Wrapping Up

The blog was supposed to be an exercise in creativity, but it has ended up as a little bit of a burden. I've read some great blogs that have been quite entertaining and also very educational. Part of what I've noticed of all the blogs that I've enjoyed, is that they've had a theme that has guided the posts and the author has been very good in following and maintaining that theme.

I just don't have that, at least not at the moment. All my posts have been random and scattered. If anything, they've just been inward focused.

So I'm going to close up for a while. I don't have the intellectual bent to provide the blogging experience that I enjoy so much in other blogs.

I'll leave you with a couple of blogs that I've recently discovered and found quite entertaining:

  Religious Policeman
 
  Lowering the Bar
 

Ernest Hemingway

I don't know much about Ernest Hemingway other than that he is quite a recognised author and what I have read on Wikipedia.

However, today I also leanred that he had a six-toed cat called Snowball. Apparently the descendents of Snowball live on today, many of them also with 6 toes.

http://www.hemingwayhome.com/cats

Sometimes the thought isn't what you'd expect

It is nice if someone brings you back a souvenir from their travels. It means that they gave at least some time during their leisure and fun to think of you, and spend a bit of their money to bring you back a small piece of their holiday. A sentiment that maybe doesn't have as much value these days when travel is much more accessible to the masses, but I think most people appreciate it.

It can get weird though when you start to wonder if much thought went into it. Some relatives of mine tend to travel alot, a slight perk of their income and career I guess. They have occassionally brought me back souvenirs and have opted for shirts for me, as its something that can be used. Its a gift that is practical.

Except for when they think you're hugely fat...

Now the general excuse is that in asian countries, the sizing is smaller, but I'm not a big person. Even in Australian sizes I'll generally wear between a small and a medium, even in the days when I used to frequent the gym, I pretty much was still medium.

So it confuses me when people bring back XL for their gift for me. They couldn't try it on themselves to gauge the sizing? Do I really look that big to them? Were they just diving in the tourist budget bin on their way to the airport on the last day?

The most recent time this happened was when I was brought this shirt from a Vietnam holiday. No matter how amusing a motif may be, when the shirt is two sizes too big, it loses the impact immediately.

Its a corny joke, and people might be embarassed to wear this in public, but just a couple of weeks ago though, I saw a guy at the train station wearing it and it looked fine; because it was the right size.

I'm going senile

For the past couple of days, one of my work colleagues has had 3 apples sitting neatly together on a corner of his desk. They've sat there untouched and every time I pass his desk, I have to fight the urge to pick them up and start juggling.

I'd also forgotten to bring my own fruit to work the past few days, so his apples only rub salt in my hungry wounds. However today I remembered to bring my fruit and weirdly, as I was walking past his desk with my apple after washing it in the kitchen, I noticed one of his apples were missing. For a split second I thought I had taken his.

I hadn't, but it still had me hesitate for a moment.

Stuff that makes me laugh

I think I have this fantasy at least once a day at work...

Amway follow-up

So, in declining the invitation to join Amway, my ex-colleague was obviously disappointed but also seemed unable to understand the reasons I gave on why I wanted to steer clear of their program. It was interesting that she couldn't (or perhaps wouldn't) see things from my point of view, and leads me to think that there might be more to people's view that Amway "brainwashes" their members.

Reason 1) Return on investment.

I explained that as far as business goes, for all my effort and personal expenditure, I share the rewards with those who are above me in the hierarchy. This is the case in many businesses, but at least you feel that your manager/boss is at least in the office and doing "manager" type work. Whereas in Amway and MLM schemes, the person who brought you in could just introduce you, then spend the rest of their life at home twiddling their thumbs and still getting a return on your effort. This aspect is a bummer, although the idea is that this also can work in your favour.

Note: There was some concern about percentage return as compared with other industries. However, it actually isn't too bad in terms of raw numbers. Take the real estate or vehicle industry where the salesperson typically gets a return of 1~2%. There is variation on this due to various factors such as prestige level, experience, ability and so on, but it is a fair comparison though. The problem though, is that 1% is fine if you're selling a single $1million dollar home a fortnight. It's great even. But what if the items you are selling range from a few dollars to a few hundred? How many now do you need to move?

Reason 2) Lack of transparency.

