Season of Harvest

After a few months, it is again the time to collect payment from all the microstock sites. Not too much, but enough to cover the cost of a 2nd hand Nikon flash. I have set a rule for myself that I will not buy any new stuff for photography until the income from Microstock is sufficient to cover all my photography expensese incurred so far, which is a couple of thousand dollars.

US dollar went down quite a few per cent yesterday, after the de fanco central bank of Singapore, the MAS, changed their guideline on currency exchange policy. To combat inflation, they will let Singapore dollars to appreciate more. US dollar went down immediately from US$1.00=S$1.38 to US$1.00=S$1.358. Analysts are expecting US dollar to drop further to US$1.00=S$1.32 by the end of the year.

In this case, I have to convert all my US dollar earning from Microstock into Singapore dollar at the earliest possible time, to avoid loss.

Anyway, it is always good to have some extra pocket money. Let's have some fireworks:D

iStockPhoto Going Subscription Model

Just received a newsletter from iStockPhoto, announcing they will introduce a subscription plan in late May to their customers, in parallel to their current 'buy as you go' model.

Wow, that is good news for everyone on iStockPhoto. A subscription model allows the customers to buy a fixed number of images over a period of time for a fixed amount. With this model, customers tend to buy more. It will be a win-win-win situation for the customer, iStockPhoto as well as all contributing photographers at iStockPhoto.

However, my optimism is cautious optimism. 123RF.com also has a subscription plan for their customers along the 'buy as you go' plan. My income from 123RF has been dismal. As a matter of fact, my income from their subscribers is less than from 'buy as you go' customers.

Anyway, it is still something good and worth looking forward to. May seems to be the season for change. ShutterStock is expected to announce their new rates in May too.

Switzerland in Asia

I read an article titled "Switzerland in Asia" today. It positively describes Singapore as the Switzerland in Asia. No surprise. Switzerland has long been the role model for Singapore, it is the goal this country has been trying hard to achieve.

But, is it good news for me? To a large extent, yes, it is. A clean environment, literally and with implications, convenient transport systems, safe streets, higher income. All these are good points. However, Switzerland is still a FINANCIAL centre of the world, not an engineering nor a manufacturing centre of the world. You are more likely to bump into a banker than an engineer in the streets of Switzerland.

In Singapore, with the recent emphasis on finance, tourism and hospitality industries, engineering is on a downhill path. Young people don't have interest nor the patience to go into the field of engineering. Rumour has it that intake for engineering has declined so much that a major Singapore higher education provider is going to reduce the number of teaching staff of their electrical engineering school by 40%!

Many practising engineers have changed or plan to change their career to something more fulfilling. This coupled with the fact that fewer young students want to take up engineering as their major in universities, it may force engineering companies, local or MNC, to look else.

Trail of Destruction...of Mobile Phones

I must be getting old. Suddenly I have this urge to list down all the mobile phones I had used before. Most of them did not outlive the 2-year contract with the mobile service provider, making me keep buying new phones, and keep renewing my 2-year contract.

1. 1998 Philips Magix: a phone using NiMH batteries that had memory effect. Quite a pain in the back when it comes to battery life.

2. Nokia 3210: Not too bad, but it died 3 months before my 2-year plan expired. :(

3. Nokia 8250: Outlived the 2-year plan, but it was killed after I put it in my washing machine to have a bath :P

4. Sony Ericcson T23: My first color screen mobile phone. A simple but steady phone, and the only one that is still working till today. Hooray...

5. Sony Ericcson K600i: My first 3G phone, with camera and MP3 player. It died one day after the 1-year warranty period was over. Power consumption was like hell. Daily routine to charge the phone, or the next day, you see blood :D

6. Nokia 6070: I have the worst luck with this phone. On the next day of purchase, the volume control did not work. A couple of months later, it became mute. Then yesterday, it went silent again. It is 3 weeks after the warranty expired.

