Wednesday 30 October 2013

p.Song - 心債 1984

The last part is here:   Song - 逝去的諾言 (陳慧嫻 1984)

The song is here:   梅艷芳 心 債 1982 (this link has many songs after)
電視劇《香城浪子》主題曲
歌詞 作詞:詞:黃沾 作曲:顧嘉輝

重重心中癡債  原是欠下你一世  無限無盡愛在我心底
悠悠心中癡意  源源不絕撫慰  只望可補償一切  明明用盡了努力
明明事事都不計  為什麼萬般癡心  都等如枉費  原來今生心債
償還不是一世  千代千生難估計
( MUSIC )
悠悠心中癡意  源源不絕撫慰  望可補償一切  明明用盡了努力
明明事事都不計  為什麼萬般癡心  都等如枉費  原來今生心債
償還不是一世  千代千生難估計

Again my heart is very soft today. Scenes from the past just flashed passed me like an old and ancient story. So many happy moments, also so much more sadness. Tears were so uncontrollable.

I have said that one day, I would bring my true love to a place I called my birth-place. We would sit by the river and play with the cool water. I would tell her about my dreams. I would show her my martial arts. I would expound my military strategies like a proud general. I do have only simple hope and simple joy. I am so easily pleased.

But, the strange world had made me into a monster. I am now scarred for life. I am no longer the young innocent lad that you once knew me. I was then but a simple soul. Why did you reach me and then dump me like a used rag? Why did you see only the money part and forget about within that body therein lies a soft soul that could be harmed so easily.

I blamed no one but myself and myself only. I hope that one day you would finally find happiness again, happiness that you never did get from me. I never detect any love from you, I guess you never once love me. I hope you finally find your true love and happiness now.

Don't use any more deceit to any new guy that comes along as it has harmed me totally. Maybe you wouldn't do that charade if you had truly loved.

It is now so difficult for me to love again. So much restraints. So much uncertainties.

Now that, I have almost grown to another level. I guess you never knew that a fallen guy could still move on to find that path that truly defines him. It is a path that beyond my wildest dream, but yet the person that is going to witness this is not you. I had all along wanted it to be you. I had so much wanted to show it off to you that I have finally arrived. But, I guess that option is no longer possible. I can't share it with some one that doesn't love me at all. Sigh ... so much lost time.

Although there are so many mis-steps, I believe we still all live to a better future. I will learn to treasure ever more those that are true to me.

Thank you once again for the negative instruction. I will learn my lesson well. I truly beared no more blame game. I only blame myself for being so blind to all the signs. To let go is, I guess, my best salvation. I am slow and still reminiscing the hurt, but I will get there some day.

All my life, I had been a beta. Small, happy and contented. The cruel life dictates that I must be an alpha. Now that I am a true alpha, I still long to be a beta.

Tuesday 29 October 2013

p.Show - 错龙袍/倾城雪

The last part is here:   Show - 精忠岳飞 (Part 2)

The show is here:  错龙袍/倾城雪

If you want plenty to cry but afraid to let others around know that you are crying, just watch this show.

Maybe I am just an old worn record repeating so many things. Give everyone a chance to show you how good they are. Give them some patience. Give them time to align themselves to you. They will eventually.

With the conquest at the land of crescent lake more or less in the bag, suddenly I noticed everyone is aligned to me. To some, their alignments are true. I know that deep in my heart. To many others, I know their alignments are driven by greed. These guys just want to share the mammoth I have landed.

To those fakies, just give them time to show themselves. Pull back all the resources that you might have given them. They will be spiteful but who cares. If they beg to return, maybe consider giving them another test. If they passed the test, then consider giving them a minor role. Never entrust them anymore with big items as they have proven to be unworthy.

For those faithful ones, treat them like family members. They will serve you well. Money will come in well if you trust your own family members well.

Dwell in every happy moment and grit that teeth during the sadder ones. It is always like that. 9 out of 10 is always sad.

b.Strategy - Sexy Business of Illegality

The last part is here:   Strategy - Popularity is a Sacrilege

Illegality is defined as "unlawfulness by virtue of violating some legal statute".

My partner-in-crime is at it again, dishing out his wisdom again.

As in all my essays, every essay advocated honesty and legality as the weapon-of-choice. But, this is real shitty work. Honest and legal businesses are very hard on the cash component. You need years before you are established in the business, meantime every competitor will take pot-shots at you always to test your resolve. If luck has it, you will survive and you make a bundle of cash at the end of 10 long years. The question is always if you do finally survive the test, if at all.

My partner-in-crime suggested another slightly different route. He said that the reason why illegal businesses are very lucrative but very short-lived is the illegality supplies an unfulfilled demand eagerly. Businesses like illegal bets taking, smuggling un-dutied cigarettes and alcohol and transporting any contra-bands of war are very, very lucrative, but if caught, very bad for health. But, the odds are so good that some guys would just take the plunge and do it. But, the green envy of those around the illegal business guy would turn-coat on him and do him in in time, in fact, very short time later.

He suggested that pure illegal businesses are really bad for health. However, fortunately for all of us, there are millions of businesses that are legal and yet bordering on illegality. For example, Steve Jobs just went around copying technologies and published them as Apple's own. In the end, Apple made tons of money. In the process, the original technology owners would threaten to sue Apple for recovery. Steve would just offer undefined out-of-court tiny settlements to quiet these poor folks down.

The lesson in this, my partner-in-crime said, is to do a pure, pure legal business is very hard to make instant money, one has to wait for a long time. But, if the legal business borders on marginal illegality, you will suddenly find lots of cash coming through. The trick is even if you get caught, the cost is not high. It is just a mere cash payment. Nothing serious. If in the event, you are not caught, then the cash you gathered would have very, very positive effect on your ability to survive and sustain business.

Do be safe. Take only very small steps that have no criminal liabilities.

Monday 28 October 2013

b.Strategy - Popularity is a Sacrilege

The last part is here:   Strategy - The Art of OEM (Branding)

I have written this once before, but now, I find it urgent enough to regurgitate.

Goods need to have a certain popularity to sell. That concept is called branding.

When a new good is pushed into the market, about 57% of the market will try it. It is like the opening of a new concept restaurant at the street's corner. Almost every other guy who passes by that restaurant will want to try it, provided it is not priced beyond common reach. After the first try, if the quality of the new good is perceived to be higher than its price, there is a fair chance for the customer to repeat his experience some time later when he has the urge, as the feeling was good during his first visit. The repetition is called the retention policy of the good.

