eBay restrictions on digital products

It seems that we can no longer deliver digital products online via eBay. That includes e-book and software products. You probably have to cut out a CD and mail it to your customer via postal services. We should expect complaints from existing eBay customers with regards to such rulings; restriction to distribution of digital contents via eBay. http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803.shtml#2008-03-24125416
It’s a pity though because eBay is one of my favorite sites where I get to sell or buy e-books online. The move by eBay to restrict digital product transaction via the net would no doubt in some way cause the price of digital products to increase as competition for online digital content business reduce dramatically with eBay out of the picture.

With the US currency heading towards south and inflation rate heading towards north, life is going to be more challenging and undetermined in the future. I have considerable stock options in the company I worked for. With the sliding US currency and the company stock price taking a hit, it might not be anytime soon before I could consider selling off the stocks to make reasonable profit, but till then it wont be anytime soon though before I do that. Will the US currency continue to slide? I doubt so unless the United States runs into another great depression. What goes up must come down; similarly what comes down must go up one of these days. US currency is at all time low, perhaps now might just be the time to start to invest in US currency. Warren Buffer can’t be right all the time I hope. He don’t like US currencyJJ

On the local MLM business frontline, it seems that Sunshine Empire Singapore business has been severely impacted by the recent Singapore CAD investigation. There are rumors that the self glorified founder is going to call it quit as far as the Singapore operation is concern and planning to move his so called greater than ‘Warren Buffet’ business to Hong Kong instead. So much so for the man who claim to be better than Warren Buffet and his money spinning Business Empire. Sunshine Empire has indeed seriously tarnished and given MLM a badname.

MLM is not a scam, just too bad that there are people who go around using MLM as an excuse to make quick profit at the expense of others.

Well on a lighter note, I love to collect small decorative items to beautiful my humble abode. There is no need to spend huge amount of money on expensive items to brighten up your home. I love to collect magnetic decorative stickers and labels. Most of these items cost just a few bucks. I make it a point to get some of these magnetic decorative items in different countries that I’ve been to. Apart from decorative effects, it reminds me of the wonderful places of the world that I’ve been to.Attached are photos of my humble kitchen, the sticky labels on my fridge looks good eh?

Cheers

Rich

Mixed signal

I commute to work daily using the public transport. Its routine to hear the following announcement in the train namely ‘ If you see any suspicious person or any suspicious items in the train, please press the emergency button to alert the train officials.’ There’s warning message sticker pasted besides the emergency stop push button though; the message? A person is liable to be fine up to 5 thousand dollars if he or she press the emergency stop button unnecessary.’ How about that? I wonder who would want to take the risk of been slap with a hefty fine for pressing the emergency stop button of the train even if he or she chance upon a suspicious looking character? I may find a person to be of questionable character while another person may think otherwise. One man’s meat is another man’s poison so to speak isn’t it?

On a lighter note, do you keep any plants at home, particularly if you are staying in HDB flats? I suppose not everyone is cut out to rear indoor plants successfully. Apart from having to ensure adequate sunlight and water, it is important to know the type of soil and the type of nutrients that the plant required. I must admit I am complete nerd when it comes gardening.

There’s one type of plant that require minimal attention and handling; a type of plant which I enjoy and have successful grown throughout the years though. What plant am I referring to? Of course it’s the mini or baby cactus. Cactus belongs to the member of the succulent plant family. Cactus is well suited to the hot and humid tropical environment such as Singapore. I once bought a dozen or more baby cactuses from Cameron Highland, Malaysia and brought them back to my apartment in Singapore. Within two weeks or so, tiny buds of flowers sprung up among the cactuses. It was truly a wonderful sight to behold.

How to earn big money

My HDB apartment is just a 2 minutes walk from the nearby Singapore Turf & Pool betting center. Over the weekend, people of all of different races, social background and age formed long queue to bet on horse racing and Toto lottery lucky draw. Some of these punters drive big expensive cars. I am not a regular 4D or Toto punter, occasionally when the winning prize is big; I will buy one or two tickets, not so much expecting to win but just for fun and besides, you never know if you are lucky enough just this once.
With rising inflation and tight job market, it seems harder to live a descent living and even much harder to retire comfortably. Yet seemingly surprising the number of millionaires in Singapore has risen to record high. For many, the only surest way to getting rich is by wining the lottery luck draw. Unless we are the CEO or big shots in a big company, we can almost forget of dreaming becoming rich and financially independent via our regular paycheck. Sure enough financial institutions such as market fund companies would like us to believe that we can beat the market by parting our hard earn money with those moron financial planners who make use of the money to brush up their financial investment skills.

