Business and the beauty of the free market

I've been thinking a lot about what to seriously write/post about the
past few days. I've been wanting to post anything, but I just keep
running into this huge brick wall... mainly because I've had nothing to
draw from for the past couple of weeks... getting sick and stuck at
home does that to you, and you're mind starts to focus on just getting
positive and healthy, leaving out the mundane and irrelevant details,
even passively working, and concentrating more on the depth and
regularity of my breaths. Yep, asthma does that to you... makes you
think about breathing. hehehe.



So anyway. What's the root word of business? ... hmmm... breaking it
down, I think we'd end up with... Busy. As in... busy-ness. Which just
focuses on the whole point of business. Keeping busy, in order to find,
seek and take advantage of opportunities to produce and make a profit.
Simply put, you have to keep scanning the market, moving, sensing
opportunities, and preparing yourself for them. Not only that, you have
to be building contacts and partners, with whom to transact/exchange
information, products, services, goods or money.



Around 3 weeks ago, I was having my sister's car fixed in Alabang,
trying to get everything running in tip-top shape. Of course normally,
you'd have to properly canvas and look around first. Get busy. Do your
business due diligence by looking for the best product/service at the
best price point.



But, because I was swamped with things-to-do. I short-circuited the
process and went straight to just one dealer. Who, on retrospect, got
the best of me, because I did not look at other alternatives. The irony
is, my dad trusts this guy, and yet he abused this and made a killing
on me. I feel really bad because I know I should have looked around
more and studied all my options, but when you're pressed for time, or
enamored with the product, logic and due process are hi-jacked.



I ended up overspending for the repair/maintenance/upgrade. Something I
now look at as my tuition fee, in learning about the beauty of the free
market:



1. Information is the best currency... whoever has it, has the leverage.

2. Best deals go to the ones who keep looking. You
will always find a better value. Its just a matter of whether or not
you're willing to pay for whatever is in front of you right
now.

3. When in doubt, or when the seller refuses to meet
halfway,you always have the choice to take your business elsewhere.
That's the beauty of the system. Kung ayaw, di huwag!

4. Don't take it personally. Everyone acts and
behaves in his or her own best interests. So if you get screwed, it
just means you didn't do your job and look further.



Now, go back to the top and read through the post. Don't you think that
all of it can also relate to our relationships? (romantic and otherwise)

Daughters by John Mayer

I know a girl

She puts the color inside of my world

But she's just like a maze

Where all of the walls all continually change

And I've done all I can

To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands

Now I'm starting to see

Maybe it's got nothing to do with me



Fathers, be good to your daughters

Daughters will love like you do

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers

So mothers, be good to your daughters too



Oh, you see that skin?

It's the same she's been standing in

Since the day she saw him walking away

Now she's left

Cleaning up the mess he made



So fathers, be good to your daughters

Daughters will love like you do

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers

So mothers, be good to your daughters too



Boys, you can break

You'll find out how much they can take

Boys will be strong

And boys soldier on

But boys would be gone without the warmth from

A womans good, good heart



On behalf of every man

Looking out for every girl

You are the god and the weight of her world



So fathers, be good to your daughters

Daughters will love like you do

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers

So mothers, be good to your daughters too

Random Shots and NUS, Board Exam update

To break my string of pensive posts...



I just saw Superman the other day...  It was pretty good:



    1. Why is it that men always leave yet hold on; while women get left behind and move on?

    2. The father-son theme got me really mushed up...
especially the  kid's bedroom scene... hehehe...  I'm an
emotional wreck when it comes to these things.

    3. I saw a lot of father-son pairings watch the
movie. I was intent on looking at their reactions... haha I saw a lot
of teary/watery eyes.

    4. Despite the fanfare, Spiderman still outgrossed
Superman in opening weekend receipts. Maybe because of the Independence
day celebrations in the US, or maybe because people want their heroes
to be flawed, not too perfect like superman.

    5. I think Kent/Superman/Brandon Routh is too clean
hehehe... maybe DC comics should come up with a superman that looks
like Wolverine?

    6. I think the kid might have had something to do with the seaplane climbing back.

    7. Kate Bosworth = elegante... but thoroughly blind to not see Kent as Superman



Yesterday we briefed one of the consultants we might be hiring for a
project, and I must say that this architect is Dominique Frankon
personified. She is one dainty, elegant and extremely classy woman...
but then again, thats just on the first encounter. I'm sure there's a
flipside.



On another note...



My application for the NUS scholarship was unsuccesful. Although the school did admit me to the MA Urban Design program,
which is something that I could be happy with. I decided to have my
admission deferred by a year so that I could finish off some of my
remaining career/life gaps. First of which would have to be my boards
(which unfortunately, I can only take June next year, instead of the
earlier January exam... pahirap na board ruling yan!) next, but prior
to the boards would have to be my (3 month) training under RMJM - Hong Kong,
which I hope would finally push through this september, after several
months of waiting and rescheduling because of Dubai's arcane work
regulations.



I figure, it will be better for me to fill in these gaps (and a lot of
other small ones) before I leave for Singapore. Also, I figure, there
may be other things that pop up for me in that period, and I'm praying,
keeping my hopes up, while I keep my head down and focused on the job.

