst the 3 is Blog2U. So far I have not received any ads through their auto-accept system, but I’ve seen people having ads run. However, I have gotten reviews chances from them, and their representative Shirley is really nice and polite. The best thing is that they process the money quick and by bank transfer. The money is fast, the service is good, I think the other two companies should learn from them. Perhaps they do not have such a big customer base or publisher base, but I will choose them over the other two anytime because what matters to me is myself. I guess as long as a company demonstrates that I am important to them, I will stick to their company. It makes perfect sense right?

So Advertlets, how long do you want me to wait before my status even proceeds to ‘processing’? Are they trying to wait till the exchange rates change? It makes no sense.

Nodame Cantabile is a romantic comedy and I really recommend people to watch it. For starters, this is one of the rare times in which I remember the lead character’s names. In certain cases like Galileo, I seem to not be able to recall the character’s names.

There are two leading characters, the first being Nodame, which is short for her real name, Noda Megumi. (See I remember even the full name). Nodame’s ambition is to be a kindergarten teacher and she is in the piano division in the music academy. She composed a “fart song” for her future students. Who the hell wants their kids to learn a fart song, I don’t really know.

The second is Chiaki-senpai, where senpai just means senior. Nodame is Chiaki’s junior, so she calls him Chiaki-senpai. Chiaki’s dream is to go to Europe to be a professional conductor. However when he returned from Vienna when he was young, there had been an emergency landing and he has an aeroplane phobia since then. Hence he is unable to fulfil his dreams because he can only stay in Japan.

The whole drama is a manga adaptation, so be prepared for manga style things happening like Nodame getting whacked and flying a huge distance before hitting a big rock.

The whole drama is about Nodame’s love for Chiaki and how he eventually “accepted” her love for him. It shows how Nodame helped Chiaki overcome his fear of planes, and eventually Chiaki is able to fly to Paris to further his studies as a conductor. It also shows how strong Nodame’s love for Chiaki is, because Nodame decided to immerse herself in music more and even attended competitions for him, something she said she will never do. In a way, she is giving up on her kindergarten teacher dream by working hard. (She has natural talent at piano also).

There is this character called Stresseman (Hope I spelled it correctly), who’s got to be one horny ah pek. But he is actually the Maestro, one of the superb conductors around the world. He’s super lame because he keeps going to parties and immense himself in the company of female escorts. He also likes reading Japan’s Magazines, the kind where skimpy clothing rule.

There are two episodes of SP to be watched after you complete the 11 episode drama. But that’s for another post. I give this drama 8.5/10. I enjoyed laughing at it. Seriously.

I’ve always wondered why I chose to study Electrical Engineering in NUS. Why Engineering? Why not Medicine? Or Law? Or Arts and Social Sciences? Or Mathematics, since I’m supposed to be better at it than my sciences? Well I know for sure that my lousy grades cannot get me into medicine or law, but if I had superb grades, would I have chosen them? I guess not.

Then I guess, it has to be a little of a preference for Engineering, albeit subconsciously. I mean, when I was in my first year, I had totally no idea why I was in Engineering, but I guess now I am happy to be in Engineering, and even in Electrical Engineering, which the newspapers claim to be one of the more unpopular ones last year (my batch) since lesser people applied for EE.

But I think Engineering’s great. For me, I have no passion in wanting to stitch people up, to save lives, nor do I have the zest to defend a client in court. The other faculties, well, I have no idea what I will become if I enrolled there, so the passion is definitely zero.

I think I love technology. Although the fact is that technology rendered my 130++ discs of blank cd-r useless (since people use a thumb drive instead now), improvements to technology is a wonderful thing, because it improves the lives of people. In the past there wasn’t air con, but there is now and air con is helping many people sleep today in Singapore when the weather gets freaking hot and humid.

Computer’s are also getting smaller and better. I forgot whose law states something like this: Technology doubles itself within 18 months. Supposedly refering to computer parts improving (like 256mb of ram to 512) every 18 months. Our handphones are getting smarter too. My Nokia phone (I know this is stale news) is flexible such that I can install applications on it. Now, I can even connect to my home or school’s wireless network and surf the net when I’m alone.

