Ben: To Success and Wisdom

RSS Directories

2011-03-24T22:58:00.000+08:00

RSS are great to create links to your sites: here are some examples:

What is Alexa.com?

2010-01-25T23:07:00.000+08:00

Alexa.com is a website that gathers info about various website and presents them to everyone who would want to check a website.

Alexa.com belongs to Amazon.com. It is a very useful site for anybody who wants to do business online.

For an example of what kind of information you can get on Alexa check the link below.
Check out Alexa's site info page for yoursuccessebooks.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yoursuccessebooks.com#trafficstats

Isn't this interesting?

Vitamins for the Mind by Jim Rohn

2010-01-18T22:51:00.000+08:00

I am quoting Jim Rohn:

Personal Development

To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract.

We can have more than we’ve got because we can become more than we are.

The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit.

Pity the man who inherits a million dollars and who isn’t a millionaire. Here’s what would be pitiful: If your income grew and you didn’t.

The most important question to ask on the job is not “What am I getting?” The most important question to ask on the job is “What am I becoming?”

It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development.

After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.

Income seldom exceeds personal development.

What you become directly influences what you get.

Career tips: Dress Appropriately

2010-01-14T12:31:00.006+08:00

This month I'm going to write about some career tips:

How about how you dress, does it really matter? Check this video:

For more tips on career success check this ebook How to get ahead at work

I'm back: well, I was never away.

2009-11-12T20:10:00.002+08:00

A lot has changed in me, and I would like to share a bit on the net the story of the journey. I've discovered so much that I hope it would interest my reader to follow my journey.

I've discovered that one could make money online. So I'm going to relate my finding in this blog about how to make money on the Internet.

I will also write reviews.

This month's Harvard Business Review is worth reading

2007-11-19T12:35:00.000+09:00

If you can grab a copy of this month Harvard Business Review please do, some of the articles on it are worth reading. I found them very useful. Or read the executive summary for free online at http://www.hbr.org/.

The 3 articles/executive summary I read are:
1. Cognitive Fitness
2. Eight ways to build collaborative teams.
3. Are your engineers talking to one another when they should?

The articles on cognitive fitness just confirms why I feel more perceptive with age – it’s called pattern recognition. Below is a quote from the article:

"Pattern recognition is the brain’s ability to scan the environment; discern order and create meaning from huge amounts of data; and thereby quickly assess a situation so that appropriate action can be taken right away and with a high degree of accuracy. It is a complex chain reaction that uses the highest-level capacities for abstraction and reflection that are based on the deepest repositories of stored experience. The power of pattern recognition, a critical competence of the executive brain, can be seen in the capacity to simplify without being simplistic. (…)

There’s a lot that you can do to develop you left-hemispheric capabilities. First and foremost, challenge your existing mind-set, enlarge it, and make it more complex. Listen to different viewpoints, read new kinds of articles and books, and visit places with a focused set of learning objectives. All those experiences (…) will expand your vocabulary, your conceptual storehouse, and your general perspective. Such immersions will call into question your own mindset and improve your abilities in pattern recognition."

Of the Eight Ways to build Collaborative Teams, I find those worth noting:
2. Modelling collaborative behaviour: senior executives must demonstrate highly collaborative behaviour themselves.
3 Mentor and help people to build the networks they need to work across boundaries.
4. Ensure the requisite skills: Teach people how to build relationships, communicate well, and resolve conflicts creatively.
5. Support a strong sense of community: when people feel a sense of community, they are more comfortable reaching out to others and more likely to share knowledge.
6. Assign team leaders that are both task and relationship oriented.

If I could travel back in time

2007-11-17T10:12:00.000+09:00

I have always loved to watch historical documentaries and science fictions and fantasy movies, because deep inside I would love to live those adventures. I harbour the wish, if it was at all possible, that I would pass through a vortex into another world, or travel in time and then I would know enough or be experienced enough to solve the problem of that world or time, a bit like in Stargate.