As more and more customers try the good, more and more customers will repeat the purchase of the good. This is good for the good. By now, market talks of a new brand emerging. But, retention policy is useless when there is no good recruitment policy. After a while, the same customers will get bored and move on. No matter how good the good once was and still is, the customers are bastards and fickle-minded, they will move on to newer goods. The customers are the ones with the spending power, they will therefore decide the fate of the good. That is why, many pubs and drinking holes only have 3 years to make their monies, beyond that these drinking joints will go bankrupt.

Recruitment policy deals with getting new customers. Some new customers are gotten using word-of-mouth, others are gotten through using advertisements and awareness drives. However, recruitment policy is painfully expensive. Therefore, every producer of good clinked on to their good and customer-base jealously. There in lie the irony. When a good gets too popular, it will invite competition. Worst, the juvenile eastern fucken government-of-the-day will try to fuck you up by restricting your sale or curtailing your access to markets. She wants to send a message to any wannabes that she is god and no one should gain great wealth through the current system. You will be fucked.

Therefore, never try to be overwhelmingly popular. I know this is a deep deep irony of them all. But, if you want to survive well, be at all times, invisible. Use the money you just made from your new good to power-roll your next venture in another place. Your strength need not be shown-off. You only need to impress the sweet young things enough for that heavenly done deals.

I believe you do truly appreciate this concept and forgive me for trying to be invisible always.

Friday 25 October 2013

p.A Weeping Yellowskin

The last part is here:   The High Orgre Feast 

For the whole of today, my eyes were surprisingly wet. The shocked victory at the land of crescent lake actually caught me breathless. Although the result wouldn't be known till summer next year, the orgre king assured me that his relationship with his people is cordial. Achieving a peaceful outcome is therefore shouldn't be much of an issue. Just get the money ready.

I then called my partner-in-crime to announce the success. He was thrilled by the surprise victory too.

I suggested that it was 杨协成 (yeo hiap seng) all over again. I can imagine pushing an orgrean cart making and selling soya bean and chrysanthemum drinks. With sheer hard work, we will then progress to buy more land and build our own factories. Life is going to be simple, healthy and happy. I should be able to feed all my kinsmen with ease.

My partner-in-crime snapped back, "+Luca! Are you kidding me? What we have achieved is way beyond the wildest dreams of any yellowskins. Don't you realise we can now operate an enterprise of our lifetime. With this enterprise, we would be bigger than any known enterprises of the east. For the east, any enterprises created like the one you have conquered in the land of crescent lake would have to be state-controlled. Its shares might not even be sold in the open, let alone owning it in its entirety. You are such a humble bastard. You are so fake. You just want to fish for compliments all the time. But, this time, I allowed your excesses. This news is good. You have achieved where no fuckens have ..."

I dried my tears and smiled.

I was once a consultant to YHS and have always been awed by the establishment before it was eaten alive. It was then a simple establishment with very little extravagance.

I guess I will treasure this opportunity given by the orgre king, bally shoes.

Enough said. I should place my nose back to the grindstone.

Just then, white crane whispered into my ears, "Bally shoes, the orgre king just called and asked you to be prepared for the coming battle of the prairies. It's nigh ..."

I replied, "Shit! So fast? Again? I am damn tired."

p.Holocaust II - Japanese Women Not Interested in Sex

The last part is here:   Holocaust II - Dr Calhoun's experiment on humans  

45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are not interested in or despise sexual contact. More than a quarter of men feel the same way.

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" and it's partly the government's fault.

The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge.

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence".

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan a country mostly free of religious morals sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. "Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage." However, the pressure to conform to Japan's anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. "People don't know where to turn. They're coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there's something wrong with them."

Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan "might eventually perish into extinction".

Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011's earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. "Both men and women say to me they don't see the point of love. They don't believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."

Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.

Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women."

Young women shopping in Tokyo No sex in the city: (from left) friends Emi Kuwahata, 23, and Eri Asada, 22, shopping in Tokyo. 

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients "strictly no intercourse" to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure.

Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.

I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. "A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up."

Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover. Her end was not pretty.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends, career women like me, to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence."

Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai."

Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".

'I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair as I am single. But I can't be bothered': Eri Tomita, 32. 

The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success.

"It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant".

The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen ("Girly Men") was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting "pink sparkly things" and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan's corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned.

'I find women attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated': Satoru Kishino, 31. 

Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn't knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. "I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated," he says. "I can't be bothered."

Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles, wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day, also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan's cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafes, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan's cities are extraordinarily crime-free.

Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. "Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality".

Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children.

"Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction," Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a "pioneer people" where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said.

Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%. 

They don't seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The cafe they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. "We meet once a week to go clubbing," she says. "I don't have time for a regular boyfriend. I'm trying to become a fashion designer." Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. "I gave up dating three years ago. I don't miss boyfriends or sex. I don't even like holding hands."

Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn't want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because "girls can't have flings without being judged". Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound.

In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire."

Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop.

Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan's youth, says it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. "Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind.

Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama "Queen Love" is determined to educate her clients on the value of "skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart" intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn't take over. "It's not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other," she says. "Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives."

Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don't want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for "making it hard for single people to live however they want" and for "whipping up fear about the falling birth rate". Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn't help anyone. And that's from a woman who knows a bit about whipping.

My Comment
Quote:
After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed 'the beautiful ones'.

Dr Calhoun clearly saw these rats and mice as models for man. Life in an unnatural urban environment of ever-increasing density could result in the complete devastation of humanity. He noted that even when population levels dropped and more space became available, the community never recovered. Even when healthy rodents are placed in the new environment, they never breed successfully again. 

Organisms need space to comfort selves, to seek refuge and privacy, and find connection. 

Other notable conditions in the behavioral sink also include failure to breed and nurture young normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality rate at all ages. Dr. Calhoun saw universal autism among rodents. This is a phenomenon in which all members of the last generation of rodents in a super-crowded environment become incapable of social interaction that would allow them to produce the next generation

The whole rodent society ultimately became disrupted, and after five years all of them died. Dr. Calhoun was convinced that his mice and rat populations were an accurate model for humans. He didn’t regard it as hypothesis any more, he regarded it as factual.

I didn't check the validity of the above report. Step-by-step we are moving towards the holocaust II. It will come sooner than later. Escape when you still can.

p.The Journey to the West

The last part is here:   Brightness 2012

Sigh ... So much talent. Talent like Brightness wrote: Want to be rich? Then choose the most fucked up country in the map and go there and seek your fortune!. Sometimes I felt so much pain. It was almost just yesterday that I have left a place that I could have called home. Why did I travel so far in search of another place to be called home. I guess till now I have yet to know the answer.

