Farewell Fa Fa at Ribs @ Oasis Bandar Utama

Late last year, to send off our dear friend, we had dinner at Ribs@Oasis Bandar Utama. This is the first time and the awesome part is that the portion is quite big. I used to be a meat lover, but now, I really should have less. However, meat lover will find this place quite interesting.

It feels like home, eating there, probably because it is so close and surrounded in a housing area. The crowd isn't too big, probably only those who stayed around there would know. However over the past few months, I think it has gained popularity.

Enough about the food and restaurant, I will let you food lover go find out and tell me how it goes. Well the reason I was there is because one of my friend is flying back to England, where she works. And I just got sentimental and started to think of my friends, how little time we have to catch up, how superficial at times because we have very little time to talk, not to mention time to eat and then have to quickly rush off. There just isn't enough quality in those time it feels. How come, generally, most people I know tell me that, time was slower when we were younger. Well, if I can just program my mind to think like that, wouldn't it be good?

Well I realize that, time will not slow down relative to my sensation to it, but it will only move faster and faster. I have to really make full use of it, every moment of it. As I clean up my computer files and photos that I never had time earlier to clear them up. Found some photos and I really took some time, looked at them and think of how fast time flies, and years that has gone by seems to happen in a blink of an eye. And it is Chinese New Year now, I would have some time to re-connect with some of them. I like to look at them, each one of them, in the eye and tell them how much I appreciate them as friends.

Time will only move forward, but good memories will last, and I intend to keep each and every one of them :)
 
~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

T. Harv Eker's Millionaire Mind Intensive

I have been invited once again by a good friend of mine to a seminar that features Kieron Sweeney, a Canadian guy and Adam from New York. Both of them leads the entire event and Harv wasn't here though :(

Anyway, all was not gloomy or bad. In fact, both of them did a good job I think. It happen early February 2010 in PWTC. Getting food was a bit difficult, to an otherwise OK event. Of course the place was jam packed with about 800 to 900 people.

Learning:
Harv's Millionaire Mind Intensive (MMI), is trying to make simple the get rich process by first focusing on our mindset. The thing is that having the mindset right is crucial in being rich and stay rich. Several methods used on providing a solution of money spending, known as the JAR system, which helps different types of personality to plan their saving. This alone is already good stuff and of course there is a lot of other teaching which when put together, really make me thing that I can do a lot more.

MMI also set the record straight once and for all about being rich, if you want to be rich, go do your OWN business. Or something sales related that, does not limit your income ability.

Interesting:
In the midst of teaching, we witness how they SELL and I am not kidding, some of their courses worth a fortune, ranging from 4 digits to 5 digits. But with their skill and experience, they seem to be able to make the sale pretty easily. I am not going to say more, but, you should see it for yourself to be fair :)

Networking:
Plenty of opportunity to mix and mingle with a wide variety of people. Most of them comes from sales background, network marketing and business owner. If you plan to come to one of this MMI, bring plenty of name cards.

Energy:
Another thing that is interesting is that, Kieron talks a lot about energy and that everything is energy and also a lot about the Law of Attraction. I don't buy the law of attraction thing, but, the energy in the room is kept high all day. They are very good in using the volume of their voice, like suddenly loud, to asking you to do something (like, giving a High 5), to getting the audience attention.

Train the Trainer Course:
This is something I really wanted, but for the price, I figured I could get a better deal somewhere. Well however they sell it, they are right, I used another principle that they taught me. I am in control of money and I can find my way, one way or another.

Challenges:
You ought to try every challenge they put you through. All I can say is that you wouldn't regret it. You will reap more than you sow. And you have to listen to them at least once, why, because they really achieve success in life. They do not only speak about money only, but also on happiness and the ability to give back and the satisfaction they gain out of it.

Conclusion:
If you have not gone for an MMI, go for it. If you have read his book or you have not, still, go for it :) At least once, I am already planning to go for the next one for a recharge :)



~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

Maintaining Motivation to stay in Healthy Good Shape

Exercise is always a do-it-yourself (DIY) venture. No other person and no machine can do it for you. Hence, it is important to have those motivating factors so that a person who is into exercise in order to lose weight will hang about. This is what people who are overweight should learn to understand. However, even if it so easy to set for instructions and easy to follow, this is not the same case for almost 35% of Americans who are unable to prevent being overweight. And elsewhere all over the world, the number is increasing because of the type of food and lifestyle that we are in. Of course, once we are overweight, we usually want to trim down for a whole lot of reasons, some related to physical condition and fitness, while others would want to enhance their physique and appearance. And it is never too late to be fit.

