Archive for the General Category

My new iPad is amazing device.
By far the best gadget I had…
It is exceeding my expectations.
I was quite cautious before buying it and now…. I feel it was stupid. Don’t listen to all the techies that will tell you “why do you need a big iPhone?” . Until you use it 30 minutes you do not know the real user experience…

Key advantages are:

1. Amazing display for the web, photos, ppt and videos
2. The best browsing experience ever – by far better than iPhone
3. 12 hours battery life – I have been using it for 90 minutes now and the battery is still 94% full!
4. keynote – cool presentation capabilities
5. VGA adaptor. I plan to use it in presentations directly from my iPad

Jesper sent me this funny post and I wanted to share it with you…

THIS APPEARED ON CRAIG’S LIST

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy.
I’m not from New York . I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows – lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 432279810

THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.
Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful”
as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way.
Classic “pump and dump.”
I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

10 years ago, I purchased my first Digital Camera. It was big and expensive – around 900$, the quality was poor and the storage was up to 2MB… I even purchased another storage card that was up to 20 MB and cost me a similar price as the camera… Back then, People were quite conservative about the new device. Many claimed that it will remain a niche market and will never evolve. Today it is the market standard and the old film cameras became the niche market… This was only 10 years ago!

3 weeks ago, I bought my first sony e-book reader. It looks a bit clumsy and remind me a lot of the camera I purchased 10 years ago… It is no where as sexy as my IPhone… BUT and this a big BUT. I am sure this is the future of books.

My first reading experience was to read a GREAT book about doing BUSINESS IN CHINA,  written by a good friend from Beijing, SAM GOODMAN, a writer of this BLOG that wrote the book when East eats West. Sam sent me his draft book about a year ago, and I am sorry to tell that reading a PDF format on my laptop is not enjoyable at all, so I delayed reading the book. BUT now I had the pleasure to read his book on my new reader and it was an awesome experience! Why you might ask? Well here are my top 6 reasons:

1. ELECTRONIC INK – The fear I had when I purchased this new GADGET was will it be as good as the good old paper book, Since PDF books on computers have the annoying tendency to generate fatigue. This was totally not the case with the reader. Due to the fact that the E-INK is very clear and looks much like a book. You can actually read FASTER than a regular book with no fatigue what so ever.

2. WEIGHT & SIZE- It is by far lighter than 99% of the books and it can hold up to 1,500 books! No more 10KG in books in my next trip to Thailand. It is even easier to read since you don’t feel like you are in a GYM when you are reading the new 1,000+ biography of WARREN BUFFET…

3. FONT SIZE – Assuming the book was written in English you can read it in big fonts (3 different size). This advantage will become even more handy in 10 years when my eyes will need glasses to read from close glance.

4. PRICE – Assuming that you want to PAY for books, you can purchase most books in a discount that is 40-60 percent cheaper than a physical book. If you DON’T want to PAY… Well then the price drops in 100%…

5. GO GREEN – Of course you support the environment when you read E-BOOKS and the trees can stay where they are.

6. ACCESSIBILITY – Anxious to read the new Dan Brown book, and don’t want to wait for the translation, or for AMAZON to ship it in 21 days, just download in less than 60 Seconds, and you can read it immediately.

I am certain that this reader is just a kick start and within 10 years, we will laugh at the fact that we used to read Physical books, just like MP3 and Digital cameras…

So, you have this great idea, you are sure that it is going to be at least the next Google/Monster/Microsoft/Facebook. Now what?

Well, having a great idea is just the first step (and some say the easiest one) in a long long journey towards establishing your own living and kicking business. Since this platform of blogging requires us to divide this experience into small, 300-500 words sections, I find it to be a great opportunity to try to attack different aspects of starting up a new business one small piece at a time.

When Barak and I decided to “become serious” with the idea of www.Meijob.com, our first step was to sit and write down a business plan that we could present to potential investors. But how do you start writing a business plan? What is the “must have” information? How are we going to translate the storm in our heads into words and numbers?

We met one day in one of the (then) scarce coffee shops in Beijing and brainstormed about it for a while, until Barak said: “You know what, when I worked in Orange, we had these company values pumped to us all the time, and this might be a good place to start with.” At first I thought ”what is this new age nonsense? Why don’t we get down to the business itself – crunch numbers, business models, revenue streams, expenses etc.?’ But after giving it one more thought, I realized the potential. The process of creating these values will be the gateway to the actual business plan. Once we start dealing with the values, we will necessarily have the wind at our back and from there it will be easier to move forward – or so I thought.

It turned out to be one of the greatest ideas we had. The first step was to write down values that we would like our future company to respect, follow and represent. This was relatively easy. However, when we looked at the piece of paper on which we wrote down our suggestions, there were over 25 values listed, whereas it was clear to us that we needed to break the list down to a no more than five values, so that each value would have true meaning.