I’m sure there are many phone function you can tell me. Things like Mp3 (will this bring about Creative’s gradual loss of sales?) players being incorporated into phones, and even cameras. Technology is improving and is helping the lives of many people.

I want to be there doing something. Creating a new technology that helps people improve their lives. Perhaps it’s not as great an improvement as saving someone’s life, or getting their ass hurled out of jail, but any slight improvement, even the enjoyment of listening to Mp3, a luxury, is something I want to do.

These few days I have also thought of what I would like to learn in my few years of university. I am not sure which modules to study to learn this, but I will find out. I want to learn to control my electronic circuits using computers, and the electronic circuit can control something else.

Today I watched a re-run of “我是创新王” and the Ngee Ann Poly students did this electronic device that stops a baby’s pram from going downslope when the mother’s hands are not on the pram. I think this is great, but I want to go one step further. I know there are smart refrigerators now, where you have this computer screen in front of the fridge, and it can even tell you which foods are expiring, or low in quantity. I think that’s great, and when it becomes cheaper it can help everyone in their lives.

That’s my direction. One day, I hope to be able to talk to everyone about the latest gadgets that I’m helping to make, and hopefully, that day will come.

Taken from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/comics/archive.pl (June 15th Comic)

Don’t you think that is rather true? Click on the image to see the whole comic. The image is too large to fit in the blog properly. I mean, you can be a great stuntman when you are alone with yourself, but people won’t recognize you for it because no one ever seen it. But if you are down on your luck, a certain unlucky event can give people the wrong impression of you. In this case, people will think you are clumsy.

Sometimes all it takes is for something bad to tarnish your reputation. A clean politician embroiled in a scandal that was created to cause a bad image of him will ruin his reputation and career forever. No matter what you have done before that, people will always remember the bad things that happened. Take for example Edison Chen. I don’t even listen to his songs or watch his movies, but he’s the idiot who took the sex photos. There you go. Bad names stick.

But the main point really is, nobody knows how we feel deep down. We may have the purest of intentions, but things may go wrong. This is always the case. You feel like doing good for something, but a certain misunderstanding causes you to seem like you’re doing bad. Or you may be stressed out and momentarily confused, and something you accidentally do, may cause people to have a bad impression of you forever.

But should it be the case? Should we judge people like that, based on one event? Or should we only have the right to judge a person only if we know him fairly well and understand his character? For all you know, that particular guy down the road didn’t mean to accidentally spill his drink on your favourite shirt. Before you condemn him to the lowest of levels, perhaps, we should be more forgiving of certain faults?

We are truest when we are alone, and we understand ourselves better. We know our intentions, but other’s don’t. All we can do is to hope people don’t judge you for one event but what you did for a whole lifetime. All we can do is to make sure we don’t judge people for one event but what they did for a lifetime. That, is perhaps the beginning of a better world.

Got this in an email from a friend, I got to say, these photos look very suggestive. Haha. I wonder who did all these. Enjoy!

Now give them some love, won’t you?

Reading today’s papers make me feel that the government is right in one thing, and that is not everything is solved by the price mechanism. However, the funny thing is, one ministry think this way, but the other does not?

The article today speaks about why the government does not want to subsidise oil in the wake of the rising oil prices worldwide. Our Minister says that “cutting the duty of about 40 cents” “would send the wrong signal to consumers about the real price of oil”. Hmm. It makes perfect sense.

I quote:

“Subsidising oil will not be right as it would encourage consumers to use more oil, which would drive up the price even more. We want to make sure that we pay the correct price for oil and tackle the problem in a sustainable way.”

This involves changing lifestyles and habits by car-pooling, using public transport, or just turning off lights and air-conditioning at home when not needed.

I think this is great. When we come up with policies, we need to make sure the factors that does not involve price are taken care off. In this case, it would be great if we can save money by changing our own life styles isn’t it? The government will then have to decide on policies to make it more attractive to car-pool and use public transport.

