DianaTan.net » Food for Thought

Stars of the Universe

Diana — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:51:41 +0000

I just came back from Mantin in Negeri Sembilan as my colleague needs to see a potential client. Now she is resting while I am surfing the web sites and came across an interesting site where you can click here to find out more information. On the way back from Mantin, we dropped by Starbucks and bought ourselves a drink each – mine was hot green tea latte. The website I mentioned earlier is Star Sign Traits and if you are Aries, you can just check it out. I am Cancer, my youngest sister is Pieces, dad is Taurus while mum is virgo.

It was our Heavenly father who set the stars in heaven and created the story of the stars in the Bible. Leo is the Lion of Judah, while Virgo is the Virgin Mary. If you listen to Pastor Joseph Prince’s tapes, you will learn more about them and how baby Jesus was born to save the entire world from an eternal condemnation. It is a love story from the alpha to omega or the beginning to the end. Do you know that the sun is the smallest star in the entire universe? It is also the nearest sun to the earth and any nearer, the earth will be too hot; to far the earth will be too cold.

Perform Analytics and Reporting for Your Site

Diana — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:49:23 +0000

If you own blogs and web sites, you need to perform constant analytics and reporting to check your traffic sources and the most visited pages. You need to know who your sources of traffic are and fine tune them for better conversion rate. This is especially pertinent if you are using your blogs and web sites to earn an income, for instance from Adsense, or any other paid contextual advertisements. You cannot afford to ignore the analytics and traffic report of your sites.

Beacon of Light to Guide You

You can go to Google Analytics to check the relevant information for free. After all, Google paid for the software from a company and is offering the service to you at no charge at all. Hence we should all make full use of the opportunities placed in front of us in order to monitize our sites to the maximum. It is like a beacon of light to guide us by giving us pertinent information on our traffic sources and how we should go about doing the next step to make more money online.

Your Traffic is Your source of Income

Your traffic is afterall your source of income and the higher traffic you get, the more you earn – simple as that. Experienced marketers use analytics and reporting to their full advantage and tweak their sites to maximise their revenue. This explains why some people are able to earn mega bucks while others are still struggling to earn a decent income from the internet.

Knowledge is Power

As they say, ‘knowledge is power’ certainly rings a bell. That is why we need to surf around for important information to help propel us to greater heights of success. But we also need to be patient as learning takes time and never rush into trying to make money online. Only time will tell whether we are successful or not.

Patience is a Virtue

We need to be patient with our online progress and work consistently at it while we can. Therefore, patience is a virtue in all matters of being successful. When a baby is born, you cannot expect it to walk immediately. You need to feed him, nurture him and slowly teach him how to crawl first before he can start walking on his own unaided. Likewise with passing exams for a student. You cannot expect a student to browse through a thick textbook and immediately remember all the facts in a jiffy. You will certainly need time to digest and remember what is read and to practice constantly especially when you are revising for that Math exam.

The same can be said for performing analytics and reporting for all your web sites and blogs. You can also pay online marketers to do the main job for you leaving you with more time for the more important tasks at hand.

Never Under Estimate the Power of Performing Analytics and Reporting

You need to also store the information after performing analytics and reporting in your computer so that you can go back and check the old data with the current one and monitor your progress. As you do this consistently, you cannot help but be successful.

Making Money Requires Hard Work and Some Luck

Diana — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:54:05 +0000

Who says making money was easy? Well you need to work hard at it and be consistent in your efforts. Also, you need some luck as well by knowing the right connections. Relationships are important too and never underestimate the value of relationships with your peers, friends and relatives. It is through these very relationships that you get the word of mouth of which company is hiring and you need to know the inside circle in order to get employed. Not all companies will hire walk in strangers but people who know the employees or are related to them. In everything we do, it all boils down to having good relations with people around you.

My Articles are Accepted

Diana — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:18:21 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote 2 articles for a USA company and they were accepted this morning. I received the news from my iPhone 4 and it will buzz each time a new unread email is received. The amount was for USD 3.50 and USD 5.50 at USD 1 cent per word. So the total was more than USD 8.00 for the 2 articles. At the moment I am rated 3 stars which is good, and hoping to be rated 4 stars for excellent writer which will earn me USD 1.4 cents per word. Yesterday I also signed up for micro jobs online and did 4 blog posts for a minimal amount. This blog now has a page rank of 2 and I don’t intend to stuff it with too many outgoing links and reduce the page rank. But with the financial rewards, I have to consider twice.

