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Business Life Updates

Is Facebook now more popular than Friendster in the Philippines?

During the past few weeks, I’ve discovered that more and more of my friends are now in Facebook.  Just a year ago, I still didn’t have a Facebook profile.  The past few years, I’ve been pretty much satisfied with Friendster.  As most of my friends are also there, I didn’t find the need to create a profile on another “social networking” website.  But ever since I joined Facebook, I’ve seen a gradual increase in the number of my fiends who were in Friendster that are now also using Facebook.  And the more friends I am connected to, the more I am fascinated with the features of Facebook.

What are you doing right now?

One of the more popular features used by Facebook members is the status update labelled “What are you doing right now?”.  I guess a lot of people want to let the whole world know what they’ve been up to the last few days, or hours…or even minutes.  Some users drop a one liner status like “having the greatest time of my life in …” while other can speak more in just one word like “zzzzz”.  Others like to be profound but barely making sense, while others like to be funny. 

The wonderful thing about these status updates is the ongoing comments from friends and colleagues.  Sometimes, the comments border on wild and funny ideas, but often times, people just want to say they’re there to listen.

I am a fan!

Another thing that I find interesting in Facebook is the numerous ways on how people can express what they like.  For example, I am a fan of Roger Federer, so obviously, I want my friends to know that about me.  What better way to do that than just clicking the “I am a fan” button in Roger Federer’s facebook profile?  Others, would like to find causes that inspire them.  Just a few days ago, the passing away of a great nationalistic Filipino Rapper, Francis Magalona, inspired a lot of Filipinos to voice out their support and love through fan profiles.  On the other end, oher people just want to let the world know of their favorite movies, TV shows, or even favorite food. 

I am tagged in a Photo

One of the most popular uses of social networking sites is to share photos with friends.  One of my college friends, for example, posted a photo of our “barkada” [a group of friends] about 10 years ago.  It’s a nice feeling to be able to remember what we were like then.  It certainly made me miss college and left a big smile on my face. 

The one thing I am amazed in Facebook photos is the tagging.  Thanks to Facebook, I can now be “tagged” on my friends’ photos.  Now, I don’t have to copy the same photo into my profile.  It automatically links those photos to me.  Sweet!

I am still fairly new with Facebook.  To be honest I haven’t really been that active with it.  But I am constantly amazed with the buzz and activity within my friend’s network.  It’s surprising.  It’s exciting.  And it’s definitely a lot of fun. 

So, is Facebook now more popular than Friendster in the Philippines?  What do you think?

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Books Life Lessons Money Mindset Personal Finance

Your Money or Your Life

For the past couple of days, I’ve been reading the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.  It’s a book I bought out on a whim as I saw it on sale at 20% discount.  I was actually looking for another book, but when I saw the title, I remembered reading rave reviews about this book from some of the financial blogs I’ve read.

Money = Life Energy

The book describes money as life energy.  I realized that having a job has additional costs associated with it in terms of life energy.  For example, I use about an hour of my morning to prepare for my job.   I buy clothes to wear at my job.  I even have to take lunch, snacks and sometimes even dinner at the office canteen.  Fortunately, I don’t have to ride a cab or drive a car to and from work.  But even that takes time as I need to walk for around 15 to 20 minutes each way.  To tell you the truth, I never really thought that I was actually spending money to have my job.  The truth is, having a job actually costs money.  And here I am thinking my job is supposed to pay me. 🙂

Track Every Penny

I just finished listing this month’s expenses.  I was asking my wife earlier whether we could use a credit card to buy the groceries so that I don’t have to enter each item in the grocery list. But when I asked whether the credit card statement will show each item, like 100g of garlic, 200g potato, etc, she laughed out loud.  Then I realized, the credit card statement will actually just list one entry for the whole grocery of more than 20 items.

Crossover Point

The book also mentions something about a crossover point where the income from investments is enough to pay for the monthly expenses.  To keep track on this goal, the book’s advise is to create a chart to plot each month’s personal income, expenses and income from investments.  The chart tells a story.  For some, it starts out as expenses greater than personal income, with lots of debts.  Then gradually, debt is being paid up, expenses goes down, and income from investments moves up.  At some point, when the income from investments matches the monthly expenses, the crossover point is reached.  When this happens, I don’t have to “work” anymore.  I can do whatever I want.  I can sleep more and stay in bed in the morning.  I can spend my time just relaxing and reflecting on life’s blessings.