天下风云出我辈,一入江湖岁月摧。
皇图霸业谈笑中,不胜人生一场醉。

If a place we used to call home told me that I am not worthy to be a warrior. What should I do? Leave? Or stay and fight the evil?

I felt very much like a damaged good. I have done many goods, but, I have also done many wrongs and hurt lotsa people. To that, I am so sorry. I hope one day I could make amend to those whom I have wronged.

I had just made a small victory over the land of crescent lake. The result is yet to be. It would only be known till summer next year. It sounded hollow if I couldn't share this glory with loved ones. This is my pain.

I pray that all talents like Brightness and Plan Bs alike will finally find peace. I wish them well.

p.The High Orgre Feast

The last part is here:   Bally Shoes, The Orgre King Calls

Bally shoes, the orgre king gave me a bear hug when we arrived. Crimson queen gave a quick dagger snare to dare bally shoes into hugging her.

The high feast was sumptuous and very indian. Drinks were ample and gals were beautiful. I was given lotsa eye candies.

At the end, we all adjoined to another private chamber and only bally shoes, crimson queen and me were left. I found it odd as orgre king for all his physical strength was no match to a sorceress' spell at close range. The door was then closed behind us. The orgre king was taking a big, big risk with us.

Out of the blue, bally shoes stepped forward and pulled at his face. Out came a very fleshy well-made mask. Behind that mask, revealed a brownish face with very hard lines.

Crimson queen and I gasped for air. The orgre king was not a white, but a fucking yellowskin, like all of us, a fucking red indian.

Bally shoes gave a wry smile and continued, "We, northern yellow orgres, keepers of our faith to Auterium, were in disguise for too long."

I was then told by bally shoes that in the beginning, there was great peace and tranquility till the white orgres came. The whites plundered the land and raped their women. The yellow orgres prayed to Auterium every day for deliverance from the white orgre evil that swept the land.  Now, another yellowskin, me, came along with great military strength knocking at his door baying for blood. As he finished, his eyes were down-casted, hollow and dangerously clear. It was as if if I were to throw a coin into his eye. The coin would dropped in and one could never hope to hear a splash.

I interjected, "Sire, we are now at war and unless the battle outcome is final, the dogs of war would never stop."

Bally shoes replied, "There is always a way if the will is strong."

I asked, "Tell me. Noble king. What can we settle?"

Bally shoes gave a heavy sigh and continued softly, "I knew the reason for your impending invasion, but, to try to win it by force is never wise. I will leave this land and give you possession!"

Sweet music to my ears. I looked at crimson queen and signaled to her that indeed, she was my lucky charm. What can I do without her.

I asked softly too, "Go on then ..."

Bally shoes expounded, "I will leave this land, but you must pay me double that of the land cost. One part is for me to buy another land but much further north than this land. The other part is to help my orgres to build better shelters than what they having now. That way, I believe they will still respect me as their king."

Money to me is not as valuable as a soldier's life. Money I can always earn back, but, a soldier's life lost to battle is permanent. Tho cost may have been higher, but saving my soldiers' lives beat all of the external tresses.

I shook bally shoes' hand and gave a deep bow. For one, bally shoes had avoided war and this might not have been a bad outcome for him. But, pushing his people further north into the bitterness of harsh cold climate was not a cheap price to pay in time. I could understand where he is coming from. A lonely and difficult decision for a king in continuous defeats. I felt deep pain in him.

I parted by saying, "My noble king. You can still have the land till summer next year."

Crimson queen and I walked quietly along the road towards our mountain encampment. For once, we were both very silent. I might have won the battle. Yet, it had this hollow ring to the outcome.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

p.Bally Shoes, The Orgre King Calls

The last part is here:   Greyhawk is Here 

Yesterday, the snow was thick. It was unusual that snow comes so early in the autumn season. My army, camping just a little away in the mountain above the land of crescent lake, was restless. They craved immediate action but yet at the same time apprehensive about the massive gathering of orgres, now numbering 3 millions. The morale although high but not without clouded thoughts. I was also not in the mood for pep talk. My army was only numbered at 4 millions. Originally, I have thought handling 2 millions (of orgres) was reasonable. But now, the problem at hand was increased. If at parity strengths, the invading army would be greatly disadvantaged. 

This morning marked the immediate melting of the first snow and autumn winds were abound. Just then, my attendant called, "My Master! Bally Shoes, the orgre king, seeks the pleasure of your company to a high feast at the southern gate of the land of the crescent lake tomorrow."

I smiled.

All my life I have prepared for this one battle. Although I have accumulated many other lands, this land is considered crown jewel that I will build my head-quarters, 紫禁城 and 天安門. The other lands although have rivers and hills but only proxied my this invasion. This battle will never be my biggest yet, but definitely, the most important. This conquest will form the basis for all my future invasions. It is the one land that rules all lands.

I replied, "Good. Go then and reply in the affirmative. Ask crimson queen to prepare well and join me in my feast."

Crimson queen more or less replaced white crane in my arms. Greyhawk, white crane's father, has all but removed my illusion of conquering this land without pain. He reminded me that there is truly no free lunch in this world.

Crimson queen was a sorceress in training. She could summon spirits to do her biddings. She has more or less promised to stay by my side throughout my invasion of the land of crescent lake. "Any costs to pay," I asked her. She cheekily replied, "There is none, my dearest." Being a sorceress, she was definitely a far stronger asset that any one I had so far. I am indeed pleased.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be an important day in determining if I need to do battle to my bitter end.

Now, fully alone and without support of loved ones, the chilliness of the autumn winds was felt in its maximum effect.

醉卧沙场君莫笑,古来征战几人回?

Tuesday 22 October 2013

b.Strategy - The Art of OEM (Branding)

The last parts are here:   Strategy - The Magic Flu   and   Branding Strategy

This is one of the most important essays. It enveloped many years of business operations, failures, successes and cunning. Following or contemplating it will save time.

The best way to understand this topic is by going into real examples.

Research & Development (R&D) is an expensive toy. Spend too much like Steve Jobs during his Lisa project, he got sacked by the very company he founded. Spend too little like Nokia cell-phones, it closed shop in 2013, after it became the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012 (Nokia Story is here).

In 1970s, Steve Jobs forced and conned his best friend, Steve Wozniak (Woz), to build a simple desktop computer from commercially available parts in a garage (Apple Story is here). Steve Jobs literally squeezed out all of his friend's technology know-how at one go, i.e., years of self-studying and researching up to University of California, Berkeley. Woz was a genius in his own right. This commercialization reduced cost tremendously, but, unfortunately allowed pirates from the east to duplicate it wholesale and with ease. By end 1970s, Apple became so popular that it single-handed created the desktop computer market. There was a saying that time, for every original apple computer sold, 99 clones were made. This provided a tremendous momentum and support for continuing purchase of Apple computers. Slowly but surely, it evolved towards business applications, which is the main force behind any historical success (recall Blackberry Story created for use in business emails).