So it boils down to the same big question of as to how we can earn big money. After spending over 20 years working in several companies, it is obvious that working harder is not the answer to making more money. Neither is taking huge risks the answer to making more money. I have read many self-improvement books, for instance, Rich Dad Poor Dad and books written by Anthony Robbins, Napoleon Hills and etc. We may get motivated for a while but as time goes by, reality sets in and we are back to where we are.
There are many fake Gurus around which only make money by telling others how to make money. You buy their books and they make money. In reality things are easier said than done. Never mind what these books says, after all, they are just words and the way I see it, hardly anyone who make it big in life and become successful ever attributed their success to any motivational books that they read. Most of those succeed has their own story to tell. There are those who believe that our destinies are sealed the day we were born. So say some people, that some are born to sit on the president chairs; some are born to sit on the electric chairs.


Here’s a great website with lots of good information that may be of useful to wide audiences, be it wealth, health or happiness.
www.earlytorise.com

Cheers

Gold investment

The US markets are in a heap of deep trouble. Unemployment is soaring. Large financial and investment institutions such as Merlyn Lynch, Citigroup and etc has loss billions of dollars due to the sub prime housing mortgage loan mess and the oil price hike and declining US currency further aggravate the situation.

Keeping US currency is no longer a wise decision at least in the short and mid term since there is no telling how further down the dollar will slide. Wall Street, once the pride of the US economic power no longer controls the world market. Oil and cash rich countries such as Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia to name a few have large stakes in some of the US largest financial institutions. Sovereign Wealth Fund better known as SWF of Singapore is one of the top four contributors has market capitalization amounts to trillions of dollars, and its impact on the US economy far surpass that of Wall Street.

US economic recovery is no-where in sight. President George Bush has finally acknowledged that the US economy is undergoing tough time. ‘Tough’ time is an understatement though since the economic situation facing America right now is different from the early 90s.

US debt to the World Bank amounts to trillions of dollars and couple with the need to pay pensions to the baby boomers, one wonders if the US has any magic formula to overcome this crisis. Furthermore, more and more countries are catching up with the US in terms of economic strength. China and India alone are schedule to overtake the US and Japan as the leading economic power by year 2015, that is of course if the US economy continues to falter.

The world has lost faith in the US currency; so much so that Venezuela has sign some oil contracts in Euros in the face of plummeting dollar. China may stand to potentially loss billions of dollars if its huge cash rich surpluses, notably in the form of US treasury and bonds value drop in the face of declining of US dollars. Gold prices have increased multiple folds the past several months. There are rumor that China may look to gold to offset and reduce risk of further declining US dollars impacting its reserves.
Is now a good time to look to gold? The answer is probably yes and most gold related ETF stands to gain from China sought to move its US dollar denominated reserves, from bonds and treasuries to gold and other raw materials.
So for those who has money to invest, its worthwhile to consider gold as an investment.
In the face of current market situation, one can’t go wrong with gold.

Sun block

On my way to Jiuzhaigou Sichuan during my recent China trip, the tour guide reminded us time again to apply sun block when we reach our destination to prevent skin burn and harmful rays to any expose part of our body. Jiuzhaigou is located almost 5 thousand meters above ground level and the high plains weather condition is extreme.
The temperature could rise as high as 35 degree in the afternoon and drop to sub minus 20 degree in the evening. I have never applied sun block lotion on my face and I will never do so because I cannot stand any lotion being applied to my face and to any part of my body. Thus everyone applied sun block when we reach our destination sans me.

There’s a big hole in the sky due to the depleting ozone layer. We are no longer safe from sunrays that exposes our skin to harmful ultraviolet rays, all due to the lost of the ozone protection layer. Sounds familiar?

At least that is what we are being led to believe that exposure to afternoon sunlight is dangerous and may result in skin cancer. We are further advice to apply sun-block lotion if necessary, in particular if we intend to spend time on the beach, in high altitude locations and etc.

Contrary to what most of us believe via doctors and mass media exposure regarding sun block, there are now strong evidences that sun block lotion may in fact contribute to skin cancer instead of the very purpose it was design for, to protect us from contracting skin cancer! There is also medical evidence that lack of exposure to sunlight may contribute to increase the chances of contracting cancer due to the lack of vitamin D, which is generated by our body in the presence of sunlight.

