Laziness killed a dollar

Missed out an opportunity to get a dollar on friday and it was all because of myself... During an errand run getting a birthday present for my partner's friend, saw this trolley that was left on the 2nd floor of the multi-storey carpark.

We have these shopping trolleys in Singapore that have a lock that is released at the supermarket when you insert a dollar coin and the dollar coin is returned if you return the trolley back to the supermarket, there are mainly 2 kinds of locks, 1 in which the dollar is partially exposed and you can see it, the other which the dollar is put into a tray slot of sorts and is completely hidden when the lock is released. There seems to be a way that people can free the dollar that is exposed, so many supermarket operators have chosen to go with the hidden dollar mechanism instead. But due to the mechanism hiding the dollar, it is uncertain if someone has used a substitute for the dollar or not. The trolley I saw used the hidden dollar mechanism.

Curious to see if the dollar was still in the lock, I took a look after parking on the 4th floor and the trolley's mechanism was locked, uncertain if there was a dollar inside and I was kinda in a hurry to get the present as it was late and the shops were closing, I just left it and proceeded with my errand.

On my return to the carpark, the trolley was still there but I was tired after lugging the present all the way from the shopping center a distance away from the carpark so I abandoned the thought of pushing the trolley back to get the dollar within.. I felt really useless after driving off and my mind kept thinking back to the dollar that I could have added to the fund just for another 5 minutes work to push the trolley back to the supermarket.

I have made up my mind now that since I am unable to return cans or bottles here, I shall return those trolleys when ever I spot them! A dollar a piece is good money, the trouble is only finding them.

Still pissed at myself that I let my laziness lose me a dollar... Bah!

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

New Toy! Zenithink zt-180

Hahaha *grin*

I got my Android Tablet! Found someone who didn't like the interface of the Zenithink zt-180 on my local tech forum and took it off him cheap! I saved like over half the price compared to a brand new 1 and his was kinda brand new. Happy that I got such a good deal and was spot on my budget for it.

It was also kinda like a secret spy deal, the seller sms-ed me at 2am just now and I met up with him at 2.30am, checked that it was ok and deal done! Super fast transaction! haha can't wait to play around with it properly.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Google Android Tablet Search

Been looking around for a decent Android Tablet to play with for my birthday.. but the search seems to be getting harder, read through loads of reviews of the newer tablets like the Malata Zpad (which looks awesome by the way but is ridiculously expensive) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab (a bit small for my liking and too expensive as well).

But what really keeps catching my eye is the Zenithink ZT-180 10" tablet. It may be of an older OS - the Android 2.1 and doesn't have 3G connectivity but I'm just searching for something to play around with and it suits my budget more. Not really willing to dump my current HTC HD for an Android right now due to massive amount of data I have on my HTC HD, and the cost of actually getting an Android phone...

The one that I would like to upgrade to right now if I wanted to spend that kind of money; the HTC Desire HD; which even with my upgrade package on my phone line I'd still have to fork out another $500+ for the phone, is not really that practical for me because I still like my older HTC HD! Yes I know its a 2 year old phone but I still love it!

So I really see no purpose at all for converting like my close friends have to Android or the iPhone for that matter.. Not when everything still works great on my HTC HD.

I'm kinda what you might call a "if it ain't broken don't fix it" person. And come on.. with that kind of money I'd rather just get a nice big Tablet to play with.

So, back to my search for my Tablet... Looked through my local tech forum and found a few people that are actually bringing in the ZT-180 from china, but are selling them at a mark up of at least $80 each! That's a 30% mark up and that's just from calculating the manufacturer's price for shipping 1 tablet all the way here with DHL courier service. I'm pretty sure he's making at least 50% for each of the tablets that he sells and that is really a rip off.

Luckily a close friend of mine just happened to have to rush off to china for a week, so I happily assigned him the task of looking for a Tablet with the same specifications as the ZT-180 and shoe-string budget to find me the cheapest one available.

But alas, an update from him this afternoon proved my task a little too tough... It turns out the city he is in ;Da Lian; isn't really famous for cheap electronics and the cheapest e-book reader he could find there costs a whopping $300! Well I guess the Chinese do eat their own in that sense... (I'm not being racist.. I'm Chinese too).

So I guess its back to searching the forums for someone who doesn't like the ZT-180 they got and is willing to let it go cheap.. and I mean REALLY CHEAP! :P

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Step 5 Complete!