Then, Steve Jobs made the first mistake in life. He made Apple III and launched in 1980 and made it totally non-copyable by any pirates. Apple sale went down like a rock. Unfortunate for Apple, during this time, IBM decided to enter this market segment with the original intention to provide a slightly more clever version of a dumb slave terminal to their main-frame computer. The IBM PC (personal computer) was meant to do a little printing, word-processing before communicating direct with their main-frame. [Rumour] Bill Gates of Microsoft was asked to write the Operating System (DOS) through his mum, a secretary to IBM vice-president. To IBM, the PC is just a toy. But, its launch timing was so immaculate that it went on to kill off Apple's home computer market in one quick stroke. By 1990s, Apple was more or less dead. The IBM PC was once again fully copied by the pirates of the east and became the new darling. Like before, there was a saying that time, for every original IBM PC sold, 999 clones were made. By this time, the desktop computer was the new found power given to ordinary home (and later, office) users to claim against main-frame dinosaurs.

Again IBM got greedy. IBM created a new pentium PC with a new operating system PS/2 and made the PC totally non-copyable. Sale of IBM went south, but, Microsoft not being a part of PS/2, then proceed to let IBM PC clones to install and run the clone computers as if nothing has happened. IBM was dropped from the market just like that. The power of masses cannot be under-estimated.

To date, Microsoft still allows full-copying of their softwares, hence, able to remain reasonably dominant in the desktop and laptop markets.

This above part is quite a well-known and documented history.

Up and about the same time, in 1950s, after the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan, the Taiwanese society was relatively stable politically in the 1950s. However, it faced some obstacles economically as a result of the mass destruction during World War II and the Chinese hyperinflation in the 1940s. The sudden increase in population caused by the Kuomintang migration from mainland China also affected Taiwan's economy. During this time, only the US came to their aid. They were given food and resources. The bags that contained these food and resources were then taken apart and made into underwears for the kids. It was that tough during those times.

By end 1970s, the executive premier, Chiang Ching-kuo's Ten Major Construction Projects served as the basis for heavy industrial development and computers in Taiwan. Unlike that fucken little island, Taiwan provided a serious sum of US$1 billion for Taiwanese to develop clones for the Apple and IBM computers. Taiwan government believed in her people and allow the full development of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) high-technological products and the grants were given freely to citizens. To date, after that critical investment in her people, Taiwan remained the only dominant player in the electronics manufacturing. This was how brands like HTC and Asus started by being OEMs and slowly but surely, they each became original product and household name.

The same story goes to Samsung, after Apple asked Samsung to make components for their PCs and mobiles.

The Argument 

Every retail chain loves to build their own house brands. They know their venerability in sale. When the brand is well-known, the sale channels of the retail chains would have less bargaining power. Therefore, all the time, the retail chains seek to limit this branding growth. Given every possible chance, the retail chains will build their own house brands. But, as said before, R&D is very expensive. In the end, the retail chains only managed to change only the external packaging of the products, but not its content. The manufacturing process of the products is jealously guarded by the original producer. So you will find a fuck-price peanuts, selling alongside Tong Garden's peanuts (obviously, Tong Garden in order to gain access into the fuck-price retail chain agreed to repackage some of its peanuts with a fuck-price packaging and allow the fuck-price peanuts to be sold at a dollar cheaper) or fuck-price canola oil, selling alongside RBD's canola oil. 

If you were to buy petrol from the pump stations, noticed their refilling trucks are sometimes from very odd companies, i.e., every oil company do often cross-sell their oil products to each other. Hence, their advertisements about how good and efficient is their petrol are pure bullshit. There are all the same.

Back to the PC market, Microsoft used to and still is dominant in the pc market. At one time, rival, Linux, was developed and distributed free. But, it was deemed to be an inferior product from Microsoft's Windows. Since Windows was easily copied, Linux never take off even though it was free. Right now, Microsoft is no-where near the mobile units. Android, the operating system for mobiles, is given a free rein to develop its product. In time, Google, the owner of Android, would be far richer than Microsoft and Apple combined.

After the first read, the arguments above may appear disjointed and a little confusing initially. Read it a few more times, you will see the reason behind each story. It is important that you are able to deduce the relationship between R&D, product and survivability of self.

So it is obvious that you would start off with very little R&D resources. So be like Asus, HTC and Samsung, start to develop the product using your own bare hands. Employ little critters as your free workers. Don't be afraid to brand your product under someone else's house brands. Keep improving the quality of the product. This is one thing nobody can take away from you. But, do reduce the risk by allowing as many retail chains to brand it under their names. That way, the retail chains will feel less threatened by your rise. Given enough time, your own brand may or may not appear, but, you will be rich beyond measure.

Sunday 20 October 2013

p.Article - For China, Nobel Prize in science is still a big leap away

For China, Nobel Prize in science is still a big leap away 

Cong Cao says the obstacles that stand in the way of a Chinese national winning a Nobel Prize in the sciences are only too real, notwithstanding Beijing's dream of glory

For one week every October, a serious bout of anxiety grips China. But it is not purely down to nervousness over which prominent dissident is in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the Dalai Lama in 1989 and Liu Xiaobo in 2010.

Rather, it reflects the Chinese government's unsated craving for a home-grown scientist to win a Nobel science prize; cast-iron proof of technological power to match its economic might and a reassertion of its capacity for innovation, first demonstrated by the so-called "Four Great Inventions" of ancient China: the compass, printing, gunpowder and papermaking.

This year, though, the trophy cabinet again lies empty. China has resorted to celebration by association. One of the Nobel Prize winners for medicine, announced last week, is Thomas Südhof, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and husband to Chen Lu, a high-profile Chinese neuroscientist. The University of Science and Technology of China, Chen's alma mater, enthusiasti-cally cheered a Chinese son-in-law and, in this way, China is at least related to the honour.

It is a familiar tactic. In 2008, an excitable Chinese media celebrated the chemistry prize of Roger Y. Tsien, an American citizen born in the US but also a nephew of Qian Xuesen, known as the "father" of China's space programme.

Ethnic Chinese do feature among China's Nobel laureates for science. But the glaring fact is that not one is a product of the education system of Communist Party-led China.

Winners of the physics prize in 1957, Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee held passports issued by the Kuomintang government, which was overthrown by the Communist Party in 1949. They both attended the National Southwestern Associated University, an institution formed during the second world war by an amalgamation of Peking, Tsinghua and Nankai universities in Kunming , Yunnan province, before moving to the US.