The book is about discovering life.  It challenges each person to have an honest self-reflection by reading through our own personal finances.  It speaks of having the freedom to say “no” to our job and do our life’s purpose, or what the “Alchemist” described as “Personal Legend”.  It paints life’s possibilities and dreams. It’s a very nice picture.  And it is something I hope to achieve.

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Life Lessons Money Mindset Personal Finance

Mindset – the thin line between scarcity and abundance

I’ve just finished reading Steve Pavlina’s latest post about “Living paycheck to paycheck”.  I don’t think I am currently living on a paycheck to paycheck at the moment, but one thing that struck me about the post is sharing from a place of abundance rather than scarcity.

On a typical day, my wife and I both love to logon to the internet and surf after we get off from work.  She likes watching TV shows online.  Her favorite, at the moment, is a Philippine’s TV drama series titled “Tayong Dalawa” (The two of us together?!).  I, on the other hand, love to checkout my yahoo fantasy basketball team.  I play fantasy basketball with my officemates and it’s one of the topics we often talk about at work.  Unfortunately, since we can’t access yahoo at work,  I’d have to check it out at home.

Since we only have one laptop at home, we have to share it together.  Sometimes, she has to watch me go through the bunch of basketball statistics for my fantasy basketball team.  And on other times, I’d have to watch the TV drama series together with her.  To a degree, it is a very nice experience, and I love spending this time with my wife.  However, at a certain point, I would rather check my favorite basketball team than watch people crying on TV.  In those times, I wonder whether buying my own PC would be the perfect solution.

In all honesty, I can actually afford the extra PC if I really want to.  However, I often wonder whether it’s really worth it.  Most of the day, I would be at the office, and I would only need the PC when I get home.  This morning, while reading Steve’s post, I am reminded about having the right mindset.  Do I serve more people by being cheap?  What about sharing from a place of abundance?  Or is this just an excuse for myself to buy what I really want?

How about you?  Have you been having second thoughts buying something you really want lately?

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Books Business Life Lessons Money Mindset Personal Finance

Searching for the book Ready, Fire, Aim – Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat and learning how to sell

A couple of days ago, I read from a blog about a book titled “Ready, Fire, Aim – Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat".  The book is about growing your business, whether it is from startup to a profitable stage, or from an stagnating business to skyrocketing success.  I got excited about it since I wanted to start my own business.  So immediately after work, I went to the local bookstore to look for the book.  I scoured the whole business section, but since it is only a small book shop with a few titles in it, I was more trying my luck than really searching.  After running out of luck, I went to my favorite bookstore at a nearby mall, hoping that with their bigger collection of books, I’d be able to find what I was searching for.  To my surprise, I did find the title in their database, but unfortunately, the only copy they have has already been reserved for someone else.  Oh well, there goes my chance of getting the book on my second try.

I was really very eager to read the book, and I wanted to do everything I can to get a copy of it as soon as possible.  Once I got home, I searched the internet for other bookstores.  Luckily, I found one which carried the title I was looking for.  The only catch – it was already middle of the night.  So I had to wait for the next morning to try and buy the book.  Well, I can wait.

The next day, I hurriedly finished my work and got off early to go to this bookstore, which was around half an hour commute via train.  It was a hectic and long ride given the rush hour traffic of commuters.  Once I got to the bookstore, I immediately went to the business section.  At first I tried to manually look for the book and flipped through the each title one by one, but after around 10 minutes of hopelessly checking the titles, I gave up.  I then tried to look for an information counter or a computer kiosk where I can search for the book. Luckily, I found the kiosk a few shelves from where I was.  I typed in the author’s name to search and voila, there it was, the book was located under business section 16-B-02.   I went back hurriedly to the business section and found what I was looking for.  To my surprise, the book was hard bound.  No wonder the price is a bit hefty.  I didn’t mind, as I was happy to get the book.