However, recently in the history of the past few months, our transport ministry has been rather short-sighted. We keep seeing more ERP gantries being put up. We see more ERP gantries raising their “prices”, or the fees that they charge when we go under them and the stupid unit goes “beep!”.

So why are we still talking about solving congestion using prices? Is there no other way? We have to give them some credit because some plans are underway to make public transports more “ridable”, but if only they can come up with non-price policies as enthusiastic as they erect more gantries to charge money, then Singapore will improve.

In fact, did I recall the minister saying that ERP is there to charge for the pollution?

What I am trying to say is, there are more things that can be done other than raising ERP gantries and fees. The amount of news about new ERP gantries seem to be more than any type of news in the newspapers these days. There was once I thought about having wonderful maps linked to GPS units and subsidise car owners to install them. These smart GPS units will take into consideration the congestion of the area and give alternative suggestions to the road that once can travel to avoid congestion. I wonder if anyone ever thought about that, because it would be a great technology to have, and people will use them because we do not want to get stuck in traffic jams.

Well, it does seem that it is ok if policies are created to generate revenue, but not ok if policies are created to use revenue? That’s actually a joke, so don’t take this sentence too seriously. Just food for thought.

Just yesterday I went to my Primary School Chinese Teacher’s house for a pschool clique gathering. I haven’t seen them in about a year or so, and there have been changes. The guys are all now in university except for one. Qingbin has ORDed, and is taking ACCA. Some people get attached. Two people are flying overseas, one to Beijing and one to Australia. It’s supposed to be come catch up session, but strangely enough I always feel oddly weird.

I guess I have been feeling that way since a long long time ago. I mean, when they reminisce about the old times, somehow I don’t remember them. Perhaps I have been too low a profile. Or I don’t make friends outside my class. But some memories seem to just be forgotten, or actually, to be brutally honest, I wasn’t there in that memory.

Even after we graduated from primary school and go forth to our new lives, the others seem to be able to connect more about past primary schoolmates who are in their respective new schools, or about some guy from one school whom everyone else knows. Hence there is always conversation really, just that I wasn’t included because I don’t know anyone. Or perhaps it’s just the harsh truth. Hey I’m like the only one who ended up in express..and most of them went into the special stream. Somehow I just got detached.

It’s like I was sitting down at the table yesterday feeling lost about all the ongoing conversations. Even conversations that’s not about the old times, I feel lost too. NTU people started saying “Hey I always can’t see you around”. Yes, most of my friends are in NTU. Only two others are in NUS, one in Medicine (Eastern part of NUS), one in Law (in another campus totally). I’m in the western part. We don’t meet, period. That’s the sad truth. But back to the main point, I can’t participate in the conversation, and neither can I say hey I don’t see the rest of the NUS people in school too, because that would be a dumb statement. So I end up feeling lost and just keep quiet. I suppose that’s how it had been last time and that’s how it will be in the future.

If you ask me if this friendship is important to me, I won’t know how to answer. For one, it is really tough to have everyone coming back, and most other people don’t meet up with their primary school friends at all. Just like how I have never seen my secondary school friends before. But to face the reality, we meet once a year, and that meeting probably won’t hurt if it didn’t take place. In a way, though it is something to be treasured, somewhat this friendship is (almost) non existent in nature. Perhaps it has come to a point where it’s just friends de-evolving into mere acquaintances? It’s like I don’t enjoy the company as much as I used to in the past. I just felt a little awkward, almost clumsy.

Friends aside, I’m having trouble with my own pet project. I mean, I created NextTutor last year whilst waiting for admission into NUS. I now have about 270 profiles of tutors, and about 5-7 assignments of which half of them were since February or March. In a way it’s like an utter failure. When my 3 month holiday started, I told myself that I am going to revamp everything. I improved on the programming, as well as the look and feel of the site. I tried adding in new features, and improving existing ones. But somehow within me, something is telling myself, “You can’t do this alone”. And I agree too. It’s too tiring doing this alone, especially when there is not much results. I can’t say no results, because the ad sense money, although slow, is just enough to pay for my hosting fees.