Maybe the idea that I would be able to solve their problem is my own pride, just because I know better and I am from another world or time. If I was to travel back in time, I would be able to tell people I meet of the mistakes there were making. For example, how many lives I could have saved, if I was to travel in time and be able to talk to an Allied commander during the WWI – well I have chosen my side. To me, it's obvious that the commanders during the WWI were guilty of slow learning and repeating the same mistakes over and over again, and the cost was in terms of millions of human lives. Any man with an ounce of common sense would have realised how pointless it was to do frontal attack on a position that is defended by machine guns. But most people do not recognise the mistakes they are making as they are making it. Most people only realise a mistake has been made when they feel the pain of committing the mistakes, or maybe they recognise the pain and not the mistake. What is the problem? It's pride. Pride makes of us slow learners and pride makes it harder for us to learn from our mistakes, and pride can make us blind to our own mistakes.

If I did travel in time, while I was in that time, that would be the 'present' for me then. In the case where we are fighting an enemy, if I have spoken to a commander on how not to fight or how to, I would have advantaged one side to victory if the other side remain slow to learn and do not adjust their tactics and strategies. I would have changed history. But if the enemy changes, reacts, adapts to the new ways of fighting, then I would be of no further help in that time. Either I would need to keep travelling back and forth in time to help, or use my common sense to help, or be of no help at all. I would have travelled in time but act as if I am living in the present. Yes, I would be of no help because I don't have any extra knowledge from the future, I am on equal basis as anybody in the present time. I am as others, a limited person in knowledge and skills.

Back to reality, we can't change the past, but we can change the future by what we do in the present. What we wish we could do in fantasy, we can actually do in our daily life. We can learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others and help others learn from their mistakes and our mistakes. We can learn to make better decisions. Will we wise up? Well there are proverbs that remains true for all of us:

"The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."

Some people, not excluding myself from them, when we get warned about the mistakes we are making, we just can't stand those advice, because it hurts us. What gets hurt within us? It's our pride. Telling the truth often hurt the pride, if there is pride, within us. Then suffering from our mistakes is the only way to break the pride within us. Doing things our own way and to have our way is a value of our age and to listen to a wisdom not our own is just out of question. There's no way to become wiser when we think we are already wise.

Well, if you feel within you, "who is Ben to be telling me how to be wiser thinking he could teach me a lesson?" What's making you say so? Could it be the pride within you that's telling you that? If you really feel that way, then you would have learn nothing from me except maybe to recognise that there is pride in you (too, because noone is without pride). Pride is so competitive at its root, it is the pride in us makes it hard to stand what appears to be pride in someone else.

Departure time matters

2006-03-02T08:00:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I travelled from Subiaco to East Perth via the Graham Farmer Freeway in less than 15 min, when I left PMH at 7 am. Today it took 25 min and several green lights to travel the same distance because I left Subiaco at 7:25 am.

This show that the time you leave matters a lot. It's just a pity why there are not more employers offering their employee flexitime.

On whale research: Is whale meat addictive?

2006-02-21T10:48:00.000+08:00

As someone who has migrated to another country, I understand that sometime some food that I used to eat in the country of my birth is not available here. So I sometime miss those food. That is what some Japanese people may be feeling about whale as food. If they haven’t had some for some time they miss the taste of it.

If you miss something you start to rationalise the means you take to satisfy your craving. It’s a bit like people who rationalise the means they take to overcome their craving to some form of addiction. E.g. stealing from the rich isn’t really stealing, in order to buy some drug.

On the other hand some people could also rationalise, if there were 3 whales left on Earth, they could still eat one of three, because the species is not really extinct as long there is a pair left.

If there is a global disease that destroys the world harvest of rice, will the Japanese people stave from not eating rice? They will surely eat a substitute, wether it be flour or corn and they will survive. If you can’t have something to eat, you eat something else, but you don’t try devious way to have it, unless it is an irrational unhealthy addiction. No one needs to go hungry if they do not eat any whale meat, eat something else.

So I want the Japanese to be honest about their whale research. Just like we don’t eat lab rats, or genae pig, they should not be selling the meat of whale killed for research as food. Isn’t there other means to do research without killing the whales? How can you rationalise saving endangered species by killing them?

There should be an international ban on the selling of whale meat as food, once this ban is in place, we’ll see if there will be any more need for further whale ‘research’.

