Lets put profit away from the first priority in business

In an earlier blog post, I defined business as some sustainable activities that will benefit the community, not only the customers only. Since this is not the common definition, in recent years a new term, social entrepreneurship, has become popular that matches closer to my definition.

I feel this is a good development and hope that this model will overtake the typical profit orientated models/concepts of business. When the main purpose is profiting, then many people would do illegal, immoral, detrimental activities if profit can be gained. In my definition, business activities are inherently beneficial to others.

Also, becoming more desired are green activities due to the love of our home, the Earth. In a world where there are still many profit centered businesses, it is helpful to have a popular theme where social entrepreneurship businesses can focus on to achieve, at the minimum, sustainability.

If interested to know more about the successful businesses that have been started by many visionary social entrepreneurs, check out the social entrepreneur blog that aims to empower green and social entrepreneurs.

By the way, businesses are also getting smaller with the advancement of technology. Home business should be suitable for many people to start out from, and I might be interested in this upcycling idea.

Is number of disabled people moving around related to developed-ness

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of NMEDA. All opinions are 100% mine.

So far, I have yet to see a wheelchair on Wheelchair Accessible Buses (WAB) in Singapore, while I saw them during my short trips to Manchester (only took a bus twice), UK and Honolulu. May be, many of them drive, while most of them at home.

I work within a hospital, and frequently passes by a shop that sells equipments for patients, or people with mobility problems. As in many other cases, efforts to improve quality in USA by organisation such as NMEDA will eventually benefit the people here.

NMEDA stands for National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association, but also includes driver rehabilitation specialists, and other professionals dedicated to broadening the opportunities for people with disabilities to drive or be transported in vehicles modified with mobility equipment. Thus, it doesn't sell things, but only their dealers do the selling.

NMEDA dealers help you in additional training or product refinements, if you still need to, after a personalized “in-person” evaluation to ensure you are getting the right driving solution customized to your specific lifestyle and needs.

It is the only association promoting safe driving and equipment for disabled people. Their members adheres to safety standards of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Furthermore, to satisfy customers consistently, companies must have a systematic and documented approach to quality. So, there are the Quality Assurance Program (QAP) dealers, where QAP is the only nationally recognized accreditation program for the Adaptive Mobility Equipment Industry.

I tried to find out any of their dealers nearby on their website (hit the dealers locator and type in your ZIP code), but too bad, I am in Singapore.

Bicycle and water treatment

Read about a good use of bicycle in Singapore relief team helping flood victims

... portable bicycle ultra filtration water treatment system. Mounted on a bicycle the water treatment system can be operated by peddling bicycle and is very appropriate for use in remote disasters stricken areas, where the electricity supply is scares.By this system 600 to 800 liters of water per hour can be treated by removing sediments and bacteria.

Which floor?

The question commonly asked in a lift. I am starting to answer more often by "yeah" or "ok" or "that's it." No, it isn't that I have been more lucky to be going up with neighbors on my level. I started doing so because I need to exercise more. Thus, when their level is not too far from mine, e.g. 3 levels or less, then I would just climb up/down a few flights of stairs.

The other advantages are saving energy and other people time.

A simple idea that I think is good

I suppose Sivasothi at Cycling in Singapore thinks likewise and put the comments into a post: From the comments: "dotted line on the road" to gauge safe gaps for cyclists

Stand and Stop

The LTA clarifies in Today Voices yesterday:

Taxi Stands — where taxis are permitted to stop and wait for passengers, and Taxi Stops — where taxis are only permitted to stop to pick up or drop off passengers without waiting.

Anyone want to suggest better way to name them?

Get your GPF Malaysia tickets at Axcess!

Tickets now selling at Axcess!

Not in your backyard, then in whose backyard?

Recently, there are voices against converting an unused school into dormitory for foreign workers. It is a real concern. However, by voicing against it won't do the whole situation better. I think some of the more fundamental issues are:

• Uneven prosperity among nations.
• Employees wholesome care is not catered for.
• Reluctant to embrace changes and others.