I went home and immediately devoured the first few pages.  I’m still reading it but I’m extremely excited on some of the ideas I learned so far.  I now know that the the first thing I need to do if I want to become a business owner, is learn how to sell.  My main goal is to sell. Sell. Sell. Sell.  It’s a scary thought for me knowing that I’m quite shy and have very little experience selling anything in my life.  It’s a big challenge for me, but I know how important it is, and I really want to learn how to sell.

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Life Lessons Money Mindset

Waking up early and my typical morning routine

For the past few days, I’ve been waking up a little earlier.  I initially set my phone’s alarm to 7am, but I keep getting up before the alarm comes off.  Sometimes at 5am, sometimes at 4am.   I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel I’m not getting enough sleep.  Or maybe it’s the caffeine kicking in.

Anyway, once I get up, I head for my laptop.  I checkout my email, blog, facebook, friendster, etc.  I get a hot cup of my morning dose of coffee.  I grab the book I was reading last night and wait until my wife wakes up.  It’s a lovely feeling to wake up before the sunrise.  I feel more energized compared to when I get up at 9am and hurriedly prepare for my daytime job. 

Brand new day is here! 

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Life Lessons Money Mindset Personal Finance

5 things I learned while reflecting on my life’s passion and dreams

The past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about what my passion is.  To tell you the truth, I still don’t know what it is.  What else is out there?  Is there something more to life?  What’s my life’s purpose?  What are my dreams?

1) Have fun 

For a long time, I haven’t really asked myself what I really want from life.  What did I dream about when I was young?  Did I always want to be a programmer?  Did I want to be a doctor?  How about an airline pilot?  Honestly, I can’t really remember what my dreams were when I was a kid.  I only cared about playing, having fun with my friends.  During the day, we play basketball or do some crazy stuffs together.  When we get hungry, we climb the mango tree to enjoy its sweet fruits.  Or if we feel a bit more adventurous, we try to climb the coconut tree or go swim by the old school’s wild lagoon.  Life is so much fun.

2) Take responsibility

When I got older, I learned that life doesn’t always give us what we want.  I thought playing was the only thing that mattered in life.  But when I went to school, life became a challenge.  Everything was new and hard.  I had no friends to play with.  I didn’t even know what everyone was talking about.  There was no easy way out.  I needed to study or I don’t play at all.  I learned to go through life’s struggles and take responsibility for my own decisions.  I learned to face them head on.

3) Work hard

I learned that in life, when you want something, you have to work hard for it.  You have to have something in return.  When I got older, I learned they call it “paying” for something.  When I was in grade school, I really wanted to have the best garden in our class.  So every weekend, I would get on my bike, drive to the school and take care of my little garden.  I watched the plants grow day by day.  When graduation came, it was one of my proudest moments.  I worked hard for it.  I earned it.  I paid my dues with my sweat and patience.  Now, I have it.  And it is very sweet.

4) Treasure life’s blessings

I learned that sometimes life gives us so much more than what we ask for.  When I was a kid, all I really knew was playing around with my friends.  I went to school. I met other people to whom I can get to play and be friends with.  Together we experienced everything life has to offer.  I travelled to places I’ve never been to before, to places I never knew existed.  As I got older, I was able to visit other countries and learn from their rich culture and history.  I feel very blessed having been able to experience things I have never imagined possible. 

5) Have faith.

Lastly, I learned to have faith.  That somewhere, somehow, life will reveal itself to me in its own time.  Perhaps someday, I will look back and see what magnificent moment today is.  That everything I’ve experience so far is a like a fiber on a beautiful tapestry, each telling it’s own story, building a great picture I call my life.  Perhaps then my life’s dreams & passion will come alive. 

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Business Life Updates

Happy Valentine’s Day

It’s hearts day today.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

For the past few days I’ve been thinking of ways how to celebrate the day with my beloved wife.  She’s been busy the past couple of weeks because of her work, sometimes even spending some weekends at the office.  I want her to just spend some time to rest a little while and take some time off.  So, instead of going somewhere, we planned to just stay at home and celebrating with something a little bit personal. 