I could be Superman

2006-02-06T16:32:00.000+08:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		75%
Robin		62%
Supergirl		58%
Hulk		55%
Spider-Man		50%
Batman		50%
The Flash		40%
Iron Man		40%
Green Lantern		35%
Wonder Woman		33%
Catwoman		30%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Advertising for cigarette through the advertising for nicotine patch

2006-01-19T10:40:00.000+08:00

One of the dodgiest advertisements I am seeing for some time are the ads for nicotine patches. Those ads try to depict the craving for cigarettes. I feel that media regulating bodies should pay a bid more attention to those ads. I feel that those ads instead of providing a relief for craving just ignite them instead. They make you remember that you need a nicotine fix, which you can get through the patch or a cigarette itself.

I feel they are advertising for both cigarettes and the patch, which ever you will spend your money on. I think the image of the cigarette, cigarette smoke, or someone igniting a cigarette in those ads are just invitations to smoke, or put a patch on, because they do not really want you to get over your addiction.

Too much advertising has the opposite effects

2006-01-17T08:01:00.000+08:00

I’m the proof that too much advertising of something has the opposite effects the announcers intended. I have 2 examples.

When I was watching the first episode of ‘Threshold” the same ads kept coming at each commercial break. Seeing the same ads over and over again annoys me and produces a negative feeling towards the product being advertised. In the end, I decided to boycott the product being advertised. I wonder if there are a significant number of other people who feel the same way as me: that way the announcers will record a drop in their sales.

Second example, it is unbelievable the number of time the new TV series ‘Supernatural’ has been advertised. It seem that Channel Ten wanted to remind us at every commercial break that the episode is starting on Monday. Too much seeing of that ad made me to shut off my attention to it whenever it was on. So much so, that when the time for the episode to be on, my mind did not recall at all that it was on. So I missed the episode and only remembered that it was on about 10 minute before the show was over, and only when my wife wanted to see what was on.

The message to announcers, do not treat your customers as people with attention disorders. Normal people do not messages to be hammered in through endless repetition. Normal people do not need to be repeatedly reminded what they need to do. Endless repetition is like nagging it creates negative emotions. Endless repetition has a numbing effect, just like the mind shuts off its attention to noise, it shuts it attention to messages told in endless repetition.

Don’t the announcers know that if someone has decided to what a TV program, it will be over its entirety, so why do they need to deliver their message more than once or 2 times. Someone has to realise that an ad should not be shown more than once every hour.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2005-12-30T11:45:00.000+08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who reads this.

I’ve been too busy and too tired to put any post here:

Too much to do at work, too much waiting while my wife does the shopping, too much cleaning after the mess of the kids (they are at home and not at school/childcare), too much lack of sleep also, too much spending.

Between by last post and this one there has been a few birthday parties, Christmas parties, and visiting new places.

I went to see the latest Harry Potter and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last Tuesday.

I'll write more when I feel a bit more creative.

Is non-functional brake light illegal?

2005-11-15T06:53:00.000+08:00

That’s the second time I followed a car with non-working brake light.

Are the drivers of those cars unaware that their lights are not working or they don’t care enough to get those fixed?

Should those people be fined or crashed into from the rear?

Storewide sales

2005-11-14T07:39:00.000+08:00

There were quite a number of stores having storewide sale last week. So I decided it was time to buy a kite which I promised my daughter a long time ago.

How long did we enjoy it? 15-20 min before it plunged to the ground and broke.

I bought a $9 piece of junk, should I ask for a refund?

11 November

2005-11-11T08:46:00.000+08:00

Today is Armistice day, I wish to express my respect to the fallen soldier of WWI, and to wish to say that John Monash was the one best General during the WWI.

My mailbox was vandalised Wednesday night; I had to buy a new one.

My home phone is disconnected because I did not pay the bill which was not sent to me. I found out that they are still sending it to my old address, and I have to pay a surcharge for them to send it to my current address.

How can they be so unprofessional as not to have updated my billing address when I relocated?

Why can’t we all use the same system?

2005-11-04T12:33:00.000+08:00

What does 4/11/05 mean? 4th of November 2005 or 11th of April 2005.

What is 97 F? Is that almost the boiling point of water or normal body temperature?

What’s 150 mph of wind speed?

What’s dollar per gallon for the price of fuel?

Why are most pdf documents in Letter paper size instead of A4?
Where can you purchase Letter paper size in Australia?

Etc, etc.