If I get a regular job, I know my salary and I know my tax obligations. If I run a business, then I get to know my fees, tax implications, and running expenses. Amway does not reveal this to you easily. On one hand, they claim that you will have no running expenses as you don't maintain inventory, and its just the cost of running around and bringing people into the system. But as I am not officially a registered business owner nor an employee of Amway, then they don't provide me transparency of how money will be coming in to me, and they certainly won't explain it to me if I'm not yet a member. If you don't like the Church of Scientology, then you won't like Amway.

Reason 3) Bias

Majority of people writing about Amway all state that the people looking to recruit them, would not provide a fair unbiased account of what is involved and what it takes to succeed. Instead, the pitch is always about the people who make fortunes. The lady I was talking to didn't get aggressive when I finally declined the offer after some discussion, but other people had experienced their contact becoming insulting when they refused. If a person can't be balanced in their presentation of an opportunity, then it may not be an opportunity at all.

If the entire business is built on bringing in people for them to get rich, then there will either be alot of victims like the GFC, or there just will simply be many disappointed hopefuls. A company needs to have some consumer focus in order to succeed, and Amway just doesn't.

End of the day, I hope she does find this business works out for her in the long run, but the odds are that it won't.

Amway or the highway

Amway is an interesting company, and like any corporation, there is a focus on their supplying goods/services with the intent to generate a profit for the company owners and stakeholders. I'm writing this as I was recently contacted by an ex-colleague who I hadn't been in touch with for years. Out of the blue they called to invite me to join in generating residual income.

Now Amway's approach is essentially to make members into stakeholders. The amount of stake that you have is dependent on essentially the revenue that you directly or indirectly generate for the corporation. The basic premise is simple and not a problem on face value. The issue though is on how they go about their business.

Firstly, you can only buy from Amway if you are a member. There is a basic annual membership fee, and in many ways, this is not different from a number of wholesalers or "Cash and Carry" stores. This membership provides you access to their buying their goods. (If you want to see what they sell and some prices you can check out the Australian site here https://www.amway.com.au/).

Increasing sales and market share is where things get interesting. Amway leverages MLM (Multi-Level Marketing, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing), so rather than putting money into advertising to the general community, instead they offer incentives to members for them to recruit new members and shoppers.

The incentives work on the following returns:

• For purchases you make, you get a percentage back.
• For members that you have recruited, you also get a percentage of the purchases they make.
• If your recruits then bring in new members, you also get a percentage of the purchases they make, and so on.

The percentage you receive of the purchases, reduces the more you are removed (in recruitment layer terms) from the member who made that purchase.

If you didn't already know about these schemes, then you can probably already see the problems; that for online shopping the discounts are reduced due to all the extra people who have to get paid commissions, and the people who want to use this as an income source now have ulterior motives when talking to people about Amway specifically recruiting.

A number of years ago, a Whirlpool forum user posted a basic guide for the number of sales needed to create a $400 / week income. You can see it in this Whirlpool link http://whrl.pl/Rck5QR . Essentially the combined total of purchases that I, and the members I've recuited, need to make in a week to earn $375 is about $20,000. This is not easy to achieve, considering that the regular purchase items from their website number 77. That's correct, 77 items fall under the category of groceries, and none of those are perishable items like dairy, fruit, vegetables or meat. The rest of the shopping categories are cosmetics, nutritional pharmaceuticals, and some basic home appliances and cleaning chemicals.


To give you a comparison, Coles "specials category" had 1,311 items alone. That's just the "specials and discounts" section, not including the rest of their regular full price items. Everything you can get in store, you are also able to buy online and have delivered.

Amway is not cheaper than your general supermarket brands, and considering that you now have to wait for that to be delivered while you also still have to go to the store to get your regular stuff (or pay a separate delivery fee for your regular shopping)? Not convenient. If you like the Amway products for yourself, that's well and good, but remember that you're also paying almost $100 per year for the privilege so you need to be making some good savings over equivalent quality brands for this to be worthwhile.

Of course Amway wants more sales, as they are a business after all, so there is the offer for you to make money by bringing in new members and encouraging them to buy. This is where Amway's reputation, and that of MLM schemes in general, have run into real trouble because of the conduct and behaviour of people trying to get new members in.

Because the system is not consumer focused, i.e. there aren't significant savings and you can't get all the things you want, then the pressure falls on the member to cajole or hook people into becoming members. This is where the sales pitch falls on the lure of riches, rather than any merit of the products or the system itself.