First one is very ... fundamental, and everyone recognizes it. However, because of its unlikelihood to be achieved withing one career lifetime, most office bearers would not spend much efforts and resources into it. It is a typical case of important but not urgent tasks that people tend to ignore.

The second point is about the current employment arrangement. I think the concept of employee is quite modern, around the time of the industrial revolution. Traditionally, family as a unit is very important, and I notice it in the Oriental culture that I am from. For e.g., it is crucial for maid to made public that she does not intend to get married because it is obvious that being a maid means one cannot afford to be a wife and a mother. The recent developments in the past few decades gave the illusion that it could be done, but it couldn't. Another example, in some Korean drama I watched, stories depict that in the last generations, the boss will house the whole family of the domestic helper within their own house. Basically, to view a person as just a person is fundamentally wrong. Family should be the unit within employment arrangement. Thus, the foreign workers' families must be taken into consideration when arranging for one or some of them to work here.

The third point can also be termed as plain selfishness. By pushing a problem away doesn't solve or make it better, but only make those who managed to push it away better. Especially here, the government have policies to ensure a mix of races in each public housing block. Now, if we ignore the importance of mixing foreign workers into our community, then those conflicts we only watch in the news in other neighboring countries will soon start to appear here.

Nevertheless, there are real concerns that triggered the petition against the move by the residents. However, the concerns should trigger solutions and ways to improve or manage the new arrangement instead of just simply asking for the problem to go to somebody else backyard.

Sule Lamido explains leadership

Found this said by Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State in the article, Nigeria: Grappling With Jigawa.

Ideally, leadership is all about people. Therefore, when you want to conceal something from the people, that means there is something wrong with your style of leadership. Number two ...

Ideally, leadership is all about people. Therefore, when you want to conceal something from the people, that means there is something wrong with your style of leadership. Number two, to me, bring out all the necessary things to the public and they will further give you the confidence to comport yourself because of the Nigerian tradition over the years, and intentionally, leaders normally carry knowledge and shield it and they don't let you know the truth or hear it. The public is denied the truth about how their leaders are faring. And if people come and report anything about my government, no matter how impalatable, it is for me to reflect over why are we going wrong and then cut ourselves. The whole thing about leadership is not personal government.

I share his views. Similar, Kingship is not about having power, but is about loving and serving people. Thus, the King of Kings must be more loving and serving than all the Kings.

Also, conflicts are mistakes should not be covered up just for good image. These should be exposed, resolved, and usually lead to improvement of the whole. Then, this is not only truly good image, but also good substance.

I wish him success in practicing what he believes. It is not easy when the people around usually don't really think as he does.

Expenses vs Investment

I read with interest this article dated back in July 2006 about the cost of remodeling your house. Differentiating between an expense and an investment is tricky. Is buying a house an investment, or an expense? We have to know is the house an asset, or not. An asset will bring in revenues. The post talk about renovation of an existing house and Forbes reported that most remodeling and renovations did not bring in profit, or even recover its full cost.

In essence, I think the author put it clearly and nicely here:
"Real renovation investments involve cheap improvements to the house that make it look good, right before a sale. You generally try to spend as little as possible to make the house look a lot better than it [currently] actually is." (I don't think we should cheat to make it look better than actual.)

Especially in my country, I heard that renovation is not considered when a home is being valuated because the assumption is that most buyers will re-do it to their likings.

Post Sponsored by Free The Drones Personal Finance Blog.

Adam, where are you?

Just like the first man in the Bible, Adam, humans hide when we are shameful. Very true, isn't it? However, the hiding is an illusion. Just like the song "God is watching us from a distance," we may try to hide and think that we are hidden, but in fact, we can't hide.

How about hiding from other mortal human beings? It is getting more difficult. We are now empowered with easily available information. The author of the book "The World is Flat" mentioned in it how did his daughter easily found the addresses of her friends by searching their phone numbers using Google.