Samuel Chao Chung Ting (physics, 1976), Yuan Tseh Lee (chemistry, 1986), Daniel Chee Tsui (physics, 1998) and Charles K. Kao (physics, 2009) all moved to either the US or Britain after completing their high school, or even their undergraduate and part of their postgraduate education, in Taiwan or Hong Kong. Steven Chu (physics, 1997), like Roger Tsien, is a product of the American education system.

Crucially, all established themselves in the US or Britain, where they found greater freedom to choose research projects, a rich academic atmosphere and sophisticated lab facilities. 

In recent years, Chen Ning Yang has repeatedly lamented the possibility that mainland China will not receive a Nobel Prize in science for 20 years. In the week leading up to this year's prize announcements, Huang Wei, president of Nanjing University of Technology, confidently predicted that winning Nobel Prizes in sciences would be standard practice for Chinese in 10 years.

Both crystal balls are clouded by optimism. At this rate, even 20 years is unlikely. None of China's recent scientific feats have come close to prize-winning status and there is little of note on the horizon.

Fifteen years ago, some of China's leading scientists told me that ethnic Chinese scientists born on the mainland, who left for the West soon after Deng Xiaoping ushered in the open-door policy, would soon be winning Nobel Prizes in science. If this did happen, they said, it would represent a humiliation; evidence of the benefits of abandoning China to advance a career overseas and fulfil one's true potential. 

This vision has yet to come to fruition. Professor Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, has offered up some bold reasoning. He argued that no matter where you study - Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge - you have no chance of winning a Nobel Prize for science if you spend your first 12 years in a Chinese school: your individuality, curiosity, imagination and creativity will simply have been destroyed by the Chinese education system. 

It is also a system that binds students to their mentors. A mentor is an authority figure as formidable as a strict father, and to challenge him is unacceptable. This loyalty discourages criticism of seniors and has proved to be a major handicap. 

Furthermore, mainland Chinese scientists have not had time to establish a tradition of research excellence and generate Nobel Prize-winning momentum. Many Nobel laureates teach and nurture students who go on to become laureates themselves. Südhof used to study with two Nobel laureates in physiology/medicine. 

The past generation of Chinese scientists, including some who studied with laureates abroad, may well have turned out a new crop of scientists had they not been burdened by domestic political traumas stretching from the 1930s to the 1970s. Only in the past 35 years have Chinese scientists been able to focus their whole attention on research. It will take time for their efforts to produce world-class scientific achievements.

Another obstacle is the paucity of excellent Chinese scientists; they are so few in number that they are likely to be transferred from research to administrative posts.

Confucian doctrine teaches that "a good scholar will make an official" and some of the best scientists, knowing that they can in this way secure scarce resources, are more than willing to leave their labs. The downside comes when they become buried in administrative tasks.

The lack of dynamism in the research environment discourages Chinese scientists who have been successful abroad from returning home. Chen Ning Yang has said that he probably would not have won the Nobel Prize if he had returned to China in the early 1950s.

The quest to produce a home-grown Nobel Prize for science has become entwined in China's resurgent nationalism.

Having hosted a glittering Olympic Games and taken its astronauts into space, China sees a triumph on the global scientific stage as a way to convince the world that it has moved from the periphery to the centre.

But winning a Nobel Prize is completely different from winning an Olympic gold. Until the creation of an environment conducive to first-rate research and nurturing talent, which cannot be achieved through top-down planning, mobilisation and concentration of resources (the hallmarks of China's state-sponsored sports programme), this Nobel pursuit will continue to vex the Chinese for many years to come.

Cong Cao is an associate professor and reader at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Scientific pursuit 

My Comment:

After reading this article, my eyes just teared non-stopped. 

I was schooled in a good school. I was not the most brilliant, but I was never weaker. I truly hope to contribute and give back to the people who taught me well. As a young lad, I was never bothered about decorum and rank, I spoke bravely and unreservedly. There were so many things I would like changed. But, yellowskins were never kind to their own kind. If they sense brilliance, they would never pause but kill. This was a basic survival instinct due to a very crowded environment.

I left that one place deeply broken in both my soul and spirit.

Sometimes, when I let the cool water from my little river flowed my hands, I would always recall that with hard work, I would be able to feed my family and those around me. It was not true, little-by-little, my hard work was removed from me. They said that I was never competitive enough. A very refreshing feeling indeed. LOL.

Now, I have finally rested. My true campaign begins.

When I looked at all the little tired-less critters doing marvellous work for me, I felt like a proud father once more.

Ambitious guys don't know that winning Nobel prizes is never key to one's happiness, but seeing one's own hard work paying off is. Having a humble life-style, with occasional treats, is really very good. I saw so many whites who have never ever left their own little home town. So why should we yellowskins be so different? We are not even superior.

Saturday 19 October 2013

p.xox - I have Cancer (II)

The last part is here:   xox - I have Cancer 

"Dear +Luca, ... Didn't get back to you for so long ... my wife got cancer and undergoing treatment ..."

Sigh ...

This is another sad and grey day for me. This guy was a foreign talent attracted to that fucken little island. He took a phd scholarship provided by that fucken varsity. He was given 3 years to complete with full pay and lodging. But, he took 5 years. The fucken varsity just simply refused to let him have the degree even though he worked day-and-night for it. In his desperation, he came to work for me part-time to make ends meet. The job was hard and lowly-paid. Yet, he didn't take it personally. He worked hard and I came to admire his work and decided to teach him a trick or two in his final doctoral thesis. He finally got through.

Over the years, we became friends.

This news is considered real bad because he and his wife are barely 35-40yo. He and his wife must be having a real bad deal in that fucken little island.

This guy I have considered as a rare asset to that fucken little island because he is honest, not like those others who came from the similar culture and background.

The stress that he and his wife encountered in that fucken little island must be so great that they don't even have time to properly rest and recover before the next day's work. Man truly knows no limit when it comes to ill-treating his own kind. Just recall what the Japanese did during world war II in South East Asia. Such enslavery could only be thought out by evil elites who know no morals.

I am glad I am no longer tricked by such glamourous falsehood.

I wish him well.

ps:   I have no intention to curse that fucken little island all the time. I used to have an axe to grind and bitterness. Who doesn't after being forced off that fucken little island? Now, I don't do it anymore. Maybe I have gotten over that phase. Now, I have no more bitterness, but an overwhelming sadness to those who are still stuck in that fucken little island. They are still not too wise enough to quit while they still can.