After the excitement of Carvivor, my group has decided to split the prize which is the price of the Motorola Charm Smartphone that was given to every team for the event.

But since one of our team members really wanted a new phone and he was the one that was playing with it the entire time, he offered to buy it off us.

And since a bird in hand is better than two in a bush, we decided to just sell it to him for a low low low price of $200.... and split the cash within the 3 of us.But because I paid for breakfast and then lunch for him... I'll have to deduct that from the $200 first. So in the end each of us will get $64.

So with that "sale" its $64 for me and since I decided to go for this event partially for this endeavor, I shall treat it as a task completed and add the money to the fund.

But since it is kinda a trade completed and not money found, as in Rule 8 of my rules - (No leapfrogging through trade), I shall only be cleared to Step 6!

Well it took a while but the journey was great! Goodbye Step 5 and Hello Step 6!

Can't wait for my next find and trade!

Started with $0.86
Traded Motorola Charm Smartphone for $192 split amongst 3 of us at $64 took $0.74 for Step and $63.26 for Profit!
Ended Step with $1.60
Time Taken to Complete Step - 26 Days
Profit Taken $63.26

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Power98 Carvivor Rally 2010!!!

Wow!!!
Carvivor was really fun! Heading to 5 locations to do challenges was really exciting and the challenges weren't too hard. As it was a fastest time wins event, every station we went to we just tried out best to clear them as fast as possible.

Reached Safra Tampines at 7.40 after picking up the rest of my group and proceeded to register for the event. While we were lining up, I noticed a lady holding up a sign "Lack 1", apparently one of their members could not make it at the last minute and they were left stranded looking for a forth. After waiting in line for a good 30 minutes we registered and was given a Motorola Charm smartphone to bring along to help unravel the clues that were given at each station.

The phone was quite interesting as it has a full qwerty keyboard and touch screen, loaded with Google's Andriod 2.1 OS it was nifty to use and the camera was great, the images were rather sharp considering it was only a 3 Mega-Pixel Camera. Being pre-packed with a broadband enabled sim card, my friend quickly took charge of the Charm and started messing around with it. After the briefing we were ready to set off with our first clue in hand to our awaiting stations.

The 5 stations were situated all around Singapore with 2 in the east (1 at the Road Safety Park at East Coast Park, 1 at Tampines Safra our flag off point), 1 in the west (West Coast Park Carpark 3), 1 at the Singapore Flyer and lastly at some ulu factory showroom in woodlands.

The Challenges were really interesting, at our first station we had to kick the chatek above our knee height 10 times each(the fastest team we were told completed this in 21 seconds!).

At our second station back at Tampines Safra, we each had to dribble a soccer ball round a bunch of cones and score from a certain distance on the pitch. It was a rather simple challenge but our soccer skills were not up to par so we took a little longer than expected to complete this station.

At our third station in the west we had to form a human wheel-barrel and fill a bottle with water using a small cup hung around my friends' neck. We ended up walking away with muddied clothes and a scraped knee at this station but it was fun!

At our fourth station we navigated our way down to the Singapore Flyer where we had to tie 80 rubber bands together to make a skipping rope and skip for 15 times. We really lost time here as to tie 80 rubber bands into a rope really took time, we ended up utilizing the full 5 minutes allocated for this station and our time was thus recorded as 5 minutes.(heard at the end that the fastest group completed this station under 2 1/2 minutes!)

And lastly as we arrived at the ulu warehouse in Woodlands, it started to rain so we were directed to head to the 4th floor of the warehouse where we had to fold and throw paper aeroplanes through a tyre. We were lucky, due to the rain this station was moved indoors or else we would also have to battle the wind as we threw our paper aeroplanes! Some of the earlier groups were not as lucky and had a hard time aiming the planes through the tyre.
This I found was one of the better challenges we completed because we were able to strategies and work out a design for the planes and the order at which we were going to execute the challenge.

Throughout the challenges we clocked a total time of 969 Seconds. I thought it was not bad seeing it was our 1st Carvivor Rally and we finished under 1000 Seconds.

Surprisingly the entire challenge portion of the event only took us till 2pm to complete and we had plenty of time to have our lunch and make our way back to Safra Tampines to de-register and return the smartphone. But to our surprise we were allow to keep the phone! So this was already a $470 prize that group got just for attending the event! We were also handed goodie bags which contained vouchers for discounts at some of the sponsors' retail outlets and some snacks.