I bet you know Google is not an address book, but a powerful search engine. Thus, anybody can do a background check, and this "anybody" could be our potential employers, future parents-in-law, future spouse, school mates, colleagues, etc.

I hope these are not scary, but beneficial to many by better knowing their potential partners in work and life. However, Google search is general and form the cyberworld that has both true and fake information. SentryLink provides search services on specific backgrounds such as driving, credit, property, and one of them is Criminal Background Check using public records obtained from state and local government offices. I hope this does not make job hunting more difficult for ex-criminals. Instead, may be such available knowledge can help to avoid awkward situations since employers can know in advance and can be better prepared to work with ex-criminals from the very start if they decide to employ any of them.

Furthermore, there are jobs which are not suitable, and vice-versa, for ex-criminals. Thus, respective bosses can do a criminal check through SentryLink on their potential employees.

Although it reminds me of the book "1984", it is not about the technology, but about how the technology is used. I doubt we can prevent these technological advances. Thus, the best is not to have anything to hide and live according to our conscience. Such transparency should encourage an honest society and world.

The Key Point

In an email regarding GPF 2007 Philippines¹, M. Trombin said:

"... the key point is the same. If we, together with our partners, do not work practically and invest in changing the life and conscience of the people for the better, we will never achieve the goals proposed by Hyun Jin Nim² via the GPF. For that we need to act on short and long terms projects and becoming a real movement for change."

¹Interested people can view a video here.
²"Nim" is a for of respectful way to address somebody in Korean.

Everything follow laws

Without laws, total flexibility is chaos.

Everything follow laws could be ideal, but attaining and remaining at ideal is bad (see Ideal is not ideal).

Setting down laws and rules is to paint the picture of the ideal state. The idea is to move towards the ideal, sometimes over, sometimes fall short. Having an idea of what the ideal is allow us to know how to be on the right track.

Flexibility is necessary as no set of laws can cater to all possible scenario. However, the necessity of flexibility on occassions does not imply everything don't need to follow laws. If the set of laws is lacking, it might be improved. If the scenario can be avoided in the future, then lessons be learnt to avoid such scenario.

They suffer, but so what?

Many of us must have experienced bad service somewhere. Sometime so angry to feel like wanna take some kind of revenge. May be spread poor comments about them. Usually the most we could do is to stop giving business to the company. Some good people spend time to send in feedback, which sadly taken as complains often.

May be eventually the poor or bad service company will not survive, but what's that to us customers?

I wish there valuable bad experiences could be collected and be used for the betterment of all.

Changing is not necessarily improving

Yesterday, had a short conversation with a friend and mentioned the idea that everything has its pros and cons. Many time when we gave up on one thing to avoid the current problems and took up another, we ended up facing another set of problems.

For example, a friend who stopped being a research fellow and took up lecturer appointment. When he was a research fellow, he has all the time to concentrate on doing research work but do not have the authority to direct a research team. When he became a lecturer, he got the authority to direct research, but now most of the time he was occupied with administrative and teaching tasks.

In some situation, giving up is perceived as a bad choice, such as giving up building a marriage, i.e. divorce. Personally, I would like to say that giving up should not be a choice, but this seems too simple for our complicated world. Instead, I would want to highlight the attitude when we decided to give up on something. Before thinking about giving up, one should check if he/she has made sufficient efforts within ability to improve the situation.

When making the decision to give up, one should not feel relieved but feel sorry for the decision and learn from the event so as to prevent it from happening again or be more prepared if the same issues arrises again. After giving up and took up or enter another situation, still be constantly reminded about the event, the lesson learnt and keep a look out for any chance to resolve/overcome the issues that caused the event.

Thus, cherish and appreciate the present, recognize the pros and cons, respond accordingly to achieve the best results, don’t envy the seemingly greener grass on the other side but work on it to have greener grass on your territory.