Quality - Please bring it back!

Those who know me will know why I simply love this ad. While this ad has been highly influential to the adversing industry, this week has been influential to me. During my first week in my new job I have been busy withstrategizing, learning, organizing and meeting people. Among those I met where highly respective and influential people from the ad-world, such as the founder of Batey in Singapore. My new job is fun and challenging at the same time and I am excited to see where it will take me.

The new place is the old place

Today we had a least one good news: The property agent has finalized the negotiations with our landlord and we will extend our lease contract for another year. They make us bleed, however, we save the trouble of moving and re-connecting all the services.

Until January 2009 we will stay in Flamingo Valley, so no need to change anything...

Anyone who want to visit, just give us a ring!

Biggest Mail box in the block

A very cool mailbox...

There are several cool signs around here.
I like the street name: Maria Ave.

Greed

Economics applied: a government imposed price ceiling is bad for the economy and supply and demand regulate the price. Cool! Sounds fun as long as you don't have to live with the prospect of sending all your money to your landlord.

Singapore has seen a dramatic growth over the past few month - which is great - and with that people gained a lot of confidence. People started investing again and the next big trend was to EN-BLOC residential and commercial property (If all tenants agree, the entire place is sold, most likely to be knocked down and redeveloped). As there is a lot of $$ to be made, a lot of people happily joined the selling and demolition spree.

Demolishing a building takes a few days, while building it a few years. Congratulations! The net effect is now that both, residential and commercial properties have become very expensive. Our Landlord, at the end of our lease, is offering to extend, but at market value. Which means a 53% increase. Funny! The place we are living in is going to be demolished soon as well. Would you want to move into a place for only 8 month and pay the same as for a serviced apartment????
Sure, people should make money, but wouldn't it be nice to say "hey, the place is sold, I already make millions on that. Why not increase the rent a bit, keep the tenants and have 8 more month hassle-free rental income...." Let's hope the place stays empty till it is knocked down!

Consequence for us is now that we will have to move into a HDB (Public) housing estate.
A fellow sportsman in the gym yesterday mentioned that Exxon is moving it's operation from Singapore to Thailand. I would do the same... Imagine, the rents have increased by 50% and few hundrets of your staff rock up, asking for payrise to cope with the increased cost of living.

Now, this whole issue is very exciting to monitor... On one hand, Singapore wants to attract "foreign talent" and also grow the population, on the other hand there is little or no intervention to deal with the rising rents. Not only private individuals may go elsewhere, but small businesses may seek other locations. Eventually, this place might loose its competative edge and then all the greedy people may end up loosing money big time.

Next book project started

As I am waiting for the immigration to furnish me with a new work permit, i need to keep myself busy. The first two days were well spent on cleaning the house, several erants to do and getting some paperwork in order.

Today I have started on a new book. Not reading it, but writing. This time around, I will be elaborating on "Learning" and I am planning to have to bulk of the wrinting done by next week. This morning I managed to put 1500 words on paper, building the foundation.

Later this week I will make myself at home in the library to get the required references for my work. Needless to say that I cannot take home any books as I don't have a valid Employment Pass (Did I mention, that you need one to have a watch repaired by the authorised dealer hahahaha)

Film tip in connection with this post: Finding Forrester

Wikipedia scares me!

When we were young, we needed to ask mom or someone who "really knew things" if we wanted to find out the most profund things in life. Now that there is Wikipedia there is no more need to wait until we see aunt XX or uncle YY who knows about these issues.

Hang on there... Have you really tried Wikipedia. The amount of information on there is scary. I have NOT found a thing that is NOT on there. I mean, type "Eins Live"in the ENGLISH version and there is a description of a German radio station. Entire blueprints of battleships, critics on movies like Apocalypse Now (Redux) can be found. There is stuff on almost every movie. Try "Disturbia", a movie most of us may have not even heard of.

Who writes all that stuff...??? And what will happen to aunt XX or Mom???? No longer needed as the Go-To address for information?