As it is.. today proved to be a rainly sunday afternoon and the lighting was not exactly good enough for reading.  Did a search online of the story and woe:

http://www.orwell.ru

Discovered the entire collection of George Orwell’s stories for everybody to enjoy.  Best thing about reading on an electronic platform, you have a host of other tools like dictionaries and thesaurus at your finger tips.  I just installed a dictionary plugin on my firefox browser and tada….

Hmmm.. surely.. this is the beginning to the end of book…..

And I see interesting results… its like.. my weight actually varies much like a random walk… but such … non-confirmity disturbs me.  I mean… I like to see meaningful results… .and this Gyminee software that I use online… just does not give that.  Man.. they should have worked in some kind of 30 day averaging graph.  (Oh ya.. btw, did you know that the house price index is calculated through a series of complicated monthly averaging stats?  they should definitely have adopted a similar approach…) 

Frankly, most people can only be bothered about the long term trend.  Surely, they are not interested in seeing short term fluctuations, and believe me… a LOT of such fluctuations are activities triggered, i.e. when u do a big business you lose between 200g – 1000g.  If its small, it can range from 200g – 400g (Personal statistics..) .

Anyway, here goes my 3 day statistics.  Tried to make it work a bit better by understating some results.  I actually weighed 71.8kg today… but … did not feel it can be accurate… how can a person lose 2 kg in 3 days???  So rounded it up to 72kg.  Hehe.. this the the manual way of doing the averaging… so that I can kind of see the hopefully… long term trend downwards?

One of the main problems faced in doing an outsourced operation is power.  Yes, fast expanding economies results in power demands increasing at exponential rates.  Coupled with the problem that building a Power Plant take a couple of years… this generally results in a temporary (hopefully) shortfall of power.

I believe… another problem with such countries is the subsidizing of electricity.  Somehow, even though there is insufficient power to prevent load shedding, authorities are prevented from correcting this demand and supply inconsistency by raising the price of power.  Electrical power like oil prices are fixed at artificially low prices for fear of upsetting the general populace (my own guess… no official data to verify).

Just recently, the state-owned Telephone company launched a strike nation-wide over wages.

PTCL Strike in Pakistan

The current electricity price in Singapore is 21.38 cents per KWH, based on the post below.

http://www.post1.net/lowem/entry/singapore_electricity_price_increase_2007q4

In Pakistan, the electricity rates for the top bracket, i.e. maximum consumer, is only half of that, i.e. 10 cents per KWH.  To deal with the shortfall in power, the government started imposing periods of loadshedding whereby the electricity supplies will be turned off during certain timings for certain districts.

I hope they will just free up the pricing of electricity and let it go up naturally.  It will resolve a lot of issues.  Generally, electricity demand in Pakistan is very price elastic as the general populace are very poor.  I believe a small increase in electrical charges will solve most of the electricity problems.

Businesses with an inelastic demand for electricity will be able to pay for all the electricity they need.  Electricity supplies will be naturally diverted from residential activities to high-value business activities, thus greatly stimulating the economy.

At the first glance, investors might be mistaken that Pakistan has cheap electrical costs, i.e. half of Singapore.  On the contrary, the truth is that electrical charges in Pakistan is much, much higher, if you take into account all the indirect costs…

Because of the artificially low price, electricity shortages are caused.  Businesses are forced to incur expensive electrical set-ups to combat the shortage of electricity during load-shedding periods.    Below is a diagram of the electrical set up of my office:

Initially I started with a simple cheap UPS.  However, as the UPS output was not exactly sinusoidal, I had to get another higher end UPS for the computers.  (Yes.. after some research, it seems that square wave UPS damages the computer circuitry).  That seemed to work for quite a while until the rain season came in.  Somehow rainwater causes massive disruptions in the power network… causing long periods of blackout, i.e. 3-6 hours.

Generally, UPS do not provide power for 3-6 hours.

Ended up, we had to get a generator… with a Switch Box.  I thought I had finally solved the problem… but no.. the UPS just refuses to get charged.  Well, the problem was that the generator did not have a stable output voltage, i.e. so we will need a voltage stabilizer….

So that is the result of "cheap electricity" charges:

• 1 Generator
• 1 Voltage Stabilizer
• 1 SwitchBox
• 2 UPS

Generator

Expensive UPS

Cheap UPS

Remember the cufflink idea I was telling you about? Well, after buying a bit of sample, we kind of give it up. Honestly, I think it is still do-able. Just that it is not easy… and frankly… all my money is stuck in invoice. I honestly dun see how I can pay for the idea unless i suddenly stop all my sales and fire all my guys and just wait for my invoice to mature… which is really unthinkable… after all… my small business has finally been proven viable….