It’s hard to imagine why this important information is not made known to the public? Even doctors are led to believe such false information, partly by the big pharmaceutical companies that stand to lose billions of dollars if such truth is told. Why is that so?
You can patent vitamin D and you certainly can’t patent Mother Nature, sunlight.

http://www.vvv.com/healthnews/dsunscre.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/021903.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/411226.stm

World class transport system?

With Singapore inflation rate forecasted to be over 6% and projected annual wage increment be around 6% or below this year, most of us are going to have to tighten our belts in the coming days ahead. Just a simple lunch in the hawker center could easily cost 5 dollars or more. Taxi fare, bus and MRT fares have all increased multiple folds throughout the years. Most of us are feeling the pinch due to the inflation resulting in higher cost of living. Our desire and dreams to retire earlier in life seems to be harder and harder to realize. Despite the increase cost of living and inflation, it seems strange though public service transport sector in particular the SMRT bus and MRT are making profits.

The increased waiting time for bus arrival is getting more ridiculous than ever. Sometimes I wonder what the heck the transport ministry is doing. I don’t mind forging out more for the increase bus fare hikes if the increase cost translate to improve efficiency and safety, instead it seems that the number priority for these privatize transport companies are the shareholders interests. The service frequency for bus has deteriorated over the years, more and more passengers are pack dangerously into the bus well exceeding the maximum standing capacity. Waiting time for bus service can exceed well over 25 minutes, so it pays to bring books or any other things to pass time while waiting for the bus. Singapore boast and pride itself as having a world-class transport system, it is a shame though because I feel it should be world-class profit making transport system to be exact.

Dealing with urgent issue.

One way or another most of us need to deal with problems in our daily life. If the problem confronting us deem insignificant or rather not serious enough to warrant immediate attention, we tend to want to just blush it off, close one eye, hope that someone else will come and fix the problem for us or ignore it all together hoping that the problem will go away the following day or as time goes by. If we are lucky, we might just get away from the problem, otherwise a trivial problem left unresolved would come back to haunt us in a bigger and more threatening way.
Either way, to resolve a problem, serious or trivial, we need to first understand what the problem is, the consequences of the problem and thereafter based on our understanding of the problem, devised a solution to address and resolve the problem.

Due to circumstances, for instance time constraint to resolve a complicated or difficult problem at hand, we may end up deriving and eventually deploying a solution to address a problem that is effective only on a short-term basis but not effective or rather not workable nor applicable on the longer-term basis. Hard press for timeline, we may be tempted to take the easy way out by delivering a temporary get around solution to the problem instead of addressing the root cause of a problem. A temporary get around solution to a problem may or may not be a wise decision. Life is imperfect so I guess at times it makes sense to find the most expedient means and manner to resolve an urgent problem without having to worry too much about how perfect or how good the solution is. So long as the solution we seek do not create side effects or create other new problems it makes sense to quickly deploy if time is not on your side. Deploy a solution to get over a crisis first and at the same time continue to fine tune that solution or explore other more robust and effective long-term permanent solution to address that problem and other potential shortcomings. In other words, get a quick fix and then work towards a long-term permanent fix when time permits.

Microsoft knows all too well with regards to the philosophy of quick fix; the company response quickly to releasing software patches to address serious program flaws and while at the same time work vigorously in the background towards releasing more robust and consolidated long term software fixes via service pack releases.
The same goes in our daily life whereby we take painkillers such as aspirin to tide over headache while we are in the office. We don’t rush to the clinic and ask for complete lengthy and thorough medical checkout whenever we have headache.


Perfectionist on the other hand though usually seek to deliver a solution that is as close as ideal in solving a problem once and for all. As much as we all want to solve a problem in the best possible way and permanently, however we know that this is not possible in reality given the time constraint.

I am reminded of a software engineer who took weeks trying to fix a simple software bug. When asked why he needed a week or more to resolve the software bug, he said he needed time to clean up and rewrite a sizeable portion of the software because he felt the code was badly written, hard to understand, difficult to maintain, basically he just don’t like the way the code were being written. As one responsible for software project deliverable, I had no choice but to insist he work out a less elegant and quick temporary software patch in order to meet the tight schedule.