Waiting on the world to change - John Mayer

me and all my friends

we're all misunderstood

they say we stand for nothing and

there's no way we ever could

now we see everything that's going wrong

with the world and those who lead it

we just feel like we don't have the means

to rise above and beat it



so we keep waiting

waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting

waiting on the world to change



it's hard to beat the system

when we're standing at a distance

so we keep waiting

waiting on the world to change

now if we had the power

to bring our neighbors home from war

they would have never missed a Christmas

no more ribbons on their door

and when you trust your television

what you get is what you got

cause when they own the information, oh

they can bend it all they want



that's why we're waiting

waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting

waiting on the world to change



it's not that we don't care,

we just know that the fight ain't fair

so we keep on waiting

waiting on the world to change



and we're still waiting

waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change

one day our generation

is gonna rule the population

so we keep on waiting

waiting on the world to change



we keep on waiting

waiting on the world to change





Sometimes the best place to change things is from the inside.

I'm waiting, but I'm pushing too.

Stuck on the taxiway...

Well as Mick Jagger says...

You can't always get what you want;

But maybe you just might find;

You get what you need.



True indeed.

But everything happens for a reason;

and in the grand scheme of things

I'm sure it all fits together.



It can be very humbling when you

end up making decisions based on

incomplete and flawed assumptions

and great expectations.



Kung ano lang yung tama,

kung ano yung dapat;

at kung ano lang yung nasa plano.

Yun lang din ang mangyayari.

Why I do what I do, and why I love it too...

Thanks to my mom, I was lucky to travel and fly to different countries
at a very early age. Nothing beats the build-up of anticipation
and excitement while waiting at the NAIA departure lounge for boarding.
I would baon a steno notebook, pencils and crayons and draw the planes
I see on the tarmac. Later on I would look them up on the in-flight
magazines and list down the plane's specifics... length, wingspan, max
speed, etc.



During that time, most of my classmates were drawing the Ninja Turtles
or the X-men, or the Dragonball-Z characters, while there I was
drawing tubes with rows of holes along their sides, wings, fins
and clouds. As I got older, my drawings got better, they were pretty
decent, except for the clouds... because I figure I couldn't really
draw a cloud because clouds don't really hold a shape.



I still remember my first plane ride, it was a trip to San Francisco,
and because my mom was an airline employee and we were flying on
standby and were forced to ride on the flight attendant jumpseats. I
still remember the wonder and awe I felt as a kid as the lumbering
747-200 took off. I remember asking my mom about how the plane flew,
and her answer was... "Its designed to fly, anak."



As I got to late grade school, I figured that it would be great to be a
pilot, but I wasn't so sure about being a driver for huge amounts of
people, bringing them to places they've probably never been before, but
driver nonetheless. (No disrespect to pilots) Besides, I dont have
a very good set of eyes, and back then I couldn't swim well (hanggang
ngayon naman). So I decided I wanted to be an Aircraft
Designer/Aeronautical Engineer instead.



With that decision, I was pretty confident, but then I started asking
my elders on how to go about it. What course will I have to apply for
in college? What college? What companies I could work for? That sort of
thing. But as the answers came, it became more apparent that its a dead
end for me, at least locally... the prospects for that field weren't as
promising as I would have wanted.



On the side, the burgeoning nerd in me, started to dabble into
computers, starting with batch files, dos, windows and BASIC. When I
ran into my good friend JM, my learning curve suddenly got accelerated,
with the two of us coding in Pascal, some C, eventually Visual Basic,
and some really shallow Assembly. It was fun, because, I could actually
make the computer do something, it empowered me and showed me that I
could do something that a lot of my peers couldn't. But its the same
empowerment that kinda made me a geek/nerd, albeit a really
unprototypical version of one.



As I hit seventh grade (a waste of time by the way...) my dad (who's a
practicing architect) suggested... "Anak, you're into computers, why
don't you study AutoCAD?" and I did take the idea up. It was all fun for
me, because it was just like programming, I was able to do something
on-screen that not very many people back then could. (Case-in-point,
AutoCAD was still on release 11 back then, now its already dropped the
release numbers, but if you count the versions, its already at release
19).



So that summer, I learned CAD, and immediately after, joined the
office, where I was a saling-pusang draftsman/encoder. I was doing a
set of marketing plans, when my dad came over and asked me if I wanted
to join him on-site to check the building. I said, sure, why not? As we
got down the car and enterred the construction site, which was a
prototypical ballet of debris, noise, cranes and workers; he lead me to
the floor I was drawing on CAD and showed me the walls that I was
encoding.



I came closer and touched the walls. And right then I felt the
creator's high. The rush of adrenalin brought about by knowing that you
had a hand in building and making that thing real. I thought to myself,
if this is how I feel touching a wall that my dad thought of, I wonder
how it would feel if I was already touching something I designed?



Thats the moment. when and where I decided to be an architect.



Not a far cry from a programmer, except that I'm no longer creating
things on the screen, but designing real, tangible, usable structures.



Nor very different from a pilot, making heavy things float and soar up
to the sky, while at the same time bringing people to places they've
never been to.



That's why I do what I do.



I'm at a crossroads, and I hope and pray everything falls into place.



Lord, Your Will Be Done!

You think you know...

but the truth is, you haven't got the faintest idea.