Anyway, forget about such mundane money problems, and lets talk about a little bit more on what I read…..

Frankly, the book went way above my expectations. I tried looking at it through Amazon and it seems to have only 1 person reviewing. He gave it a 4 star, but you know how deceiving statistics are on small numbers? Anyway, after flipping through a few pages, it went pretty all right. Did i read something really analytical, something out of the blue, something totally revolutionary? Nah…. the book feels more like an ounce of common sense. It writes about things you already know… but it was something definitely worth reading again. I mean… we all need reminders… some nagging just to get our ideas straight from time to time.

The book claims that you have to take 5 steps to LeapFrog your competition. For one thing, the contents of the book says it all:

Giant Step 1: Cataput Your Strategy over Conventional Wisdom

• Be First, Be Exceptional
• Make Yourself Obsolete Before Someone Else Does
• Go Beyond Traditional Competitive Weapons
• View the World Through Bifocal Lenses

Comments: The typical Blue Ocean Strategy kind of thing. Only thing is… Blue Ocean Strategy really goes into details on the profitability of Being First, Being Exceptional. It has graphs, charts, etc…

Giant Step 2: Flood Your Organization with Knowledge

• Obliterate Barriers to the Flow of Ideas
• Don’t Empower Your Employees – Liberate Them

Comments: Something quite new to me. Finally understand why my X CEO keep showing all of us the balance sheet and profitability of the company…. even though the figures were honeslty depressing. I guess it puts us all in the correct perspective on the siutation of the company.

Giant Step 3: Wrap Your Organization Around Each Customer

• Obsess About Customers, Not Profits
• Focus on Market Units of One

Comments: Hmmm… now this gets depressing. I am definitely not doing this… but then again… I am beginning to feel that this might be the right way. The problem is… I am trying to mass market a service like web design… but honestly, it seems that most of my money is made from the bigger clients….. not true also… ‘cos my most profitable clients are still those touch and go customers where I do not need to even meet them… Those clients are immensely profitable as I at most spend half a day talking cock to them. I mean.. how long can it get over the phone when you are not travelling to meet them? I just realised… travelling time is a major time killer for sales people. Cut down on that.. and u save heck of a lot of time.

Giant Step 4: Transform Your Organization into a Web of Relationships

• Get Real About What It Takes to Build a Web Team
• Invite Your Competition In – Don’t Fence Them Out
• Bless Thy Complaining Customer

Comments: Cool! Must get my future clients to believe in this. Honestly, IT should be this way… especially if we are going for ERP systems to try to make the company operate smoothly and efficiently…. Who else can better advise the customers other than their IT vendor?

Giant Step 5: Eat Change for Breakfast – Serve It Up for Every Meal

• Get Honest – Walk the Talk
• Don’t Get Snookered by Fads du Jour
• Sponge Up Daily Doses of Reality
• Beware the Danger of Success

Comments: Hehe… when it comes to this stage.. I can only close a blind eye. I not successful yet lei… and i dun know.. but I do embrace change. In fact, our company is constantly improving in its core services. Yah.. i am constantly investing in technology to fine-tune our operations… so that we can do less and earn more…
I particularly like Giant Step 4. It explains the powerful rationale in Outsourcing… and yes, I believe Outsourcing is good. We should all just concentrate on what we are good in. It claims:

94 percent of surveyed firms currently outsource at least one major business activity. The fastest-growing candidates for outsourcing are traditional in-house functions such as accounting and finance (where outsourcing has doubled over the past three years), information systems (up 40 percent), and marketing (up 35 percent)!

Hmmm.. i wonder when they will start outsourcing even sales. So imagine. I run an IT company and outsource development, marketing and sales. Effectively, I can just sit around with an empty company name and start earning money. Hehe… of course that is just bullshit. Just as HP does outsources the manufacturing while retaining the high value design work, I think every company must have people doing their most valued work. But that is the point! Staff should only be doing the most valued work. All other works of lower value should be outsourced…..

An excerpt about Rolls-Royce and EDS:

The two companies have gradually developed a Step IV collaborative web in which the parties physically intermingle with each other at work and hold ongoing, open discussions on planning, design, and execution. Rolls-Royce gains with the inflow of exceptional expertise that it doesn’t have to “buy and own.” EDS gains significantly greater “share of customer” business on a long-term basis and a wealth of new unanticipated expertise from its customer that it can market to other clients.

I like the part of: doesn’t need to “buy and own”. Recently, I heard a saying amongst divorced old men about “not needing to buy a cow if you only want to drink milk”. Hmmm…. you think they are talking about the same things?

A gaze in the crystal ball of the future:

We imagine a world in which there are many, many firms with only one person, and many others with fewer than fifteen people. These firms would come together in temporary combinations for various projects. Work is already organized like htis for producing moveis, organizing conventions, and construcing large buildings.