Amway has been around for more than 50 years, so the stuff above is already something you probably know. If a friend starts to talk to you about Amway, then be polite but firm; you don't need this in your life.

But if you really think you'd like to get into sales and make some good money, then go into an industry that properly rewards the effort you'll be putting in and consider finance brokering, real estate, vehicles, insurance, or travel.

Actually, no. Don't go into vehicle sales...

Scoundrels

Alot depends on the yard manager, but many of the larger caryards will keep a pool of umbrellas for that "extra mile" of customer service. This is because when it rains there are still alot of people who come into the yard with an umbrella of their own. Providing one for their use will not only make them more comfortable, but provides a convenient excuse for the salesperson to approach the customer uninvited and endeavour to work their way into a sale.

However, you will always get points where the customer insists on browsing alone for a bit longer, but wants to continue to avail themself of the umbrella. That's still good, because they'll come back to the office to drop it off, giving us a second line into probing for opportunities to make that sale.

Don't get annoyed, you're in the yard because you want a new car, right?

Anyway, what gets me, is that there are some people who don't bring the umbrella back. They keep it. And when I'm out and about, away from the yards and I see a person using one of those umbrellas, it burns me up.

It also means that the cheapskate yard I was at stopped providing umbrellas so I had to begin bringing my own. Believe me, I watched those ones like a hawk.

Sliding off the face

Ouch sorry for the extended absence. I always wonder how bloggers could just 'drop off' for several weeks, even months. And then when they say they're getting back on the wagon, much like I am hoping to say here, they then fall off again a week later.

Well I think I understand it a bit better now. Maybe it was writer's block that turned into a little bit of apathy, maybe it was just life. But hope to be getting back into routine again.

Milk tea

I've only started thinking about it in recent months, despite all the years that I've drunk regular breakfast tea with milk. I don't add much, just enough to colour it to a dark brown. But I do like my tea strong, so often I'll leave the tea bag in the entire time that I'm drinking it.

But I'd recently only started thinking about how milk affects the brewing (steeping) of the tea when we ran out of milk at work, so I had to drink tea black a few times. Now, leaving the teabag in for more than a few minutes resulted in very strong and bitter tea.

I'm a bit confused as to how this works, as a quick Google search turned up results saying that milk in itself does not stop the tea brewing. It's only the cooling effect of the milk dropping the water temperature and hence slowing the rate of brewing.

But I don't add much milk, and I've had cups of tea where the bag has remained in for over 30min and it is still no where near as strong as 5min of black tea. So I didn't really get an answer to my question from the internet, but I did learn that apparently milk is reducing any health benefits of the tea, so I'm supposed to be drinking black.

I guess that is kind of an answer.

Like a dog

Every now and then I remember why dogs love sticking their heads out of car windows. Although the whole looking into the wind thing does confound me a bit.

One of my friends used to drive trucks for a recycling company, and this was way before wheelie bins were around. Both the recycling and garbage were collected by different trucks that used runners who would grab the stuff from the curb, throw it into the truck and move on. Essentially the truck would just be slowly driven down the street while one or two runners would race between curb and truck constantly.

I joined my friend for laughs for a few months. Every friday morning we'd have to be at the depo by 4am to collect the trucks, squeeze into the cabin as we drove down to the start or our route, then the next 5 hours would cover a couple of suburbs. During the route, as a runner, we didn't go back in the cab, we'd either be hurling bundles of recycling into the truck, or seated on the rear step with a firm grip on a rail while the truck hurtled around to the next section of the route.

Halfway through the route, peak hour for the masses would start, and there was weird thrill in sitting on the back of a 5 tonne truck, the cold morning air whipping by and the ground just barely out of reach, while everyone else was bleary eyed and preparing to face traffic.

Oddly, I had an office job in those days as well, and the recycling gig was just for fun. So when the shift was done, I had to shuffle into the office to finish my friday and make up the lost hours.

Still miss those mornings though.

Trash and Treasure continued

Ok, so continuing with my attempts to sell stuff since last weekend, I have now had 5 people contact me making enquiries, and this includes the fellow who bought the lenses from me last weekend.

In every case, none of them volunteered their name. In all of their communications, whether by phone or SMS, they all defaulted to being anonymous. What is with that? Can anyone explain to me the culture today? I only got the name of the guy who bought the lenses when I outright asked him what his name was.