I don’t know if I should continue. I told myself I should launch the tried and tested new version by 1st of July, but I’m not so sure if I’m going to complete it by then. I once had grand plans, to incorporate a new section and hopefully it will gain more traffic. But I’m just tired.

I want to start something up, but all I know is web programming. HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. The problem is it is easy to pick up, but hard to master. The standard that I am in, I can’t do freelance work. I can’t do anything at all actually. What can I do? I dream, or actually my friends and I once dreamt of starting our own business, but the partnership fell through because we can’t find anything to do, or anything that’s feasible and approved by everyone. It was an enriching process, but one with no results.

I suppose I can take my experience in setting up NextTutor and set up some web development company that helps small companies do sites, but am I qualified? Working alone is hard. Sometimes, how I wish I have a bunch of friends who are interested in this and can work with me. Working with friends is perhaps more fun than working alone, but I don’t have close friends in that category. Perhaps I will just continue with NextTutor for fun.

I don’t know what I am doing actually. Feeling a little demoralized.

I’ve always dreamed of starting my own business, or at least something small whilst in University. I keep seeing success stories of how some undergraduates got together, started something up, and earned their pocket money. To me, how much I can earn is not a problem. I want to be able to do something, and at least earn a bit of pocket money. However, I have to admit that I wasn’t very successful.

If you ask me, I probably have a million reasons why I wasn’t successful. Have you ever found yourself wishing to be an entrepreneur but for some reason or another, you have had obstacles and problems lying in front of you from time to time? I guess I could say I was lazy, and I lack help. Starting up NextTutor is easy, all I need is to learn how to do PHP programming, but maintaining it and having activity is difficult. If you are aiming on a larger scale, say selling clothings online, or providing a service to a thousand people, you are probably going to meet up with some problems.

If you have already thought up on the problems that you are going to face being an entrepreneur, take another step now and think, if you have the authority, what would you do to help yourself become an entrepreneur? Would you get the government to create a fund for aspiring entrepreneurs? Or make it easy to be mentored by existing entrepreneurs?

Now if you have at least an idea of what you can do to aid yourself, then you are on the way to winning S$1000! This is because ACE is organizing this contest titled “Why Not?”.

The idea is this: Everyone, and I really mean everyone can participate in this contest if you have new ideas on how to:

1. increase Singapore’s attractiveness as a place for business
2. nurture entrepreneurs of tomorrow
3. encourage innovative and competitive businesses

Any one of the three will do. Just choose one of the three questions and give your opinion and idea, and you can stand to win a sum of money. In fact, having some cash would make it easier to do many things. For example, if I have the money, I would at least be able to print more fliers and pay people to distribute them to gain awareness of my own website! Hence, why not give your idea now?

The prizes are as follows:

Prizes
1st Prize: S$1,000 Cash
2nd Prize: S$500 Cash
3rd Prize: S$300 Cash

5 Consolation Prizes: S$100 Cash each

So how are they judging on your idea? What do you need to fulfil so that you can WIN? Your idea must be innovative, and it takes up 50% of the score. Do not say things like “Give more money”, because anyone can do that. Your idea must be feasible, and this takes up 25% of the score. If you say things like “Get the minister mentor to personally mentor every aspiring entrepreneur in Singapore”, you are probably going to fail, and badly too. The last criteria is that, if your proposal is implemented, whether the impact of the change will be good enough. That’s 25% too. Now if you are going to say that slapping young children to make them realize the benefits of entrepreneurship, I am going to slap you. Whilst the impact is great (pun intended. Impact of your hand on their faces), this is not the kind of impact they would want.

After reading all these, are you up for the challenge? Can you think of the unique idea that is going to win S$1000? Well if you win the money, and you applied because you read this here, do give me a comment, I’ll be happy for you and I will expect some commission ok?.

I will also try my hand at winning some money. After all, even winning the consolation prize is good money. (Can pay for my web-hosting! )

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