Remote controlled car lock

2005-11-04T11:16:00.000+08:00

Last week, my nephew stumbled on a lost car key in a shopping centre car park. It had remote controlled car lock, and by just pressing the button, he found to which car the key belonged. It was a quite nice new car without immobiliser.

But being an honest person, he gave the key to the shopping centre security. Imagined if someone else found the key instead.
No matter how convenient it is to have put you car key and the remote control car lock on the same key ring. If you lose it, let’s hope it is an honest person who finds it.

The truth about women

2005-10-31T17:46:00.000+08:00

Women, as every body knows, talk among themselves. Sometimes they talk about what special thing their boyfriend/husband did for them, or what present he gave them. Then one day, your wife picks a tantrum at you because you did not do the same for them.

Another of the problems of being married for years is you drop your guard on what you say to your wife. When your wife asks you your opinion, and you reply the honest truth, and she will get angry with you because you do not tell her what she wanted to hear. Worse still if you state your opinion without being asked. Never tell your wife that what she is telling you is not interesting, nor she is boring you, nor what she just cooked doesn’t taste good. Never tell her the truth in those circumstances. She can’t handle the truth. As for me, I remind myself, speak the truth with love, that is sensitivity.

Pozieres (2000)

2005-10-28T19:26:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was my documentary night. Besides what was already on ABC, I borrowed the documentary “Pozieres” from the local library. Pozieres was where the Australian soldiers were fighting on the Western Front during the Somme Battle of World War I.

It was an excellent documentary and good history lessons for me. There were a lot of facts that stirred my emotions.

Some example: of the 60,000 who attacked on the first day of the Somme Battle 40,000 died that same day. General Haig considered it was a reasonable lost, and ordered for the the attack to continue the next day with what was left, and the next day for the next 6 months.

Aboriginal soldiers who volunteered to fight were citizen of no country.

During the war, towns with German names in Australia were renamed.

John Curtin who was against conscription during WWI introduced conscription when he was prime minister during WWII.

The prime minister Billy Hughes created the AFP (Australian Federal Police) because the Queensland police refused to obey his order to arrest someone who threw an egg at him.

Australians of German origin were kept in detention during the war and deported after the war.
Etc.

Australian Television

2005-10-25T07:15:00.000+08:00

The more I watch Australian commercial television the more frustrated I get with it. There are so many things I don’t like about it.

There are too many noisy low quality commercials, actually wasting my time just to watch them.
The news is too Australian-centric. If anything happens in the world, if there are no Australian involved, it is not news worthy. E.g. Hurricane Wilma hits Mexico, all the news talks about is the number of Australian that were in Mexico. Why don’t they talks about the locals? This is something I would like to hear your views on.

Australian Idol is unashamedly wasting our time: Everything after the break. I don’t watch Australian idol anymore. Australian idol lost a lot with the departure of Dicko. I’ve lost my respect for Mark Holden, he is so un-entertaining.

Current affairs are just gossips. I wish they were more of the investigative television type programs like “Four Corners” on ABC.

I think a solution to this is to tape what you want to watch and watch it afterward, where you can fast forward though the commercials.

However, ABC and SBS are different. There are so many interesting documentaries worth watching these days, especially on Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays.
Yes, I love to watch documentaries, I hate soaps and police-detective shows.
Documentaries worth watching are “Fact or Fiction”, “Auschwitz” (Thursday on ABC), “The history of Gold” (Sunday on SBS). If you’ve missed the first parts of those documentaries, make such you don’t miss the final parts. I also liked “The life of Nat King Cole” on ABC yesterday.

What's Behind the "No Animal Testing" Claims

2005-10-12T17:00:00.000+08:00

There is an interesting discussion going on about environmentally friendly products and products that hasn’t been tested on animals on Hammy’s blog.

There is also that new ad with some celebrities to promote products that does not use animals for testings.

I believe that ad is misleading. It shows animal in pitiful state, but how do we know those are animals used for testing. They could be pictures from an animal pounds.

The claim found on some products that mentions “Not tested on animal” can be misleading or false. This is because the company selling the product may not have conducted any test on animals itself, but some other companies many have tested on animals the ingredients the product is made up of.

Is there any regulating body to check the claim?

Then what does no testing on animals mean? No test at all was conducted, tests were conducted on human only, tests were conducted on non-living things only. How do we test for allergic agents and reactions on non-living things?