It isn't like I want proof of ID, I just think the fundamentals of etiquette are getting lost. They also aren't using 'please' or 'thank you' any more either. That all just seems weird to me.

... and makes me less inclined to entertain discounts as well.

Trash and treasure

Been clearing out some old junk from the spare room, last weekend. Came across a small pile of camera lenses that I'd accumulated when we'd gotten our DSLR. Back then I had visions of utilising a small arsenal of lenses for different settings to achieve perfect pictures. But well... that didn't happen. I'm just not motivated enough to lug all that equipment around these days.

So decided that rather than throw the unused lenses in the bin, I'd try my luck on Gumtree. Within an hour of listing, all 3 sold. Had me a little astonished, so I'm trying to sell some old exercise gear, but that has been online now for 4 days and no buyers.

Just goes to show that some of my junk is still junk.

Selling for a reason

Owning a supermarket is fairly good business. Sure, there are factors to consider to ensure that the store is accessible and is not in a location where competition is excessive, or the population density very low. But people need to eat, and the vast majority can't eat out every day, so they'll be visiting a supermarket reasonably often.

An ex work colleague now runs one, and he tells me that it isn't all easy money. Between shoplifting, outright break-ins, managing a moderate sized staff of low-skilled labour, the extended trading hours, 7 day trading, and not always being closed on public holidays, means you end up being faced with some potentially costly challenges. At the end of the day though, you can find it to be a good revenue stream if you have the commitment and mental resilience.

Oddly though, not every supermarket is guaranteed, and this became obvious to me today when I was wandering through the one near my work. It used to be a Coles outlet, but certain segments of their range constantly had items which were being discounted because they weren't turning over fast enough. Eventually Coles had enough and about 2 months ago, sold off that outlet and it was picked up by IGA. The IGA is now struggling a little as I see their stock changing slightly to try and work out what the local demographic wants. Bakery and dairy seem to be amongst the toughest segments, and I'm curious as to whether the new owner is now regretting their purchase.

Seeing as I'm grumpy enough with a 9-6 desk job in airconditioning, I'd be more unbearable if I had to deal with that aggravation. So no self-employment for me...

Value of an education

On the train home yesterday, there were three girls seated a few rows in front discussing the futures and dreams. I didn't go out of my way to eavesdrop, but they made it easy to overhear as they all seemed rather enthusiastic.

Listening to the conversation, it seemed the girls were still getting to know one another, but their acquaintance was due to them all attending the same dance college in the city area. So their discussion was about their backgrounds and dreams. None of them had finished high school and thus the only thing approaching tertiary training was going to be their dance training.

They each expressed an earnest passion to travel the world, working as a dancer as they enjoyed all the excitement of moving from country to country. Sounds nice, until you realise that although it isn't impossible, it unfortunately is more likely to end in tears.

You could blame movies, as many movies revolve around people chasing and achieving dreams that we all share. But perhaps it is because they also haven't had a wiser person around to guide and mentor them.

There's nothing wrong with pursuing a passion, but one needs to be intelligent in recognising levels of risk and being able to have a fallback, or being able to recognise when you may have to let the dream go.

I've had dreams of running my own business, and even got quite serious at one stage about running my own go-kart track business. To the point of beginning TAFE business training courses, and completing a draft of the business proposal and revenue projections to submit to the bank for funding.

In the end though, I weighed up risks and realised that there wasn't room in the market for it to succeed. People love the stories of underdogs that beat the odds and become success stories, but what they gloss over and ignore is the fact that countless more fail than the ones that succeed, and its often not due to a lack of effort. And in some cases, someone who succeeds will do so at the expense of another.

Basically, it isn't all as golden as the movies would make it out to be, and not everyone can win.

You need a back up plan, and these girls with the dreams of being a dancer and seeing the world did not have one. If you read the interviews with successful Hollywood actors, many of them share the same story of beginnings which involve living from hand-to-mouth, while going to every audition to try to make it.

So if only a few make it, imagine how many didn't. And if they don't have another career to turn to, what happens then?

My point? If you have a friend or family member who has an exciting dream, but one with risk or a limited lifespan (e.g. you can only be a professional soccer player while your body holds out), then be the voice of wisdom in their life. Don't extinguish their dream, but help them to at least think about a plan B, in the event that plan A doesn't happen.