Just got a new mobile phone today, Nokia again. I simply can't resist the user-friendliess of all the Nokia phones. It is again a 3G phone. The features this phone has make my S$600 Dell Axim PDA look so pale in comparison.

It has two cameras (my K600i had that too), one of them is a 2-meg camera. I don't need to buy or carry a compact digital cam anymore. My phone is my cam. Just 5 years ago, a 2-meg digital cam was still something new and expensive.

There is also a MP3 player, and many fancy features that I don't have a clue what they are yet at this moment. But I like the MicroSD expansion possibility. I like to live a life of abundance. 2GB of storage is just about right for me. Snap snap snap around needs lots of memory, you know. :D

Ah, one more point. Alex bought a 8GB thumbdrive for around S$50. Wah....

How to Increase Your Blog's Hits...

I was watching a repeat telecast of a talk show on Channel 8. The hosts and guests were discussing about blogging. The five guests present are all Singapore's successful bloggers, and the most prominent of them of course is the Singapore blog queen - Xiaxue. According to her, her blog has average 10,000 hits per DAY! For 3 years, she has not taken up any conventional job, solely making a living through blogging.

That is not very surprising, considering there are a lot more star-bloggers around the world, they are making equal amount of money every month, if not more. What is the big deal then? What irks me is the fact that she became famous because she bitched about others, ridicules people, stirring up contraversy, to attract eye-balls to her blog.

Ok, I am bitching about her here too. Anyway, the point I want to make is one way to blogging stardom is to stir up contraversy, cursing others. You can even collaborate with someone to start a war of words between the two, or many of you, then everybody involved will benefit from the war. Ah, this is the first time that I know a war actually does have some benefits.

Tibet - on Phoenix TV

A series of TV programs on Phoenix TV touching on the subject of Tibet have been compiled and made available at the Phoenix TV's website. Too bad, almost everything is in Chinese, but I think our English, or other language speaking audience should take a look as well.

No doubt there are differences between ethnic Tibetans and ethnic Han Chinese, they have vastly different views on life, and MONEY too. What they need is more communications between the two ethnic groups, more understanding, and more tolerance.

Remember, innocent people sometimes are taken advantage of by political figures. I don't why YouTube removed the video clip of the documentary from National Geography Channel. Before the Chinese entered Tibet, Lamas were the masters, and many ordinary Tibetans were nothing than slaves. This information from some Western literature, which is supposed to be 'objective'. The Kingdom of Tibet that some supreme spiritual leader wanted to establish is just to return to that glory past.

The Links are below:
http://itv.ifeng.com/v/200804/tibet-hr/
http://itv.ifeng.com/v/zhj/xz/

A Bet

Being not very prudent, I put a couple of thousand dollars into a stock that someone recommended. He had mentioned the counter to me before, but I didn't take any action on it, until today he called again.

Well, I think time for me to take a little bit of risk. No, that is not true, we are taking risks everyday. It is always a matter of how to manage your risk. His recommendation may be a bit too speculative, but it is up to me to manage the risk.

Darly Guppy has written quite a number of books on managing risks in stock trading. Interested persons can visit his website: http://www.guppytraders.com/

All his books are listed at his site, and some of them are available from our National Library.

Anyway, now just keep my fingers crossed and see what will happen.

Jigsaw Puzzles

It has been almost a week since I last wrote anything for my blog. Haiz... Too busy, too tired to write anything.

Jigsaw puzzles had never been something that I like, even faintly. If the puzzle is too easy, then there is no fun; if the puzzle is too difficult, then people will lose interest. The creator of the puzzle has to have a good grip of the difficulty level.

However, if the jigsaw puzzle is a real life puzzle, then it will be very difficult to even assess the difficulty level. Nobody knows about it, even the innocent 'creator' of the puzzle.

Facing a real life jigsaw puzzle, probably created by me, or my peers, unknowingly! Now the task is to get more clues, put the pieces together, and of course, finally solve the puzzle. Time is ticking... Racing with time... That is kind of stressful... But kind of fun, too.

Wish me good luck in solving the real life jigsaw puzzle....