Friday 18 October 2013

b.MegaTrend - The True Magic of Nature

The last part is here:   Mega-trend - Depression pushing through

My partner-in-crime is truly brilliant. As I have said before, not many guys have a deeper understanding of philosophy than him. He can harness energy from the universe as his own. His skill level is now way beyond any mortals. If that fucken little island had ever engaged his service to the nation, he would make a fine 帅才。 "能领兵者,谓之将也。 能将将者,谓之帅也。" But, unfortunately, fuckens would never know what they missed. There were too many paper generals, but none of them I considered 帅才。To be a 帅才,not only is he good at military strategies, his moral scruples must be up to speed. He does not give in to pressure to do evil. His moral compass must be sharp and pointing correctly upright. 

He explained that technology by man is unfortunately fallible. Every time, a smart guy comes along with his little new-found trick. Every one on the market gets excited about his little toy. He made a rave nifty profit out of it. After about 6 months, a newer smart toy comes into the market. The interest in the older toy is now dead. The original smart guy can't believe his toy is already dead. He then reinvested his entire profits and even poured his entire life-savings to rehash his fledgling toy. He can't believe his formerly extremely popular toy just lose traction like that (read stories about rise of Apple II, rise of IBM PCs, rise of Nokia, rise of Blackberry and so many others). After another 6 months, he not only loses all of his gains, his original capital and his life-savings are gone forever too. The market is so clever. The market just eats up all of his smart toy invention and hard work. To sum, he just did hard work for nothing.

My partner-in-crime said that therefore, trust no smart toys of man, trust instead the workers of nature. Trust the little bacteria, viruses, spores, yeasts, mushrooms, fruits, plants, animals and etc. to do the job for you.

Each of these little critters have billions of years of evolution, revolution and knowledge behind them, for them to be able to survive till now, they must have one hack of survivor skills. They are your best workers. They are tired-less eager beavers. Their technologies are the best you can ever find. So why invent more silly toys of man when you can get the best knowledge and hard work from our almost free tired-less little critters.

Of course, there would be arguments against it by suggesting we are now able to harness wireless technology to better our lives. Granted. No doubt about the contribution made by man did better our life. But, what we are discussing here is building of a very long-term business empire.

He further gave me a ridiculous but too obvious example:   Just take a look at book-covers in a bookstore, notice that book-covers that showed photographs are so much more vibrant than computer design artworks. What a great food for thought. He is a 帅才. I am glad to be of company to him.

Therefore, use the wisdom made by my partner-in-crime to further your quest of long-term business empire building.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

b.Passion Business I - Great Wine Fermentation

The last part is here:   Passion business I - Red Sorghum Wine 

Just tasted the concoction made by my co-worker. It was heavenly. Just 3.5 months old and it already proved to be worthy of a vintage collection.

My partner-in-crime asked me to keep the formulation secret and limit the ingredients and procedure to within only a few of us.

Well, now I just have to wait for that one license to rule them all.

b.xox - The Enslavement of a Young Pinoy

The last part is here:   xox - The City of Rats

Just spoken to a 25yo pinoy. I hate pinoys. They cheat, they lie, they con, they steal and they do things that of a city scorn. Despicable and unforgivable. They infested the white land like the yellow locusts. Everywhere you see them setting self-interest-groups in oblivion of everyone else. I guess all of Indians must have hated all these intrusions into their quiet life. First, invaded and raped by the whites. Then, invaded and raped by the blacks, yellows and browns. Frankly I am no different. Awhile back, I suggested setting up the 四合园 to house our workers and sing only chinese songs. The chinamen were beaming with pride. They managed to talk non-stopped for half-a-day. Indeed I have made them dreamed a little away from their dreaded miseries for a short while.

He started work as a grocery store assistant immediately after his studies in white land. Back in his pinoyland, he is considered a rich family member. His migration slant was investment class. Over the years, his family lost it all. Currently, he has no skills.

Once he managed to get a job, he immediately applied for a car loan and bought himself a big, big white land car. He has to pay the car loan over the next 8 years. All these he claimed is to make his gf's family happy. He hoped to win the heart of the young gal and hoping to get married real soon. His gf now is a nurse, earning quite a sizable sum (nearly 3 times) as compared to his miserable minimum pay. He therefore needs to loan his way to her pussy.

He then explained his dream about starting a tourist agency and buying a big house in the heart of town in the coming few years.

I smiled.

He has caught the famous white land's dream. He was simply not happy with a 8-year car loan, he now wanted a 30-year house loan. By the time, he is out of it, he would be in his 50-60s. Another 30 more years, he would be a dead meat. If he is not careful and continues his white land's dream, he would buy a bigger house and be bonded till 75yo, leaving only another 15 more years before he closed shop at 90 years of age. If he has done it in a far away fucken little island, he would have banged his balls for achieving nothing as he is due to hand over the property for free just 9 years after he is declared a dead meat, making a ripe 99 years worth of slavery.

But, but, but ... Properties in white land are freehold. Wouldn't that make a difference? Always remember: The capital of Roman Empire was Rome. Look at Rome now, nowhere close to its former glory. 北京 (Beijing) was only a recent capital of the chinaman empires. Previously, the capital was in 洛陽 or even 開封. Look at 洛陽 and 開封, nowhere nearly as glorious. Therefore, if you stick to city purchases right from the word go, you are already made a slave - no more hope to fight the evil empire. How much do you think you can make by becoming a grocery store assistant (pinoy boy) or a nurse (pinoy gal) in a city setting where everything is made so expensive and unreasonable? You may make it big but you spend bigger. Then, where are your marbles at the end of this exercise?

I loved this enslavement, else I wouldn't be so at peace with my invasion plan of the land of crescent moon lake. Crimson queen just called me to bring me my much needed food supplies. She is proving to be a reliable ally in this game.

p.緣生緣滅

The last part is here:   早知今日事, 悔不慎当初。 

Many times when all lights dimmed and darkness prevailed, I asked for forgiveness. Forgive me for being so willingly wanted to exact revenge, whenever people around me failed me. Forgive me for being so harsh to those who loved me from their hearts. Forgive me for being so poor and unable to perform my basic duties as a member of the team. Forgive me for saying hurtful things when I meant to say good ones. Forgive me for being unable to change the world and give you rest. Forgive me for wanting acceptance from people around me and received none.

All my life I had wanted to stand up for things that meant so much truth to me, but every time I gave in to pressure and awkwardness.

Maybe life has all along meant to be this way. Maybe I was never truly a part of this world. A wanderer perhaps, never meant to stay put at one place. If this is my 命冥, I will learn to understand my place in the universe.