Late bloomer

I've been a software engineer for 16 years now (well, just a glorified code monkey) and have now only just crossed a milestone:

I have finally actually used inheritance in some code I've written.

I've known what it is for many years, and I'd seen examples of it, but never actually ever created anything with it. I might have finally graduated from n00b. Go me!

Don't like...

In any corporation, one of the biggest outgoings is salary. If you talk to any corporate accountant or payroll master, and they'll tell you that alot of money goes towards people's salaries. Hence companies want to know what employees do, and hence timesheets feature quite commonly in the private sector of the corporate world.

I shouldn't really complain, because in many regards I have it easy. To hear a full rant, talk to any lawyer, clerk or accountant employed by a firm. They have to account for their time in as small as 5min increments, as it all gets billed to customers.

The reason for this, is that the clients who pay the money to a company for a service, often want an invoice so they can see where that money is going, and to give them a chance to see whether the costs are reasonable. You can understand it when you go shopping at the supermarket or take your car to the mechanic, as when you see a bill for a few hundred, then obviously you want to have a chance to make sure that no 'extras' are being slipped into that total.

So my company does the same. At the end of each day, I need to fill out a sheet detailing the time I spent on different tasks and different projects. My "cost" to the company is then recorded against each project so they can determine how much that project cost in the end.

Now where my gripes for this post come from, are that my role is odd. I'm like the courier that provides supplies to the office. I'm a necessary part that supports a number of teams on different projects to extend test automation, but I don't do any automation or test itself. So sometimes the work I do, supports several projects, and other times it is for stuff that isn't in the pipeline yet. Now from a project costing point of view, I'm an undesirable component, hence many projects that are tight on funds end up telling me to not bill to them. Way too many times, my timesheets get rejected by managers who don't want my costs on their project, even though my work that day may have benefited their team.

So I don't have to provide the fine resolution reporting that some people have to endure, but I do get the run-around alot when it comes to just filling that thing in.

Its the neighbourhood

I have a short route I like to walk when I need to get away from my desk. About 3 times a week, I'll just need to get away, and go for a 15min stroll for some fresh air and exercise.

On my stroll, the first 500metres will pass 5 law firms and one private investigator office. One deals with property actions, such as settlement and conveyancing, the second deals with corporate law for business. The remaining 3 law firms specialise in what they call "family law", which encompasses all those relationship breakdown items such as alimony, divorce, divorce settlements, contesting wills, custody, pre-nuptial agreements, and the like.

5 law firms seems like alot, and 3 out of 5 on family law also seems a little disproportionate. Part of me wonders if its to do with the 3 brothels that are also within a 400 metre radius of where I work.

More than a generation gap

One side of my family has chinese heritage. My wife's family has chinese heritage. There is a fair amount of immigration from various asian regions of people who have chinese heritage, and along with that comes people who have grown up with certain cultural norms.

Norms that I don't understand and really dislike.

Now this isn't a racist rant. It's a post about the "aunties" that come with this demographic. The aunties are the older ladies of chinese background, who are around my parent's background and fall into the age bracket where people are either close to, or already have, retired.

For some reason, these aunties feel they can take certain social liberties, particularly with the younger generation, when it comes to the things they do and the things they say. Some of these include:

• "Have you put on weight?" (Ummm... no, you haven't seen me in 3 years, and I'm actually the same weight as before)
• To get your attention, they pull your sleeve urgently, even though you're in the middle of a conversation with someone else. Or worse, they pinch your arm, or poke you firmly in the shoulder.
• They walk up to pregnant women and without asking, greet them by placing both their hands on the woman's pregnancy bump.

If I returned the favour in any of these ways, I'd be considered rude. So can anyone tell me how this works? Because the next aunty who asks me if I'm getting fat, even though they weigh more than me, is going to get the same question right back.

I'll pass thanks.

I like the occassional soda, and with Burger King doing their $1 frozen Coke, it makes it hard to resist on a scorching summers day.

But the Australian government has been pushing pretty hard with their adverts seeking to educate people against the hidden dangers of continual junk food indulgence. This one, which was in a recent saturday paper made me start thinking I'll have to look at skipping the frozen cokes now too.

They suddenly don't seem to taste as nice, now that I've seen this.