Eventually, we decided (as we continued to do many times later) to get a feminine point of view and consult with our spouses and friends. After a few beers and several servings of homemade finger food, it turned out to be a real fun, yet productive, evening, which resulted in not only our chosen values, but also a mantra and vision (one which I will post about seperately). Having a second and third and fourth opinion from different point of views and personas is, in my opinion, an essential step in creating and understanding your business’s personality. This process should repeat itself every once in a while, to make sure that you and your business are still on track.

The values we came up with are:

1. Simple,
2. Different / Creative,
3. Together,
4. Honest, and
5. Possible.

I know that these terms may not fall exactly to the pure dictionary definition of “Values”. Perhaps a more accurate term would be “Foundations” or “Constitution” – any way it doesn’t really matter. The main idea is that you will have something that will unite all the people related to your business under one set of conceptual guidelines.

I can rant for hours about each of these values one by one, and what they mean to Meijob.com, but this is not important for the sake of this post. You should choose your own set of values and determine what they mean to you as an entrepreneur, a manager and a human being.

From there the path to start writing down our business plan was clear and wide open.  We completed the first version in less than 10 days.

Final note – the first thing we did when we entered our office (which was actually an apartment close to Beijing’s Hutongs) is order posters of all the values – separate poster for each value in Chinese and English with a suitable picture to visualize the value – and hang them on the walls together with the brand of Meijob.com. From there on, each time we had a dilemma, or wanted to show our employees our way of thinking, we just pointed to the walls, to the relevant value hanging there, and said “how does this relate to our core value of _____?” Our employees loved it and we got to create a real personality for our company.

I just came from a great visit to Barcelona.

It is an amazing city. For me it was very surprising that I can practice my Chinese in Spain. Many of the service workers are Chinese, and I figured out that my Chinese is definitely better than my Spanish

Another important insight was the amount of Muslims in Barcelona.  Many taxi drivers and service workers were from Pakistan or Turkey.

Today i reviewed this Video that Dana sent me.  It shows where we are heading. I am not sure the point shown in the movie is so bad… Take the brutal elements from the Islam and it is a great religion. I can’t forget my last visit in Jordan 12 years ago and the great hospitality we received there. Look at Turkey and see how amazing can a modern Islamic country can be. This one of my favorite countries on the planet.

I think that Iran is a key here. As soon as the Terror regime in Iran will collapse, there will be positive impact on all the Muslim world and the Renaissance of the Islam would begin. The 21 century will be the century of the Chinese and the Muslims and we have to face the fact that it is the end of the world as you know it…

Here is the Video…

I am currently attending a 3 day workshop by David Shepard in Tal Aviv from August 18-20. David Shepard is a terrific speaker and the content is great. David Shephard is the Managing Director and Head of Training and Research for The Performance Partnership.  If you want to learn more about his company follow this link – performance partnership, and read some training tips in his other site the coaching academy blog. In order to read about David Shepard in HEBREW you can open this post on kinemagine.com or Alona Yogev’s blog.

The Performance Partnership was founded in 1993 and it has successfully become one of the fastest growing NLP training and consulting companies in the UK. The Performance Partnership attracts clients from all over the world.

I will keep writing about this workshop in my forthcoming posts.

Best Travel Sites

Here is my compilation of some of the best travel websites. These websites will surely help you with accommodation across the globe. Know more about the tropical holiday destinations and Asia by reading further:

The unique idea for hostel and hotels booking across the globe was introduced by HostelBookers.com. Hostel Bookers is mainly focused on students seeking accommodation and backpackers looking for budget hotels. Hostel Bookers is one of the best travel websites where you don’t have to pay booking fees or register an account for booking a hotel.

The best information driven website concerning tropical destinations is WarmIslands.com. Before planning a visit, learn in depth about the tropical destinations on Warm Islands. Study the list of esteemed beaches, quality food, hotels and sports activities by reading reviewed posts of users and Warm Islands team. Acquire all the information about tropical holiday destinations on WarmIslands.com, a website dedicated to the admirers of beaches.

QuTravel.com is the answer for all travel related questions of the foreigners who are living in China or people planning a visit to China. QuTravel is a Travel Guide of China. Plan a visit to China with Qu Travel without hesitation. Qu Travel is a service oriented website and they respect the value for money. Qu Travel provides the service that you can rely on.

Two best places to stay in Thailand are Baan Mika and Koh Lipe Castaway Resorts. Recently, I came through a website BaanMika.com. Baan Mika is very artistically designed beach villa located in Thailand. Take a look at the 360 Virtual Tour at Baanmika.com to see the exoticness and unmatched luxury of Baan Mika. My fellow entrepreneur Jethro has built an 18 Bungalow resort in Thailand named as Koh Lipe Beach Resort. Koh Lipe Castaway Resort is located on a small Thai Island. Koh Lipe Beach Resort affords picturesque views of the pristine beauty of nature.