We were treated after to a performance by our home grown A Cappella Vocal Band 'Tone' and rock band 'Monochrome' while we waited for the lucky draw to begin. Sadly we weren't lucky enough for the draw but were still entertained by the performances.

At the end of the day we truly enjoyed ourselves and are looking forward to next year's Power98 Carvivor Rally!

Wish us Luck for next year!
M$Penguin

Update on Step 5

Been really a rather dry week, was only able to find 4 cents at the office.

The roadshow proved to be dry as well but it was good for my agents as they managed to gain a few leads to follow up with in the following weeks.

Still need to clear my dollar hump, my comic book listing has yet to yield anything and is starting to look bleak... but i shall persevere! Rome wasn't built in a day! I Will Prevail!

Started with $0.82

Ended with $0.86
$0.04 From him

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Electronics & Sports Expo Roadshow

Gonna be heading to the Electronics & Sports Expo later for a Roadshow by my company. Would be more psyched if my agents were more willing to participate in the event and are enthusiastic about it...

What is the meaning of trying to make sales if they're not even willing to take the first step to approach people, I mean they are not fresh agents, they have at least been doing this for over 5 years but are still dragging their feet and not doing what needs to be done.

Sigh... Sometimes I wonder, why are they still making themselves mediocre when they all have the means to be good if not great.

Anyway there will be many opportunities for coin searching as there is expected to be a big crowd for the event.

Gotta get myself over the Dollar Hump again!

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Cloud City

It seems that my little island nation has become a cloud city of sorts.. everywhere you look its like you're in the clouds... Mind you its because of the stupid haze that our 'friendly' neighbour has kindly blown our way. I can only imagine how bad it is further up north, must be like freaking cloud locked or something...

Right now the PSI, which is the index that our kind weather station uses to measure the pollution in our air, is over the 100 mark. Which is bad enough that you can't see to the top of a typical skyscraper. Its bad enough that you can smell smoke when you take a deep breath..

Not too sure when our dear government is issue a warning about heading out..

Hope the weather clears with a big rain or something...

No new finds lately so
Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Perspective on life as a business

Been doing a lot of personal accounting for the past few years, mainly due to my car which I wanted to calculate the fuel consumption and amount spent on it.

Over the years, I've been increasingly adding to the number of accounts that i have been keeping. So right now there's one for my car, one for my portfolios, one for my monthly cash-flow and one for my poker winnings/losses.

I find that the more I think about this endeavor, the more intricate and detailed my accounts were and I find myself doing it more religiously than before. Especially for my cash-flow and portfolios.

It would seem that as technology improves, from keeping them on a little booklet for my car, I went to my pda, then my smartphone and now I find myself tallying everything up and keeping an eternal record of my accounts by cloud computing like on google docs.

Its also really easy to access them nowadays due to the convenience of Internet connections through your iphones, andriods and your now windows mobile 7.

Keeping a detailed record of my income and expenditure is really like keeping an account book for a business.

So in a way the perspective would be, why not run your life like a business?

If you can sort out what and where the gains and the losses of your life are, then you can really begin to save up a lot just by avoiding or minimizing the losses and increasing the gains.

It ends up giving yourself a very different look and understanding of what and how you've been doing and where you actually spend your time. Then you can review and see in which areas you can improve or should improve, like spending less money on the daily indulgence of a $7 cup of starbucks to maybe once or twice a week? Just the little act of cutting back on a cup of coffee can save you over $100 a year.

And mind you I am not trying to tell you not to live your life but to enjoy yourself better with the resources that you have now.

Bet you could find something better to do with that $100 than just improving your coffee experience every morning now can you? And that's just from cutting down from a cup of $7 coffee to maybe a $5 cup. Will the experience of that cup of coffee really be that different? Now with that $100 saved, you could instead at the end of the year, buy your partner something nice or take him/her to a nice dinner. All that for basically nothing but changing your habits a little.

The more detailed an account you keep, the more information you'll be able to gleam for yourself every month or every other month when you can take a step back and basically tally up your life.

This form of sorting of detailed info is probably the basis for what is now known as Forensic Accounting.