Yes… i believe the above is true too. I believe that projects will be handled by a motley group of independent contractors. Only called upon when their service is required. I mean… how can a company remain competitive if he needs to pay staff to hang around with no good work or purpose for him?

But imagine a company that only utilises staff to do work which has a 100% value add to the organization. Now that is powerful… if the company needs to push a product through a series of marketing campaigns, an ad-hoc team can be put together to drive it. This team can be disbanded immediately upon project completion, thus shaving off unnecessary costs. The economy is also better served as these resources are now released back into the human resource pool to service other corporations. I think… that is the future too… hmmm… wanna start creating project management software? Dun be stupid… how to compete with all the msn and google platforms?

Hehe… and that is why i so happy about a recent collaboration I have – Musician Online. It is basically a new revolutionary musician booking service which I am confident is the future. It will probably just take some time to pick up. But as the saying goes: Be first. Be Exceptional. This will be my Blue Ocean. Man.. it better be. It is draining whatever shit I can salvage out of the bloody waters of our IT industry to finance it.

But the again, talking about being first and exceptional, I just can’t stop thinking about Ryan’s Wall Stickers. Honestly, when he first told me the idea, I just thought it was pretty cool. But now having bought a set and pasted it all over my room, I must say… it is a great product, and it will succeed. Honestly, it is hard to visualise its effects… until you see it in your own room. I just think it is fantastic. It livens up my room, makes me more productive and ya… adds value. Definitely well worth the 60 bucks! (yah.. i hear some of you scream… 60 bucks for some stickers! But trust me. It is cool. If u can spend thousands on renovation, why not another 60 bucks to get a new refreshing look in your house?)

Okay… enough of advertising (not paid)….

Last thing after reading the book, really quite happy that I do not have enough cash to finance the cufflink project.

It talked about how Novell, at a particular stage of its life, tried to foray into Microsoft’s arena of word processing and spreadsheets before getting beaten and crushed by Microsoft. Only when it refocussed its efforts on its core competency, i.e. networking, did it start to get back to profitability.

Honeslty, I think that if I were to enter the cufflink business right now, i will die quite tragically. In the bloody red ocean, web solutions business I am in, capital and cash-flow is really important. Also, there are a thousand and one profitable things to do in IT. Why should I throw good money after bad ones by venturing into a retail industry which I have utterly no experience at all?

Anyway, I had to meet this girl as my friend’s fiance actually claimed that she will make me go oo-oo-ah-ah when I do see her. I have to take a peek at Ms Oo-oo-ah-ah no matter what.

So putting my mountain heap of work load aside… I drove mummy’s car to Hougang Ave 4. I took the following route:

• took the PIE, planning to exit at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3
• missed the exit at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 and exited at Kallang Way
• Hit the AYE and went back towards Clementi
• Came out at Alexander did a U turn… and move back down the AYE towards Changi Airport, planning to turn into CTE
• Ended up at Keppel Rd. Honestly..i swear the CTE exit just disappeared.
• U turn on the AYE (or so I thought… ) hit a strange road that looked like AYE but brought me all the way to Haw Par Villa
• Drove past my house and hit PIE again
• finally exited successfully at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3

It was a f***** long ride. By the time I reach the house, I was quite heated up. Then I went into the house and saw a girl. I couldn’t believe what I saw. She made my mum look pretty.

Just when I was about to kill Mr Khoo Kay Tiong, I suddenly realised that it was the wrong girl. Hmmm… that was Mr Khoo’s fiance .. .whatever… that is not important. Anyway, the girl was definitely pretty. And the long ride didn’t feel that bad after all.

So we did some simple talk amongst us. And… man… young women are so …b*****? Not sure if that is the word… but anyway…. all both me and Mr Khoo did was sit down there and get insulted by Mr Khoo’s fiance and that pretty girl. After enduring 2 hours of mockery… I still have not the faintest idea of who she is as a person. All i figured out is:

• she carried a book around, so i guess she likes to read?
• she speaks better english than me.
• she is pretty.
• she is not shy, demure kind of a girl. (cham liao… very good in quarreling one)

Oh ya. Ms Oo-oo-ah-ah’s name is Jessica. I think the surname is Goh…. not sure though. Yah.. I am really bad with names… I still remembered I used to sms regularly with a girl that I kind of liked… until one day I forgot her name. When i tried to ask her for her name again over sms, she instantaneously stopped smsing me. So better put it all in black and white. At least, in the event that I really do forget her name, I can just give mummy a call and ask her to go on the net and fish out something for me.
Anyway, at the end of it, I sent her home. And now am struggling to finish up all my work before reservist.