In the past 50 to 75 years, physical activity has become the exception rather than the rule, both at home and on the job. People tend to drive where others once walked. People tend to flick a switch and machines do the hauling, lifting, pushing, and pulling for them. However, people who try to lose weight tend to believe that weight gain is likely to happen if they will not take forward-looking steps to stop it. The point here is that health experts believe that people lose their way, especially when it comes to dieting. They tend to go back to their old eating habits even after they learn to enjoy low-fat eating. They tend to return to sedentary ways even though they enjoy exercising.

Despite the momentum toward weight gain, you can stop it from happening, experts say. And there are plenty of good reasons to avoid excess pounds, reasons that go beyond vanity or social appearance. There are many reasons in order to keep you motivated to exercise and stay healthy for the rest of your life.

Ways to Lose Weight and Maintaining Motivation to Exercise

1. Have an explicit goal

A simple statement like, “I want to lose some weight,” is an ambiguous and an indefinite statement. It will not the least motivate you to start doing exercises right away. What is important is to be precise on your goals. It would be better if you will set some detailed amount of pounds that you really want to lose. Envisage yourself what you will look like after reaching your desired weight. Doing this will inspire you to lose weight. In fact, maybe even more than what you have planned in mind. The idea is to use that figure to assist you to remain resilient and dedicated.

2. Develop a strategy

Strength of will does not work alone! To lose weight and stay with it, your strategy must comprise of both exercise and diet, and not either of the two. Try to start motivating yourself by throwing away your clothes that have bigger sizes. This will put you in a situation where you only have your sexy clothes and that you have to make a choice by staying motivated to exercise or not wear any clothes at all. Which do you prefer?

3. Make out little, calculable measures

Put into practice actions that will suit your lifestyle. This means you have to implement moves that you and you alone will benefit from it and not somebody else. The idea here is to opt for a more positive and attainable goal and not just to shun away from being plump and chubby.

4. Produce monitoring that has an important effect

It would be better to have somebody willing to take note of your progress or development. This will inspire you to keep on doing what you have started. Having somebody to listen to your achievements is definitely a better prize than just achieving your goal alone. Besides, having an extra hand to support you and cheer for you when things start to fall short. It is that simple way of hearing somebody believing on what you do is one of the greatest motivations to keep you exercising for more.

5. Construct a vigorous, sensible time-line

What do you plan to achieve in a year? Try to suit your objectives to your calendar, and do not look forward to see the results in just a snap. The bottom line is that in order to stay motivated to exercise entails a lot of hard work, which is contrary to what most people tend to think. The main idea is to let people change their lifestyle because it is only through this way that they will absolutely change their weight for the better.


~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

Shopping Around

Wow.. it is not that easy shopping online. There's plenty of stuff to choose from.

Come to think of it, it is not that easy to find a good story book for kids, one that teaches good value as well as durable hard covered book. I'll try to find out more.

~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

3 things we need to know to progress, where we are, where we want to be, how to get there. We need to know all 3, think about that.

Thank you 2009, Welcome 2010

My believe is that every year we have to look back and see what progress we have made, do a minor tweak or adjustment and see where we are headed to next. In all reality, 2009 has not been an easy year, as do most years anyway. It will be a waste not to look back and take away learning points. The reality is that the world seems to have gone on a twisted economic cycle. Just to recap some of it the financial meltdown in US, the laying off of workforce all over the world, cutting back of spending from consumer to corporate, the almost always worsening weather and its getting really hot here, political disappointment (the usual picking and biting of each other but as a nation, no real progress), H1N1 another name for another strain of something as common as flu (but it has name because it kills us easily) and inflation on daily items.

So it does look crappy 2009, isn't it? well there was a feel scare but we all survived. And well, for all the stuff mentioned above, it is really beyond my control anyway. What I could do was what I can influence both from my personal action and personal thinking. In spite of all above, it was quite a fruitful year to complement a sad list above :) It is a year that I achieve my PMP, got an award in Software Testing for the organization I service, made a few friends, felt closer to God (yes, we pray more during the tough times), attended Wealth Mastery and preparation for fatherhood. Not that bad at all, I think.