So if you want to, maybe for a laugh, in the next month or so just keep a detailed record of what and where you're doing. Then at the end of the month just look through them and be amazed at how exactly you've spent your time.

Who knows where this insight into yourself might take you?

Have fun and Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

On and Off Gig

Had the opportunity to earn some extra cash by extracting videos for a local company, the money is not bad but the work involved is really time consuming. I guess that is why i'm being paid... To add to that the conversion of file types to suit their system is really difficult, gotta search for the right converter that has the right codec.

The source is also another issue, they used to just have the link embedded in the source page but now they have taken an additional step of embedding it in a .xml file to even further hide things. Sometimes I wonder why they are so guarding of things when their main source of business is advertising and not selling media.
O well its an extra income source even if it is just once a year...

The last time i did this for them was exactly a year ago, it seems that around this time there is a need for such services. And from what I heard there is only 1 other person that is doing this media extraction for cheap, so I suppose I'm giving him competition. At least he won't be a monopoly in this area. Capitalism Rulez!

Don't think I'll be adding this amount to the fund as it is something that I would have gotten before embarking on this endeavor.

I guess it is slightly different from the Surveys and Moola.com because it is due to this endeavor that I will be putting more effort into doing those things so it is a direct correlation?

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Interesting Lecture 01

Stumbled upon this lecture by Marshall Brain a while back and decided to post a link to it here.(will also be placing an easier to find link under the resources for later re-reading.)

It really gives the primed student a great angle to look at how they would like to be placed in society, as a productive member of society? Or as an entrepreneur?

I'm not saying that entrepreneurs are not productive, its just that the 80 percent that try usually end up back where they started either a little richer in experience or money but mostly experience.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't, because without the effort of even trying how are we to know that we will be successful in anything? To quote Woody Allen "Eighty percent of success is showing up." So why not put in the effort to do so?

As an agency manager, it is hard to convince people to come for the first interview or to attend a recruitment seminar. But as one of my industry's long time speakers Dr Andrew Goh will always say at the start of the seminar: "Congratulations You Have Made It! There Are Probably Three Others Who Are Still On Their Way Here."

This shows the point of just showing up and being there is part of the formula of success, because if there is no cause, there will be no effect.

I've read and heard plenty of lectures on the web and through books. Some good, some awesome. Shall strive to share them and to keep for posterity on this blog so as to remind myself in times of great lows, how to scale the heights once again.

I may not be a graduate of any college but I will learn as a student through the University of the Web.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Carvivor Rally 2010

Great!!!! Got a call back from my local radio station(Power98) about a contest that I registered for.

We got in!

And the grand prize is $10,000 cash! Contest requires a group of 4 in a car to drive around our little island to 5 different locations and doing challenges. Fastest total time wins!

Can't wait!!! Excited. Got to win! Then I'll put my share into this endeavor! but then.... just realised... if I put it into this endeavor, I can only put in to complete my current step! So I guess its money for a well deserved holiday then :) Holiday Money!!!

Hopefully we can beat the other teams and emerge the victors! I want to WIN!!!
:P

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Online Surveys / Down a Step and Up a Step

I've been doing online surveys now for over 2 years and it has really given me a little booster here and there in terms of shopping vouchers and gifts, so far I've gotten around $40 worth of shopping vouchers and small gifts like a candy bar(yes they actually sent me a candy bar as a welcome gift) and a baseball cap.

But unknowingly, I have accumulated over 1,600 points for 1 of my survey sites over the past 2 years doing a survey here and a survey there. With 1,000 points amounting to US$50 I guess if i put a little more effort into doing those surveys I just might be able to get more out of it!
So this being another one of my free resources I think it should be added to this endeavor even though I started doing online surveys 2 years ago. As I have yet to cash it out I shall wait till I have received and cashed the cheque before adding to the total, but to help me keep track and keep me motivated it will be added to the Limbo section of my fund.

With that I have decided to drop myself down to Step 4 and back up to Step 5 again due to the comic book that I bought previously for $0.50 and the $0.37 that I've found since.
I shall keep all un-cashed items under the Limbo section and focus on bringing them into my Actual amount. This will take me back a bit but i believe it is the right thing to do. We should not be "counting our chickens before they hatch".

Started with $1.32

Ended with $0.82
$0.37 From him

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Moola.com

Started an account on Moola.com awhile back before I found out about the Steps. Was as intrigued by the concept of doubling a penny 30 times to over 10 million as I am when I found out about the Step program.