I guess that’s how life goes; we live in a constant fast paced society that demands quick solution to anything and everything. We can provide the best solution to a problem but if it takes ages to deliver the ideal solution, you can bet it is as good as delivering nothing at all.

Alternative cancer treatments

Research has shown that Graviola, a tree growing in Brazil is effective in treating many types of cancers. Some researchers claim that Graviola treatment is several thousands time more effective in killing cancer cells compare to chemotherapy.

Conventional chemotherapy sometimes kills far more normal healthy cells compare to cancer cells. No doubt, conventional chemotherapy is slowly making way to more advance effective cancer treatment which allows doctors to deliver more accurate radiation doses with precision without harming healthy cells, such advanced cancer treatment though for instance the integrated TomolTherapy system is very expensive and beyond the reach and means of most ordinary folks.

As a matter of fact there are some people who believed that big giant pharmaceutical companies are aware of Graviola treatment but choose to withheld such important information from the public for over a decade. Why do all these pharmaceutical companies withhold such important discovery from the public? Graviola cancer treatment cannot be patented since it is all natural ingredients extracted from the tree and since it is not a patentable there is no profit to be generated by these big companies thus why would they want to promote something that cannot generate profits?

Information with regards to alternative cancer treatment is easily accessible to everyone nowadays, thanks to the power of the Internet. Do share such information to your friends and loved ones who may need of such information, in particular those who are in the midst of seeking cancer treatment, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Alternative cancer treatments such as the intake of Graviola may be combine with standard cancer treatment such as radiation therapy to form a holistic approach to treating cancer more effectively.



Here some useful links to alternative cancer treatment.
http://www.cancertutor.com/Cancer/Graviola.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/003536.html

Advice

Pass any good advice that you may have to your friends and loved ones. Good advice are seldom use on oneself, usually it is meant for others. At least that is what Olson Wilde once said with regards to advice meant for others and not for oneself. On the contrary, there’s another saying that states one should practice what one preach. So is it necessary for us to walk the talk so to speak so as to maintain our integrity or should we just give any good advice we may have a miss from ourselves for the time being and instead pass it on to others?

Naturally we would expect top management of any organization inclusive of political parties to walk the talk since the average citizens and employees look up to the leaders for confidence. In a bid to dispel fears among the Thai consumer with regards to safety of poultry consumption amidst the bird flu situation in the country, the then Prime Minister Thaksin of Thailand walk the talk by publicly eating fried chicken wings.
Even though it is more of a publicity stunt more than anything else nevertheless it does goes to show walking the talk or doing what one preach has tremendous impact on audience.

I recalled an American Olympic goal medalist swimmer who was taught by a coach who does not even knows how to swim. Speaking about passing good advice instead of using it on one-self, aren’t the swimmer situations described above the best classic example?

I bet you didn’t you know that there are many doctors who wouldn’t even consider chemotherapy themselves or for their loved ones if they themselves or their loved ones are afflicted with cancer? Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are some of the standard medical treatment that doctors are taught to recommend for patients stricken with cancer. Why is it that I say there are many doctors themselves who wouldn’t even think nor consider chemotherapy treatment on their own selves? The answer is simple, doctors knows that the recovery rate for chemotherapy treatments for patients with advance stage cancer is very slim, perhaps less than 10% and even so, the recovery rate becomes almost down to one figure or virtually zero if one is to consider the possibility of complete cancer remission beyond 5 years after the 1st year of the chemotherapy treatment.

I am also reminded of my family dentist who chooses to bring his daughter to another dentist specialist to have her teeth mended instead of doing it him-self. The fear of not being able to give his best treatment to his own daughter or fear of being blame by his own daughter for any botch up dental job or the lack of confidence to perform dental surgery on one’s own loved ones if enough to bring any bravest and most experience dentist to down to their knees I suppose.


Thus next time if you feel you have any good advice, consider if you have an immediate need of use for it and if so apply the advice you have pickup to try to address your problems first be whatever they are instead of trying to pass it blindly to others. Advice that works for you may not necessary work for others though so be cautious when passing advice to others. I would suggest you do not pass any advice that does not work for you to others, be very sincere and honest in helping others. If it does not work for you chances it may not work for others too.

If you have no immediate need of use for the advice you have, be cautious when you pass it to others, less you get blame for making things worst, always remind those whom you gave advice to use it at their own discretion and that the outcome depends very much on the circumstances involved.

So there goes so much so for advice, attached are photos taken during my recent Sichuan trip. Enjoy reading and cheers.