It’s a bit tricky to pull up a surprise for something you spend almost 24 hours everyday with.  I wanted to surprise her before she wakes up. And so, I got up early this morning to buy some flowers for my beautiful and loving wife.  It was still dawn.  I walked the dimly lit walkway down to the train station.  The flower shop is about 7 stations away.  It’s about 30 to 40 minutes trip back and forth so I figured I still had quite a few minutes before my wife wakes up. 

Just before sunrise, I arrived at our sweet home.  I sneaked into our love nest quietly.  But as soon as I stepped inside, my wife woke up.  My wife being a very observant lady that she is, caught me holding the bouquet of dozen roses, trying very hard to hide it.  I just smiled, kissed my wife and greeted her a happy valentine’s day.  Yes, she was surprised.  Not in the way I imagined, but I’ll take it anytime.  As long as my wife is happy, I am happy. 

valentineflowers

What a way to get the heart’s day started.  How about you?  How did you celebrate valentine’s day?

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Business Life Lessons

The next revolution of transportation technology – high-tech bikes, flying cars and intelligent machines

I just watched Discovery Science on TV.  The episode featured the next revolution of transportation technology.

In Europe they have this high-tech bikes equipped with built-in GPS.  These bikes can never get lost.  Anyone can ride the bike, go somewhere then leave the bike at the station nearest to their destination.   The bike is free of charge for the first 30 minutes.  Longer than that and there’s this smart card they use to pay for the bike rental.  This lessens the dependency on cars.  It lessens traffic.  It solves the problem of parking.  It’s environment friendly.  It’s seamless.  It’s even good for the body.

In the future, they even envision these bikes to be able to generate energy out of the pedaling action of its users.  The energy generated by each bicycle will then be collected once they are parked in the station.  Each bike might give out only a fraction of energy.  But when thousands of bikers each contribute, the total energy becomes massive and could be a viable source of energy.  Perhaps, in the future when this technology becomes sustainable, and more of these energy creating ideas become mainstream, the world will no longer need to depend so much on oil.

There’s also a hydrogen-powered bike, which looks like a scooter more than a regular bicycle.  It can accommodate two people at a time, which is great.  It looks very easy to use, and no balancing required.  Even kids can use it.  It is also nature-friendly as it combines hydrogen with oxygen to generate electricity and disposes off its very safe by-product which is water.  Its slick design, ease of use, and “green” technology is a powerful combination that solves peoples problems.

According to the show, the future will also allow everyone to fly their own cars.  That will definitely solve the problem of traffic.  The two-dimensional problem of roads can then be solved by the three-dimensional solution of flying.  In the future, they expect anyone, even those with totally no background in air flight technology, will be able to drive these flying cars.  Boeing is developing these virtual three-dimensional lanes similar to roads but hanging on the sky.  The intelligence built into the flying cars will be able to detect and prevent any collision as well as dangers brought about by the weather.  To solve the same problem, some scientists are also studying how swarm of insects and/or bats efficiently maneuver themselves without ever colliding with each other.  They simulated these insects using mini flying robots which look more like helicopters with built-in cameras and transmitters than insects.  The data coming from the camera feed are transmitted to the computers and the artificial intelligence kicks in so that each of these mini-helicopters could communicate with each other.  For example, in the advent of a pending collision, one of them could tell the other that it is trying to go to the right. The other then receives this message, processes it and decides to go to the left to prevent collision.

While watching these marvelous and futuristic inventions, I could not help but reflect how far will technology take us.  At what price will humanity need to pay for these great inventions?  Can the bike of the future make us more human?  Can the ability to fly make us reach out more to each other?  Can artificial intelligence bring more meaning to our empty souls?  Perhaps only time will tell.

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Business

How potato chips are made?

Just this morning, my wife and I were watching a TV show about how potato chips are made (or cooked).  Did you know that potatoes actually have sugar content?  And it is 80% water?  According to the show, the sugar content, when heated gives the potato the crispness that we all so love.  And the water?  It all goes up as steam when the potato chips are deep fried in sunflower oil. 