Thursday 10 October 2013

b.xox - The Curse of Expansion

xox - The City of Rats

No matter how good is your product, you can never stand alone and hope to make large sums of money; you will always be required to deal with big retail chains. They are your essential channels. Internet is only a good proxy and not fully capable of replacing physical brick-and-mortar.

Dealing with them is unfortunately very bad for health, you therefore need to arm yourself correctly when playing their game.

The following example is a typical one and the numbers are simplified to illustrate its principles.

Typical Example
A typical retail chain can have say, 10 branches. Its turnover for the year is $100 or $10 per branch. The retail chain unfortunately is rather stupid in decision-making. Why? Simple. As a retail chain, it is very pride-oriented. It always seeks to expand. When the retail chain tries to expand, it always makes very poor branch location decisions. Why? Again you asked. The said retail chain is never stupid, in fact, the retail chain is super cunning. But, the retail chain is always at the mercy with the landlords. If the retail chain finds a good branch location, so does the landlord, the landlord will exact very high rental, even if the landlord doesn't yet know, it will soon know within the next 5 years. The asshole landlord will raise rental of branch location once the retail chain starts to "sink-in" to the location and has built localized brand loyalty. When the rental is super high, there is no profit, may even be losses. The retail chain will always get stuck real quickly. The cycle is vicious. Due to this reason, no matter how clever the retail chain is in seeking out good branch location, the good decision will soon turn bad. This is the pre-condition for the retail chain's failure.

Turnover
Because of the above issue with the landlord and/or manpower costs, the retail chain will find itself having to pay, say $105 for the year's operations, i.e., 5% more than the sale turnover. The retail chain simply has to find this extra $5 ($105(expenses)-$100(sales)) to make ends meet.

Expansion
So the retail chain has to think of a clever method to solve this mis-step (usually caused by rental increases from the landlords or increased labour costs). Typically the suppliers of products to the retail chain give a discount of say 40% to the retail chain. Usually the retail chain will pay up after 6 months of sale. So in the example above, the suppliers would be owed about $60 out of the $100 sales turnover, i.e., 60% of $100. The retail chain would have made 40% of $100 = $40 gross. But, the retail chain year's expenses is say $45. There is therefore a shortfall of $5, i.e., $40(income)-$45(expenses).

The cunning retail chain then has no choice but to think of a way to con the suppliers and screw their asses. The retail chain then anyhow chooses a new branch location and does business. Now there are 11 branches in the retail chain. The suppliers are told to stock-up the new branch, but never get paid because of the super-delayed payment cycle. The new sales turnover is $110, i.e., $10x11 and the increased number of branches will need an increased expenses of say, $55. But, the retail chain don't have to pay the suppliers for another 6 months to a year. So the retail chain will only pay the older debts like $60. Thus, leaving $50 for expenses, i.e., $110(new turnover)-$60(old debts). But, the original expenses is only $45. So the retail chain still have $5 left, i.e., $50-$45, which the retail chain wrongly declared as profits. The retail chain is flush with cold, hard cash from sale over the next 6 months. The retail chain don't even bother to pay any suppliers just yet.

The Next Year
To keep up the charade, the retail chain will need to expand by another branch or two by the following year. As long as the retail chain keeps expanding (approximately 10% a year), the old debts are being honoured by the increased turnover. The retail chain will show no weakness.

No Such Thing as Free Lunch
There is always a physical limit to every market, one simply can't expand forever. There will come a day when the retail chain can't expand anymore without cannibalizing on older branches' revenue. When that time comes, the retail chain would be fucked good. So be careful and read their annual reports to find hints of slowing down. The retail chain will shut down given time (30-50 years). That's why there are no retail chains that survived 400 years. Just chew over this.

Fucken Little Island
Notice the similarity with a certain little island policy on population growth. It is no-different. In time, this cutey island will sink big time. So you better don't follow a sinking ship. They can declare all their needs, but, the failure follows just as sure as the sun rises from the east.

Solution
  1. When the retail chain grows and asking for more inventory to be placed at new stores, supply only what you can supply. Don't borrow from bank to increase the supply. Spread the inventory thinner if needed.
  2. With increased branches, the turnover will be bigger and faster. Use the additional income to pay for new inventory in cash terms.
  3. Diversify to other product range or another market.
  4. Vary the payment terms.
  5. Never try to be the biggest in the supply chain, the retail chain will first fuck you up good.
  6. Procure alternative income source.
  7. Invest in retail chain's enemy.
  8. Expand only in cash terms
A little exercise:
If we know that the retail chain is an asshole when it comes to repaying old supply invoices and the retail chain is not growing anymore, how do we overcome this short-coming?

Wednesday 9 October 2013

p.Greyhawk is Here


The last part is here:   Shows - Mongol (蒙古王) and 止杀令 

"My king, his excellency, greyhawk is here. He seeks your council ...", the chieftain of red chariots announced.

"Send him in. Bring him to the inner court ...", I replied and hurrily chased lotus and chrysanthemum away to the north chamber. I straightened up and walked leisurely to the inner court.

Greyhawk is the father of white crane. During his younger days, he owned 75% of white land's food chain. At the airports, he was the complete supplier of all airlines' food. His power was unmatched and his company listed in the white stock exchange. He lived in a house that has a swimming pool about half the size of a standard Olympic swimming pool. White crane learned her unparalleled wisdom from him. His military strategies were a result of 60 years of trial-and-error. His presence now is definitely not good news. His request of council was obviously a joke, remembering always that he has never sought council from me. I was considered too young and un-gifted in his eyes.

...

"Greetings! My king. You look good today," greyhawk gave me a wry smile. A bloody standard white man's way of starting a convo.

I asked, "Then to whose pleasure should I be enthused and indulged to believe, your excellency."

Greyhawk straightened up and said, "I heard from white crane that the battle of the land of crescent lake is nigh. Upon your conquest, you are determined to claim it and upon its extent, you intend to build the forbidden city (紫禁城) and the gate of heavenly peace (天安門). Their orientation points towards the north star (紫微垣)." Every fucking wise guy always likes to straighten up before replying. Very irritating way of imposing their influence.

I smiled happily and chipped, "Isn't it a great idea?"

He shouted back, "NO!" Wow ... Shit! Big show-down now. He continued, "The whites have ruled the earth for 2000 years. Although it is now time for their decline, they remained powerful for a while longer. You cannot underestimate their prowess. With the help of my daughter, white crane, and me, you would likely be successful in your quest. The ogres have received news of your march on them. They are now amassed at 2 million strong. They will not take this battle lying down!"

I enquired, "With my heavy archery and chariots, I estimated that although my numbers are fewer, I stand to fight every inch."