The only thing was, for the moola.com thing to work:
A) You have to be extremely lucky &
B) Someone else will have to lose a few million in the process for you to gain your 10 million.
So with that in mind I decided that it was a ridiculous idea to purely double a million through moola.

Because as stated out in the report, most people can't stick with the program! and to add to the difficulty, someone else would have to lose half a million for you to reach your million! Just Ask Yourself "Would You Risk That Kind Of MONEY?"

But anyway since i started the account before i started this blog I've decided to add whatever amount I can muster from playing those games to this endeavor. But only after cashing it out and receiving the cheque. As it is right now, the site does not allow for foreign players to cash out so i shall slowly wait for either them to release an international version or a friend who's in the states at the time that I can cash out to lend me their address. haha *evil grin* In the mean time I shall slowly amass my moola there as well, one penny at a time. If you wish to join please do so from my link as they have a referral program as well.

Wish me Luck
(for moola.com I really need it)
M$Penguin

AdBrite Accepts! Boo to Ad-No-Sense!!

*grin*

As you might have noticed, I've started to monetize this blog and after much searching finally found a good Advertiser that lets you choose the ads you want and customize them to fit your page.

Looked at a few other advertisers but most needed the blogger to "mention" certain services or links that they will send u in an Assignment Email(which i find is horrible, because we blog what we want to blog about not take direction from advertisers right?) that's why decided to stick to the simple Banner Ads format of AdBrite. Which was actually stumbled upon by accident while I was registering for the Black Label Ads until I found a HUGE poster of a man holding his penis on the side of my blog that I realised that they did "Adult" ONLY Ads.... I just thought "Adult" meant adult focused like stocks or products for men/women but not porn... so quickly cleared their Ads and went for AdBrite instead for that more family oriented ad.

Anyway as i said before its not for the money(thou it won't do any harm to have a little more) but for the exposure and understanding of how online ads work and how much they can actually make.

Please don't feel obliged to click on any banner ad unless it really catches your eye as I do not endorse anything that is shown myself.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Intereting Posts and Motivation

Been reading a lot more lately after starting this blog, I guess it must be the want and desire to know more of what others who are heading for the same goal as myself are doing and how they go about achieving what they've set out to do. And along the way I happen to pick up a few gems of knowledge for myself to share here.

Over at Marelisa's Blog she has an article about this book by Pink(not the singer I'm assuming) on the 'Adventures of Johnny Bunko' which is essentially a manga style book for people who are searching for the right career and it gives advice about what to look for. There are 6 points highlighted by the book that you should internalise before starting on your career hunt.

I like points 3 , 4 & 6.

Point 3 - It's Not About You.

I like the quote by Seth Goldin: “I will sell by helping others get what they want, by identifying needs and filling them.” Its really true because "People won't care until they know how much you care". I've been taught these principles in some other form and they ring very true in the sales and service sector. We really need to see our jobs as one that is of a caring nature and not one just purely done for the sake of money to be truly happy. Luckily I can say that I am very happy with my job.

Point 4 - Persistence Trumps Talent.

Why I like it so much? Because it sums up my industry to the T. In my line of work, you have to be extremely persistent. I am in the Insurance business(O the horror! Quick Run!). See what I mean? In my line of work I face rejection every day and from everyone, and I really mean everyone. Even the person who ends up signing a plan with me has rejected me at least 5 times throughout my presentation. Being a manager, I've trained and seen plenty of fresh faces that come in and out of the industry.

And why i like point 4 is that it is so true, I've seen plenty with talent beyond words. People that can charm a bird down a tree. But yet fail within a year of joining the industry. The truly successful people in my industry are not people like them but rather the hardworking and persistent people that never calls it quits due to a bad call, that never gets discouraged because a prospect they felt had potential canceled their appointment. These persistent people are the real successes of my industry.

Point 6 - Leave An Imprint.

I believe this is probably the hardest point to digest but yet the most important. Finding ones purpose in life i believe is one of the hardest things to do let alone plan for. But in the book it challenges the reader to find your true motivation by asking yourself:"What is my sentence?" and sites examples like:
“She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.” and “He taught two generations of kids how to read.”

