I just happened to come across an announcement of a departure of an accomplished person at the age of 49. I don’t normally read this part of the news, but the way it was written had a sense of appeal in the way his life was examined. 

To quote:” The death of a good man always come too soon…. It was so unfair, many who knew him said…  But his life was not a waste. He was an over-achiever of the very best kind, the kind that strives and achieves without fanfare, show or self-aggrandizing.

He had, at the time in his life, received many of the rewards one hopes will come for a life well-lived… A man of great tact, he could deal with difficult human encounters with quiet good humour and equanimity.”

That, I hope, other than the first sentence, would also apply to me, when it is my time to go.

Here is a great article on the seven ways you can do to prevent your job from being downsized, marginalized, or outsourced.

The goal is to make your job more valuable.

– Sharpen your business skills.

– Get closer to the customer.

– Diversify your management portfolio.

– Align your job with the core.

– Be a person of ideas.

– Seek out complexity.

– Go vertical.

There used to be a time, and I am sure that a lot of people have also done this, when I mused that i would have been much more successful if I was not born in the Philippines, but maybe in Europe or in the United States.  People there seemed to be much more successful, and earning better.

This lament, about not being born in the right place or in the right time, might start to become irrelevant, thanks to information technology.  Everywhere in the world, we see now news of Indian, Lebanese, Chinese, South American, or African entrepreneur who made it big.  In now almost every country, there are lists of people who made it into billions.

One of the things that the internet

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I shot this during a tour on a natural park.

Sometimes we may take things granted.

It is a grim reminder of what is really valuable to us.

If you are thinking why Microsoft Products are bloated, and requires a lot of memory, maybe its because they put some fun things inside too.  MS Excel 2000 apparently has a racing car Easter egg in its code.  Here is how to activate it.

Over the weekend, we visited a friend who had a Hummer.

Its a $140,000 purchase for him after taxes.   It sits four people and hardly spacious, and there is almost an absence that in advanced features that you find in most  cars  ( windows is manual, all dials are analog etc).  The ride is bumpy, and hardly comfortable, and it gets less than 3 kilometers to a liter.  Its noisy, and runs like a truck, and acceleration is non remarkable.

The plus side:  it can run even in three feet deep water and the engine/brake would still work.  And … its a Hummer.  It will be successful as long as there are people like me who proudly blog to have  rode and drove such an expensive machine — in short, its success is not as a transport machine, but as a feel good item. Its success ( like Prada or Louis Vuitton handbags) is to make people show off by owning one.  After all, if your goal is just to know the time, why would people buy a Rolex or a Patek?

If you like solving logic puzzles, try this one for fun.   How far can you go?  ( This will need some knowledge of URL naming.)

I just meet up with a friend whowas talking that he had a friend who made it big in business.  He was poised to benefit from his wealth, and decided to construct a big mansion.  The mansion took up a lot of his time, and money, and he was on the construction site everyday to make sure that everything was just perfect , and.. impressive.

He was not able to get good workers enough, and the house made him upset every day because of many ‘delays’ and ‘imperfections’.  At the end, it consumed him so much that he had a heart attack, and died before the house was finished.  What lesson can be learned from that?

The last few days, I had my system upgraded. I am running the windows Vista Beta , as well as the Office 2007 beta.  I am trying to traverse, and have found some really nice things, as well as some frustrating ones ( the interface is somewhat different!).  But finally, I had two monitors installed, and this is what I can say.

If your job involves juggling with at least 3 or 4 different applications, having 2 monitors is probably the largest time saver you can give to yourself.

I flatter myself that ocassionally I come up with some creative gems.  I got quite a response from friends, when heading last June the Business Month Celebration of our chamber of commerce which focused on three things:  ICT, Tourism as the two industries where our city would be globally competitive, and Entrepreneurship which would drive the growth of these, we called the series of events as InTourPreneur.   My family name is NG, and when we did a series of retail stores, we called it NGenius IT Hub, which in essence puts our family name into the store ( as we have some amount of goodwill in the community) , and creates a good linkage  to what it sells.

Creative names sell ( would raw fish sell as good as when it is called sashimi ?) and makes people remember.  Lately, I came across a series of articles entitled Dollars & Sense, which essentially means that when it makes dollars, it makes sense.  It is a good site for good business suggestions and ideas.

I recently am starting to contribute articles to SME Insight Magazine, and I called it EntrePreViews which essentially means my opinions on entrepreneurship.

Do you have creative names that you think is really cool?