The potato comes out of the farm, delivered to the plant, where it is first washed through several layers of scrubbing.  It’s amazing to see that there’s actually a way to clean up a potato without the touch of a human hand.  Once the potato is washed, it is ready to be cut into thin slices.  And guess what?  another machine does it’s magic.  A rotating blade chops off the potato in several directions.  I cannot imagine having to manually slice hundreds and thousands of potatoes with just a knife on my hand.  Once the potatoes are sliced, they are then fed into a very hot sunflower oil for deep frying.  In about 5 minutes, the chips are cooked.  They are then set through a series of vibration to segregate the good potato chips from those that are overcooked.  A video scans the whole batch and blows the bad potato out of the conveyor.  Once, the good potatoes are selected, it is ready for the flavoring. The flavoring is added via a rotating cylindrical drum similar to the way cements are mixed when building roads. Once the chips are flavored, they are ready to be packed into bags and boxes.

At the end of it all, what amazed me was how such an assembly machine gathers these muddy potatoes, washes them, chops them into thin slices, deep fried, then flavored, all with very minimal human intervention needed.  It seems like magic.

As a child I have always been fascinated with automated assembly lines like these.  To me, when something gets created, genius is unleashed.  I wonder how would it feel like to design such an amazing line of machinery.  Could it be better than the taste of a delicious and crispy bag of potato chips?

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Business Credit Card Life Lessons Money Mindset Personal Finance

3 tips on how to track cash expenses effectively

For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to track my expenses.  But my problem is, I haven’t found a nice way to track cash.  Yes, I use cash.  In this part of the world, cash is still king. 

I remember when I was assigned to the US for a 6-month stint.  While in the US, I rarely used cash.  I can count on my fingers how many times I had to reach out for my wallet and spend cash.  In most cases, I used my corporate credit card.  On other times, I used my ATM debit card.  Of course, when I buy online, I can only use paypal, or my credit card.  Once a month, I would receive my statement from both my savings account and my credit card.  If I want to check the transaction real-time, I can just login online and check my credit card and bank statements through their internet banking services.  Instantly, I would know where my money went.  Sweet.

But when I got back, I had to use cash again.  The problem in most of South East Asia is that people rarely use a credit card.  Unless I am buying a washing machine, or any other home appliance, I don’t want to use my credit card.  Besides, most stores have either a minimum order to accept your credit card, or they charge the same item for a little more when you pay using your credit card instead of cash.  So, cash it is!

Track each transaction.

I tried to track my expenses monthly through my bank statements.  But I can only see deposits, withdrawals and the occasional online internet banking transactions.  It doesn’t give me any idea how I spent the cash I withdrew the other day. Now, I’m trying to track each cash transaction I make.  How? By keeping the official receipt.  Keeping the receipt of each of my cash transactions helps me know where I am spending my money.  In my case, most of my receipts come from the office cafeteria, the local grocery or my favorite bookstore.  That’s when I realized, if I wanted to cut back on my expenses, I could probably eat my lunch in the cafeteria less often.  Perhaps, keep it to only 3 times a week instead of everyday.  In addition, I could buy a book only after I’ve completely read the last one.  Or maybe, I can buy only a few items in the grocery store, not a whole-month supply.

Write it. Picture it.

I thought of carrying a small notebook with me everyday so I can take note of each cash transaction on the spot.  But when I realized I would need to carry it with me down the office cafeteria where my officemates also are also having lunch, I hesitated.  Perhaps, I’ll just keep the receipts for now.  In the end, however, I still need to consolidate all these receipts and come up with some kind of a report.  For now, I’m using an excel spreadsheet.  I just list down the date in the receipt, the amount and a brief description.  Then I try to generate a pie chart out of this data.  In excel, this is pretty straightforward.  Just select the list of transactions, then click the Chart Wizard at the top menu.  This pie chart gives me a summary of my expenses. I can take a quick look and easily picture out where the bulk of my expenses are going.

Keep it.

The reason I wanted to track my expenses is because I didn’t know where my money is going.   If I don’t know where is it going, I wouldn’t know where to cut back.  After I found out which transactions are eating my budget, I started to cut back a little bit on them and saved a little cash.  I haven’t figured out what to do with the extra money. For now, I am just keeping it at the bank.  To my pleasant surprise, I’ve seen my savings grow month after month.  It’s one of the most liberating thing I’ve felt in some time.

It’s just 3 simple tips but it helped me gain back a little control over my money, even if only to save a few extra bucks.  How about you?  How are you tracking your cash expenses?