If a product hasn’t been tested on living organisms, how can we be sure it is perfectly safe? All its potential adverse effects are actually unknown. The company is actually selling a potentially unsafe product. The company is judging it is better to put humans at risk rather than the animals. If any adverse effects is discovered the product can always be recalled. In this case the market has been used as guinea pig.

“No animal testing” claim is just another marketing ploy to get the money of a segment of the customers. It is a marketing strategy that relies on emotions, and misinformation.

Why should we think that any testing on animal is always animal cruelty? Why should we think that animals used for tests are poorly treated or kept in uncomfortable cages? Why should we think that animals that are used for testing are going to suffer enormously and have an agonizing death? Why should we think test on animals are conducted in poorly lit unhygienic laboratories? That’s what the advertisement is trying to convince us of. They are just trying to enforce the stereotype of animal testing which is not totally accurate.

Personally, I’ll be cautious about using new products with the label, “no animal testing.” It is safer to use products that has been around for years or using generic ingredients known to be safe.

What happened since Friday until now

2005-09-12T19:00:00.000+08:00

Last Friday, our project manager organised lunch at a restaurant. I had to choose something from the menu. Well, I was not going to have a salad, again. I chose grill chicken with so and so. What I end up having was some Macaroni pasta with small bits of chicken and white sauce and some herbs. The chicken tasted more like roast chicken rather than grilled chicken. I could have made the same at home by buying a roast chicken, a pot of pasta sauce, and pasta at the supermarket.

I fixed the air flow through the door problem by installing draught excluders. Coming from a tropical country I did not know what those were. Any way I know now. I borrowed a book called “Maintaining your home” from the library. I have got to start buying some basic tools now.

Yesterday I watched “Oil Storm” and found it was very interesting. Well, the US said they are not going to sign any agreement on the reduction of Carbon dioxide because they need to put the economy of their country first. I don’t see how the figures of their economy is going to add up if their country is going to be hit more than once by super strong hurricanes every year from now on.

Kerry Emanuel, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has tracked hurricanes over five decades and found that they are getting stronger and lasting longer.

Finally, I am doing my bit in beating the petrol price rise. I went to work on my bicycle this morning. The weather was great and it took me 35 min to ride 10km.

Keyboard layout creator

2005-09-08T20:20:00.000+08:00

Have any of you wished their keyboard layout were different? Like the position of the “A” was somewhere else, or wonder what it would be like using Dvorak Keyboard layout. Well I have found that Microsoft offers a free software that allows you to do that. It’s called Miscrosoft Keyboard layout creator. I downloaded it and started to “improve” on the default keyboard layout. It is also possible to reposition keys of a keyboard by removing it and putting it elsewhere.

I did change the location of some keys to experiment. I had to give up the experiment because not only my mind does not like the idea of having to press at a different place for a character. It made typing very slow, but worse of all it also gave me pain in my wrist, and a headache.

Soymilk Maker

2005-09-08T06:53:00.000+08:00

Spring is almost here, and people are starting be more health conscious, and coincidentally lots of the health clubs and products are starting put out their advertisement.

My wife, like most women, every now and then reads something and gets very excited about certain products. This time it is about the goodness of eating soy products. So we end up buying a soymilk maker.

The soymilk maker cost $169. 1 Kg of Soy bean cost about $6. 100 g of soy make 1.5 lt of soymilk. So 6/10/1.5 = $0.40, 40 cents of soy bean to make 1 litre of soymilk. I will add another 15 c for the water, electricity and cleaning cost. So 55 c for 1 litre of soymilk.

1 lt of commercial soymilk cost about $1.8, so the saving is about 1.8 – 0.55 = $1.25 per litre. To recoup the price of the soymilk maker I need to make 169/1.25 = 135 litres.

The taste of the home soymilk is not too bad, it just lack the extra vanillin flavour, the preservative and the sugar.

Then my wife tried to make tofu, it took 4 hrs to make 400 g of tofu, and you can buy 400 g of tofu for about $2.50 to $3.00. I think it is not worthwhile to make home tofu, unless we have too much time. The amount of effort is too much for the little gain.

Now I am interested to add spices/flavour to the soymilk, eg. Almond, vanilla, oriental spices. Does anybody have any suggestion about how to make the soymilk taste better?