So, come 2010, first of all is making real progress in planning and execution, as well as getting excited and fill my enthusiasm for life itself. I have to be more detailed now, and more precise in execution as this is one of the area I feel lacking the concentration. You know, we can be so distracted sometimes over things we have to do. I am really thinking of a year plan and then breaking them into quarterly plans so that the tracking is much better. From past experience, yearly plans are seldom looked at. Though with quarterly targets, I must live everyday by itself that is, everyday I must make progress and live it to the fullest, in passion, enthusiasm, love and joyfulness. We know we have today, but we do not know whether we really have tomorrow. And all of the daily activity jumbled up really packs it up and well hopefully still giving myself 7 or at least 6 hours of good sleep, plenty of water and pack in a couple of hours of good exercise and sun light every week.

A lot of cutbacks as well for 2010, I must reduce wastage time. Plenty of it, I suppose I should start with less TV, less games (yes, I still do games), less unhealthy food, less negativism, less pessimism and definitely less anger. I find that we live in a world full of pressure and pain. As yet technology has provided us with ample amount of convenience, I do find that with so much convenience, sometimes we do not appreciate life enough as it is. One thing I remembered that Keith Cunningham taught me, is that we have to set aside time to THINK. Have you really sit down and think today? Have we sit down and appreciate each and every present that God has give me and thank God and thank the people around me? Nope, have not done much of that. Come 2010, I definitely will.

One theme I want to make 2010 for me personally, is that 'To make this world a better place, with compelling future and exciting tomorrows for people around me, more so my family, so that the energy and enthusiasm around me will bring me to greater heights with God and understanding him better. To utilize my time so fully that I translate all my plans into outcomes that I wanted through perfect execution, as well as being generous with time for family and friends.

Yes Yes Yes, I can't wait for 2010!!

~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

It is time to reflect and give thanks, to love ones, friends and re-connect with others we have lost touch with. Merry Christmas

Do or do not, there is no try - Yoda

Importance of HR in 2009

Following the world economy crisis earlier this year, it is utmost important that every organization re-look and re-evaluate every single operation and strategy to ensure survival and profitability. The truth to the matter is, almost all the organization that I know have been affected. And the organization that is able to adapt to the slowdown, re-invent itself and make itself and its product valuable will be able to capture a bigger piece of market share as the world economy begins to recover.

Organization that is not able to change and re-invent itself will lose out to its direct competitor whom is able to do so. Instead of competing for market share, the beginning of 2009 appears to be a year of re-invention and a race to be the most effective and efficient company that is able to satisfy customer needs. Customer needs remain pretty much the same throughout this period of time, where the main concern is price. So, customer does not mind that the supplier does not provide them best services, but they would like the price to be as good as possible. The war on price forces almost all organization to make a product in the lowest price possible. The squeeze therefore has forced organization to cost down, retrench, reduce, outsource or even sell their none profitable unit.

Earlier this year seems to be the best time for company to make use of tools, such as Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Knowledge Management, Balanced Scorecard and 'Lean' methodology to drive down operational cost. Retrenchment would basically cause two problem, that is loss of moral among staff and loss of valuable staff as well as knowledge. This is followed by outsourcing of an entire none major or focused tasks to a third party organization. In all this
movement, the most overlooked aspect is always, the knowledge that the staff take away with them and the loss of knowledge as a result of outsourcing. Knowledge is among one of the many 'asset' of organization and if lost or shared out to the public may cause their 'secret' of success leaked out, in both cases, giving away their competitive advantage that they may hold against their direct competitor.

HR strategy if properly implemented can help reduce this impact and facilitate organization to re-invent itself so that the organization can sustain and emerge from this economy downturn with an advantage from its competitor. Here are a few areas that HR should look at:

1. HR Strategy must follow the organization vision, mission and strategy. Whatever lay out in the organization strategy, the HR strategy must follow suit to ensure that it is inclined and supports the objective. For example, if Company A decides to outsource its operation to Vietnam, Company A HR must be prepared with employment rules and regulation of Vietnam, access the capability of expertise there, cost of hiring and expenses there and attrition rate. All
this will prepare the organization with knowledge and ability to access whether the feasibility of this happening and also for them to ensure work done at the end of the day.