News has spread far and wide now. I believe the spies from the ogres had fedback to the ogre king that I am about to invade. I suspected bubble tea, the fucking elven king must have been instrumental to this leak. Doing battle is never a quiet task, to be able to hold our silence is quite key to our ultimate outcome of the battle. Now that the news were known. The element of surprise can never be used on this battle. The white ogres are now warned.

Meanwhile, bubble tea has been asking me to let him in. He even offered his sister as a bribe. He knew I was not into money matters. Girls remained my greatest weakness.

Snapping back to reality, greyhawk answered, "Here! Take these bunch of weeping willow. When you have finally won, plant a cutting every 10 metres along the entire crescent lake. Wait for 10 years. When the leaves from the tallest branches touch the water surface, you may then build your parapet wall of 26 foot around the forbidden city. Keep 10 pairs of red deers and 100 pairs of black minks. Let them roam free within the city limit. You may then build a summer palace for white crane. She is the only one I have."

I smiled back, "Yes. Sire! I will honour your daughter in her rightful place." Person like greyhawk was not drawn by money alone. He was too rich for his sake. He valued his daughter way more. I had to tread carefully.

With that commitment, greyhawk left me in my peace. He doesn't know that I do have another offer from crimson queen. an outsider. She wished me good luck today. With her support, there was really no risk in my battle now. But, I really had too many women in my life. Not a good thing I must say.

Saturday 5 October 2013

p.xox - The City of Rats

The last part is here:   xox - I have Cancer

If you have not read the all-important essay on Holocaust II - Dr Calhoun's experiment on humans. Please do. It will fill you in on the exact details.

... There was also “sexual deviance”. Dominant males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Rats became hypersexual, pursuing females relentlessly even when not in heat. The mortality rate among females was extremely high. A large proportion of the population became bisexual, then increasingly homosexual, and finally asexual. ... Dr Calhoun clearly saw these rats and mice as models for man. Life in an unnatural urban environment of ever-increasing density could result in the complete devastation of humanity. He noted that even when population levels dropped and more space became available, the community never recovered. Even when healthy rodents are placed in the new environment, they never breed successfully again. ... The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.

Previously I wrote about renewable resource. Only renewable resources are sustainable. So when one started to build a rat city like in that fucken little island. You would encounter a problem soon enough. How were you going to feed the populace? There was simply no farm resource. That's the reason why one needs to cry on TV to explain away his silly decision to break off from the union among friendly rats some 50 years earlier.

As time went by, the rat city became totally unstable. There were no means of the king rat that could quieten and feed the rats. So the king rat resorted to the idea of expansion. He suggested to the rats that they should give birth but not too many. For each increase in birth, there were added goods and services demanded. (I will explained its fallacy later.) In exchange they worked for MNCs to buy food and materials. All was well till the rats ran out of space and the MNCs like locusts moved on to greener and cheaper places.

Due to the lack of space and living in coffin holes (remember the bees), the rats refused to procreate. The birth rate dropped to 1.20. This was called, for the lack of a better term, the space stressor. The king rat then implemented the idea of foreign importation of fresh rats. The birth rate went back up towards 1.29, the king rat proudly proclaimed. To me, the explanation was simple: Due to the Calhoun's effect, the local rats had stopped procreation due to the space stressor. The imported fresh rats were healthy and had none of the space stressors, they procreated like nobody's business. Hence, briefly, pushed the birthrate index back higher. But, given time, the space stressor would once again set in on these newer rats and they too would stop procreating. These newer rats would behave exactly like the older rats. Greater, newer and fresher rats are more than ever needed. The cycle repeats. The problem would become extremely dire very rapidly, as the birthrate of 1.20-1.29 means for every new born, they will need to support 2 silver adults. This clearly is not sustainable. 

In the past, the rats in the rat city used to try to produce innovative goods, like the creative techie and the thumb drives. But that was in the past. At the present moment, the rats in the rat city produce nothing of originality, they only try to provide nondescript time units in services rendered. One should be able to deduce that a service engineer, lawyer or accountant is useless without the farm products.

The world is a very cunning place. You produced no goods of originality, you only have your nondescript service time units for sale. Your employers will only pay you pittance and only just enough for you to survive. If the entire rat city is on service terms, the whole rat city is being paid pittance. The whole rat city would under perform most of the time, i.e., the payment for each time unit is below food prices. Over time, the whole rat city has no choice but to cannibalize each other to survive. The king rat and his cronies would naturally have the advantage. The gini index just goes worse.

The king rat thinking that he is smartest among his rats would always come out with the most obvious and silly solution, i.e., expansion. He was by far the most stupid, i.e., the king without clothes. Like it or not, the rat city is not just an ordinary place but a nation. In a nationhood, the early rats would grow old and become the next silver tsunami, if not careful, these silver tsunami would get stuck in the rat city and demand health care. So the king rat just willed them away by allowing them to emigrate easily. This explained why it is so easy to leave the rat city through emigration. The king rat just simply not interested in keeping you, as you age. But, this is a double-edged sword. Only the more abled rats would migrate, bringing along with them, very educated rat kids. The rat city hollows out in no time. Corporate knowledge and expertise just drain away. The king rat thinking that these corporate knowledge and institutional skill were easily replaceable was once again proved wrong. Corporate knowledge takes time to build and takes more than a lifetime to perfect. Once lost, the rat city is hollowed out. Just like if all of kikkoman soya sauce makers were to resign totally, kikkoman would be fucked bad. Same thing for a rat city, you need older rats to guide the newer rats so that knowledge (an art) could be passed down by training of apprentices. There is simply no short-cut to corporate knowledge retention.

On the other hand too, the king rat just open the flood gate and allow new fresh rats to enter. The effect is simple: The rat population is now renewed and made young again. Now you have 2-3 young rats to support one old rat. As long as this ratio is maintained, the rat city would be OK. The additional demand for goods and services would be healthy and great for nation building. But, the king rat forgot one big factor - space. The rat city for all its wonders would run out of space. Why? The world is a clever place. Unless the immigrants are strong, healthy and superior, they would not be able to emigrate to another place, i.e., the export of rats cannot be higher than the production of silver tsunami, making the silver population growing at all the time. With growing silver population, it would imply an ever greater need to grow young, fresh and foreign trash. Sooner rather later, the space stressor of the rat city would turn up. The rats would stop behaving like rats and lose all procreation skills, the rat city would go the way of dinosaurs.

I may not sound alarmist, but, the effects are deadly. In fact, by careful comparison, you would already see this wheel of loss in motion. Get the fuck out as soon as it is still possible. The north korean king rat might become alarmist and shut all exits. Genocide is not a bedtime story.