It stems from Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, who went one day in the early 1960′s to visit President Kennedy. She told him this: “A great man is a sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was the following: “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s sentence was the following: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.”

Luce was worried that Kennedy was trying to do too many things, and that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.

We should strive to do as much as we can in this lifetime but what exactly do we wish to be remembered by?

I, alas is still searching for my question. Maybe someday I will be able to proclaim that I made a million dollars through this endeavor, and that might be something worthy to be remembered by.

Anyway motivation is important in anything we do and we can't get motivated but inspired to take action. So may this post inspire and thus motivate anyone reading to do their best in what they have chosen to pursue and....

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Update on Step 5

My dry spell is really over! Found $0.12 lying around my office in pennies. Must keep looking! Keep my dry spell at bay!

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Dry Spell Over!!!!

O Finally!!!!! My dry spell is finally over, last minute decision to pick my partner up after work for a little walkie walkie and dinner.

While walking around a department store we were playing around the Novelties section with the new coin banks, these are the battery operated types that have a dog eating from a bowl and the electronic safe kinds then when i entered the code for the electronic safe and low and behold a nickel was inside! Then she looked in the doggy coin bank and found $0.20!!! So now we are a quarter up!

Lucky Lucky!

So now its time to aim for the next step!

Started with $0.45

Ended with $0.70
$0.05 From him
$0.20 From her

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Update on Step 5

Still trying to get over the dollar hump... seems that it is either people are more careful about dropping money or i really have no luck in finding them these past 2 weeks... still unable to find anything.

But on a brighter note, found some really cheap comic books for sale and rummaged through the lot to search for untapped gems. Managed to find a few gems in near mint condition including titles like 'The Mighty Thor' , 'Batman - Shadow of the Bat' , 'The Punisher War Journal' and a few other "if-ies". Anyway here is a picture of the title that i choose to put up for sale first.The Mighty Thor - Odin Awake #449 published in 1992

Each comic book cost $0.50 so I am only able to buy 1 using the fund.
Bought a total of 15 comic books because they were on further offer at 5 for $2, but it shall be put under my own personal stash for now. I will then slowly buy them from myself using the fund and for a profit, haha.
Anyway, searched for some other free online action sites and managed to find a few, will start posting the one comic book up for sale within a week as per my own Rule #5 and see how things go. Feeling excited to be able to get something going while still in the less-than-a-dollar phase.

Will be writing the purchase up as a deduction first as I really have no idea how long the comic will be stuck in limbo and if so it will just be in my itinerary.(hopefully not).
Anyway not sure if this will drop me down to step 4 due to the cost of the comic but i shall just keep myself at step 5, with the comic listed as in my itinerary with its cost price listed.

Started with $0.95
Used $0.50 to purchase comic book
Ended with $0.45

Wish Me Luck
M$Penguin

Ad-No-Sense Again + other stuff

O bugger.. guess this blog just can't seem to make those Ad-No-Sense people happy... and i wonder why they are all situated in the Netherlands... every time i request to resubmit the blog for Ad-No-Sense approval I'll see an audience member from the Netherlands.. so I guess in the Netherlands, my blog is unacceptable.

Still can't figure out why this blog is not accepted. They just keep referring to the T&C of Ad-No-Sense

Guess i really have no luck in getting this thing up with an Ad.. but like i said before 'its not for the money, but for the experience of how to earn it through Ads'.

=_=

so no Advertising for this site for now, it shall remain a journal of my journey.

O and sadly... still haven't crossed the First Dollar Hump... its getting that much better when I finally clear it :) got to stay positive right? And I'm not even talking about clearing the step yet.

Wish Me Luck
M$Penguin

p.s Found out that a private poker room got raided last night in the area where i used to frequent, hope its not my friend's room... would really suck if it was.
But o well, if he chooses to flaunt the law he'll have to live with the consequences when it catches up to him.

Why a Million?

Why double to a million? Why a million?
Read an article in my local papers a few months back about how a few girls got together and started their blog-shop selling clothes and fashion accessories and cleared over a million in profits a year after just 3 years. With the girls still in high school and having over a million in profits, 2 of them decided to quit school to focus on the business.
After a little calculating, it seems that they must have sold at least 3,000 articles of clothes per month at a profit of just $5 profit per article. And without the cost of having a brick and mortar store for overheads. One can clearly see why they stuck with this model of sales. They also spread their website far and wide by sharing mailing lists with other blog-shops.
Envy is the worst thing to hold onto when trying to start your own business, so I'll steer clear away and move instead towards admiration.
Admiration towards the way they used every resource available to them and look for the cheapest way to get the job done and done well. It is no easy feat to clear the million mark in a business, just ask any business start-up, staying solvent and having cash-flow is nothing to snuff at.
So back to the question, why a million?
Its the true mark that you've made it in business and i intend to hit that mark with this endeavor.