2. Succession planning must be implemented. Even with limited time and resources, this will ensure continuity and mitigate possible risks moving forward. Retrenchment is also a time where competitor company will try to woe your best staff away with only the minimal promise of monetary reward. They can be attracted to other things such as stability of competitor organization and other none monetary reward. So this time, any employees may move, even the most unlikely. Therefore Succession Planning is a necessity, not a luxury.

3. Knowledge Management is a must. Method of how KM is practiced and implemented across will have to be looked at. We know that it is not possible to extract all knowledge from each employee, BUT, the main knowledge has to be sustained and controlled. Person designated to this must be diligent to follow through in an organization to ensure outflow or retrenchment will not affect work and loss of knowledge. In addition, non-disclosure agreement must be something that has been done throughout. If there is a need for revision and getting everyone to sign on it, so it has to be.

4.Intellectual Property (IP), copyright is also another area that HR has to get involved in order to ensure that all this organization property is protected. This are valuable organization asset that if not properly protected will result in net loss of organization value.

5. Sourcing for talent and talent management is also a major challenge for HR teams. The HR must have the foresight in area of retaining, nurturing and attractive renumeration method to retain talent. All too often, HR poses to be the 'paperwork' or administrative role, but it is time to step up and propose to management the best way to retain talent. All too often, the idea of monetary value is the only criteria that everyone thinks the employee looks at. How about, in the area of flexibility and work from home? For example, Naraya (Thailand), the company that produce ladies accessories have production lines in the remote home of poor village housing area. However, the outreach of the market capability goes as far as Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

If there is ever a time for HR to step up and catch up, it is now. It is always said, in the midst of problems and difficulties, comes great opportunity. In the early years of Sony and Toyota, both company, took the step to divert and set up plants across America and then Europe. Before they even have a stronghold in their own country, that is, Japan, they took the calculated risk to expand before others. Today both are superpower, by the sheer diversification and expansion of plant in many countries. They are able to retain their expanding talent in Japan and send them all over the world and further expand and grow talent from there. It is a good organization growth strategy coupled with HR masterstroke. I leave you with one last example, that is Samsung. Today the company grow daily by just filing nearly 100 patents daily. Almost all of their employees are trained in the area of innovation. In one year, it could easily have 20000 patents. In a few years time, all this patents will play a big role in providing monetary return for Samsung. Samsung HR provides the right mix of motivation and compensation to make this happen.

~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.

Decision making is take a pick and stick by it. Successful people do it everyday, others sit on the fence and let others make it for them.

Impossible is a limitation we set our brain to believe that something cannot be done - Winson

Tomorrow may hold a better future, but today you need to decide whether you want it or not.

Holistic view is important... opportunity missed by organization because of silo view, must be careful of that.

I wonder if twitting and micro-blogging makes life better? Must we market so much of ourselves or tell so much about ourselves?

Prosperity depends on how well the company focuses on adding real value. -QP

In hard times, if you are better than the competition, they will get out and leave you with a larger portion of the market - QP

It used to be information limited, but now, it is information overloading. We have to learn to filter what information to process already.

Innovation used to be an art to me, but now, science. It can be done following a certain method or process. www.systematic-innovation.com

How significant your day is depends on how you see it, how important you are to the society depends on how you participate in it -winson

My Guess Watches

Interestingly, I was at a Guess watch yesterday trying to get my watches working again. I had a little chat with the guy who replaces the batteries. And below are some facts:
1. If your watch cover (on the reverse side), need to be peeled open, your watch is old, and if someone tries to sell you one of these, please make sure it is free or very cheap (because it should be old stock)
2. If your watch is original, ensure that the battery inside is made from Maxell. It should not be Sony or anything else. But more expensive watches would want battery made by Swiss manufactured batteries. So do watch it.
3. Life span of a decent Japanese battery is RM15 (including installation services). Life span of a lousy battery is several months (don't know how much it costs) AND a Swiss battery could go up to 2 years (for about RM20)!!

So that is that, a little wisdom from the watch maker :)


~~~ Life is an adventure where we search for the meaning of the outcome.