Best Home Insurance

Diana — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:44:47 +0000

When you purchase a new apartment, you need to buy the best home insurance so that in case of disaster, your money will not be depleted too fast. The insurance company will pay for your damaged home either by natural disaster or by fire. I am staying with my parents currently and will remain with them for a long time to come. They have insured their home by comparing for the best policy rates. As you move out and stay in our own, you need a roof over your head and shelter from the elements of the harsh weather. That is why most of your income will go to paying back bank mortgage for your cosy home and the period may be a few years to more years until you are retired. More than 60% of our income will go towards the investment of a new home.

As a caution, just make sure that you have more than enough to pay for your monthly mortgage so that the bank will not auction out your property to the public and advertise in the press of the proclamation of sale. The worst injustice you can do to yourself is not having enough money to pay for your home and become a homeless vagrant in the streets.

Powerful Message from Steve Jobs

Diana — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:50:21 +0000

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

I hope this speech inspired you as much as it has inspired me.

I go back and read it from time to time when I need a boost.

Don’t borrow from Ah Longs

Diana — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:03:02 +0000

If you are in desperate need of money, always approach the banks first. I keep getting phone calls from Citibank wanting to loan me money through my credit card. Sometimes the phone calls become a nuisance especially when I am resting and get woken up or when I am in the midst of doing something or working. In Singapore, banks never call you up to loan you money – unlike the desperado banks in Malaysia. That is why the moment you take up a big loan using your credit card, the banks start earning interests from 17% per annum onwards. This is the real money making machine with their credit card services.

But in the event that you get turned down by a bank for a loan, then you should ask your relatives, families or close friends for financial help. Never, by all means, resort to Ah Longs or illegal money lenders. They make cut throat profits at 25% per day or so. I am not sure about the percentage but it should be in that range! If you need money to do business, then approach a bank with a business plan. This way, they may be convinced to loan you the money with lesser interests rates. We have heard of horror stories of people who default payment from the Ah Long and get themselves in trouble – like getting their house or car splashed with red paint, house gate locked from outside, life threatened, etc. If you have to borrow money to start a business, then you might as well forget the plan and try to work for other people instead. There is at least job security and income in being an employee.

There is more to Life than Work

Diana — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:59:20 +0000

Some people are parasites, depending on others to feed them and refuse to work. It is not that they cannot work, but they choose not to work and take the easy way out, like sitting the whole day in the shop lot waiting for customers to walk in and give them business. For others, they prefer to nap the whole day and give excuse after excuse like cannot handle work pressure, etc. Just yesterday, I read an article in the newspapers of a young girl, a graduate in Computer Science from Australia who committed suicide after having depression and came back from Taiwan six months ago. This is so tragic as her condition could be averted by taking medication and seeing the mental health doctor. Life is more than work, it is about enjoying what you do and learning how to handle the daily grind and dreary pressure that may come along your way.

To be Rich, Spend Less than You Earn

Diana — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:39:26 +0000

No matter how much you earn, to be really rich is to spend less than you earn each month. This is basic financial principal. As long as you can save some money, say 10% of your income every month, you will become rich when you retire eventually. Many financial experts keep writing in their books to tell us to spend way less than we earn. Otherwise, you are just a transit for money transactions. You need to attract money and not repel it. By using compounding interests, you will become rich in a matter of years as you faithfully keep at saving money monthly. There is no other way for most of us who have to slought it out daily, year in year out.

Busy as a Bee in my Home Office

Diana — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:33:23 +0000

Today I have lots of offers to take up and am busy as a bee in my home office. After all, it is not often that you get lots of offers like today. And since I am not required to travel today, I can comfortably write the articles and submit them all by today. This is how I am kept occupied for some cash allowance instead of doing nothing or napping away. The year end is also a busy time for me as we need to send out promotional material to people all over Malaysia for our business. I also need to design calendars for next year and buy envelopes plus stamps. It is the determination to endure hard work and the tenacity to see it through that spells success for our business. The diligent shall have plenty to eat but the slothful who does not life a finger will go hungry.