Wish Me Luck
M$Penguin

Hurdle or Hump?

Not sure what is it that is keeping me from clearing this hurdle.. Is this the Dollar hump?
I'm wondering why its taking so long so find another nickel... I mean I've been looking and looking and looking but nothing.. I feel like that I'm worst off then when I started looking for coins. I mean I've been looking everywhere.. in vending machines, around car-parks, around grocery stores and even looking wide eyed when i spot a stray trolley around the parking lot hoping there will be a nice dollar stuck in its return box but alas... zip....
But what to do.. I should just carry on and look right?
Push through! Push through!
Hopefully I can find the next coin soon to bump me over this hump..
Been ill lately as well so would be nice to find a nice shiny coin to brighten up my day.

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Reasons

Told some of my friends that i was starting this endeavor, i supposed there was a reason why in the report it says at the end not to tell anyone about it.....

What drove me to write this sort-of-lengthy entry is a show by abc called My Generation. It is a faux documentary that is supposed to look back into the 10 years since graduation of a group of teenagers of a certain high school. After watching the first 2 episodes of the show, it really got me thinking of the past and how my dreams and ambitions have turned out.

As in the show i graduated high school in 2000, making me an ideal subject to look back into the last 10 years and see how everything has unfolded. So let's see....

Back in 2000 i wanted to start a business with a friend, was given $500 capital by my mom as she thought it might be a good idea for me to learn how to do business.

Had the business plan all done up, products sourced but then the marketing and sales were not done and we didn't agree upon a lot of things, soon the other guy's enthusiasm dropped. So it fizzled and i was left with the inventory.

Managed to sell a few pieces myself after that and was given the opportunity to take on the distribution for a certain brand for the region but I was ill prepared, I was scared of failure and scared of the task at such a scale that I gave up the opportunity and well.. now I see the brand flourishing in the many years since.Who knows? if I had taken on the project, the brand would probably have failed.So lucky them???

I wasn't mature enough, lacked experience and was just plain naive. I see that now.

As for my education, I naturally thought that i would be getting my diploma in engineering. But that didn't happen, i dropped out of polytechnic late in my second year.Was not able to understand one of the essential modules, so i was out..

Looking back, if i had chosen a nearer polytechnic I would have felt more willing to head to school and not skip it.. or maybe its just an excuse that I'm giving myself now. So with that, I have pissed away 2 years just cause of dropping out from school.

Then there was my National Service, well... nothing to moan about here, really enjoyed my time serving the nation in I dare say one of the best run medical centers in the 3 services. So add another Two and a half years to the time line.

After which I joined my financial institution, till now has been around 5 years. No regrets with this career. Can't really have any, everything you want you can just go out and get if you work hard enough.

So there it is, my 10 years since high school.

My dream of being a millionaire at 25 has failed, but in the ashes of failure one will learn and rise again like a phoenix.

Why I started this endeavor?

To test myself. To Challenge myself. To set my goals out in writing.

As a wise man once said 'If you just think it, it will only be a dream. But if you write it down, it will be a goal.'

And to me goals are achievable. I've learnt to set SMART goals in management so I'll apply it:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

And so a goal of earning a million dollars with this plan is achievable, as it breaks up the goal of a million into the steps to be S.M.A.R as for the T, I suppose it's up to each of us to set a time frame. For me it will be in the next 10 years. So in 2020 i shall be a millionaire purely from this endeavor.

No new find these few days but i shall persevere and keep looking!

Wish me Luck
M$Penguin

Hot hot day with added dash of bad...

Added the dime my partner found to the fund, too hot a day to do anything much today... weather is horrible and my dad's netbook just became a brick.... gonna have to head down to acer to get it fixed.. wonder how much it'll cost.. warranty over.. sianz...

Started with $0.85

Ended with $0.95
$0.10 From her

Eyes on the ground

wish me luck
M$Penguin