November 2006

Monthly Archive

Yahoo Mail Beta

Filed Under Uncategorized

I got hooked with the new offering from Yahoo Mail. They are now on beta stage for the new look of their mail client and I must say that it looks great and really functional. In fact, it look very much lik MS Outlook and Outlook Express and I’m sure when it goes live, Gmail will have play catch-up. Aside from being functional, the new Yahoo!Mail is also visually appealing. There’s even a preview pane that is really fast and when you double-click and email item, a new tab will be created for a full view of the message. I am very impressed!

And of course, you still have that folders where you can use to group your emails. I just don’t understand why Google isn’t implementing that for Gmail. Maybe they are still very busy with the GMail Mobile. But surely, this new product from Yahoo will add more popularity to it. It will create a new and exciting experience for web-based email.

Loans : Good or Bad?

Filed Under General Nonsense

Since I passed-up the first time I was offered to invest, I made sure that it won’t happen again the next time. Christmas is just around the corner and for sure, I need funds for the season. I applied for a small personal loan that I’ll invest when the opportunity comes.

According to Mr. Colayco of the Colayco Foundation, borrowing money is not bad. Actually, it empowers the borrower. It creates opportunity. It is the mindset of the people that’s not good which put some people in huge debt. The mindset common to many Filipinos is that the borrowed money is considered theirs when in fact, it is not. Loans are loans. You have to pay them and make good use of the money.

And what’s the best way to use that money but invest and invest I did. It will return on the first week of December. It’s not a big investment but is good enough to earn something extra. The proceeds of this deal will already cover the whole year interest of the loan with some excess. That means all the proceeds on the subsequent deals will already be considered profits. If given a chance, I can use the loan six times in one year and if the average profit is 16% per deal, that will almost double my money in a year.

The prospect is very promising indeed. I’m just hoping that I’ll be given more chances like this.

Elections and Christmas

Filed Under General Nonsense

Christmas is coming and this season, it would be different. Wanna know why? There’s another election next year and our beloved politicians are already trying hard to show themselves to our voters. You can’t blame them, that’s their bread and butter. Oh yes, the country’s coffers is their source of living. Haha! Damn right, it is!!!!

And to get back to our topic, election and Christmas, trapos(that’s Traditional Politicians) are already scrambling to prepare their own gimmicks. That’s the reason why you can now see a lot of streamers with greetings to their constitutients. They are the type of banners wherein the face of the candidate covers 80% of the printed area while 5% is for the greeting itself. The 15% remaining is for the white space. If you think about it, who will throw away at least 300K worth of banners into our thoroughfares for nothing? Well, except the politicians of course!

And there’s another not-so-subtle technique, a TV-commercial. Woohoo!!! This is the winner as of now! I don’t know if you already got a chance to see the latest LuckyMe commercial. Senator Kiko Pangilinan is there together with MegaStar Sharon Cuneta! Damn, I didn’t expect that from him, really! I respect the man but I didn’t expect something like that from him. Whether he like it or not, it sure did tarnished his reputation as fas as I’m concerned. He’s not the first one to do that, though. You have Sen. Lacson who did the same for Napoleon VSOP and Sen. Jamby Madrigal for another product I forgot what. And of course, there are others who did the same but didn’t win. In fact, one of my bets in the 2001 senatorial elections, Mareng Winnie (Monsod), didn’t win even with the help of a detergent back then.

In the next coming days, you’ll see more of these. Personally when I see them myself, the feeling is like..”There goes my withholding tax again!”. Whew!!! For a person who pays almost a third of his salary, you can’t blame me if I feel that way especially when you know that your goverment and the legislative department does not do what they need to do. And what’s more painful about it is the fact that you see a lot of misfits in the government. Paying a third of my paycheck for tax and be treated indifferently in our government institutions like Airports(BI), Seaports(PPA), SSS, LTO, City Halls and others does not add up well. It does not feel good to see unqualified and self-serving persons running our government from local to national. And they will come to you in the next coming months to solicit your vote. But actually, your vote will not matter since they’ll buy it from somewhere else, anyways.

So, until then. Let’s just hope that you receive a present from these parasites so that you’ll get something back from your taxes.

FilipinoPal : Social Networking

Filed Under Personal

I got the chance to be invited to alpha-test FilipinoPal, a social-networking site currently on its infancy. It’s like MySpace and Friendster. It does not actually trying to rival the two but rather, they want to be a complement with other social networking sites. They wanted it to be more focused on the local scene.

As I have said, it’s still on its infancy but it is very promising. Yes, there are things that needs to be improved with the system but for sure, they will all be fixed one-by-one. I know the people behind it and their plans are great. Let us support them! If you happen to drop by their site, you can add me as your contact here.

Money Matters for Rich and Poor

Filed Under General Nonsense

It is an undeniable fact that the rich will continue to make more money while the poor will continue to struggle just to survive another day. Though it is true that there are rags-to-riches true stories, they are very rare.

What’s really interesting is that it never occured to me that a realization will happen to me. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was offered to invest in a trading transaction. It’s a huge investment that naturally will give a large profit. It’s a very rare opportunity that was only offered because the trader didn’t have enough funds for her business because of a sudden surge of purchase orders. Afraid to lose clients, she offered the deal to me. It’s a sure deal and there’s just one problem — I don’t have the money to invest. It could have been a great help for us to experience a time when there’s something extra…. something left to save and for our guilty pleasures(even for just a time). But I’m not a rich man and clearly, this opportunity is not for me.

For a well-to-do family, coughing-up 300T will not be a problem. Even if they don’t have the money in cash or in bank, these people can easily borrow either from banks or any lending companies that would be more than happy to loan them the needed funds. They have the capacity to pay, banks wouldn’t have a second-thought of approving their loans. It’s that easy. And after 2 months, they would get their investment together with their profit which could go from the lowest of 20% to as high as 100% or even more.

That’s the sad reality and if we don’t help ourselves and take advantage of every opportunity that knocks our doors, the struggle will continue.