A Fateful Day ... The Smite of the Axe

It was a normal day in the office.  Everyone was on their seats doing everything they can to finish their tasks at hand.  Then suddenly our manager from NJ appeared in the office.  It's as if he teleported from the US to Singapore.

Everyone looked at him as an angel of death wielding a very large AXE.  With all the news on recessions and job cuts and us being a US-based company, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the people thinked that way.  He called for a quick meeting with everyone and there was silence.  It is as if everyone were holding their breath.

Ten of my colleagues lost their job that fateful day.  Half of my team were let go.  But in some bizzare way, it was also a good sign for us.  At least for those in Singapore.

All of the employees who were let go are in our New Jersey office and most of them are under the development group.  Right now, our management have decided to move almost 90% of development to Singapore.  Which means a better, brighter future for us... unless of course the economy worsen more and another wave of retrenchment will go down.

I just hope that the economy will not get worse to the point of larger corporations shutting down.

xxx crossing my fingers xxx

Investment Planning: Going Crazy

I have been literally pouring myself over a number of articles regarding personal investment for the past couple of weeks and have even gone as far as talking to investment agents i.e. Manulife and DBS just to give light to my current dilemma.

Basically, I just want to ensure my future and my family's future.  But all these recession thingy, and all these terminologies; stocks, bonds, equities, insurance policies, unit trust funds ... it's driving me crazy!  Talking to agents didn't even help either because they added more terminologies!  Portfolio management charges, admin charges, dollar cost averaging, risk profiles ... you name it, it's somewhere in my head!  Plus the fact that they are selling and not really "taking care of you".

My plan is actually simple:

+4 yrs: Own a house/new family *wink* *wink*

+5 yrs: Buy a car

+6 yrs: Send my son to a good secondary level school

+7 yrs: Start my own business (masama bang mangarap?!)

+10 yrs: Send my son to a good university

+16 yrs: Est. secondary ng 2nd son/daughter

+20 yrs: Est. tertiary ng 2nd son/daughter

+31 yrs: Retire sa resthouse (teka kelan ginawa yung resthouse?!)

... meron pa ba akong nakalimutan?

So essentially I have short term goals and long term goals.  What do you think?  What would you recommend?

If you can't think of anything for me, then this might help you:

Tiendesitas Kid's Park

We went to the kid's park (forgot the name, I think it's Fun Ranch) right beside Tiendesitas at Ortigas just after a month of my Son's heart operation and just a few days before he went back to Bicol. It was like a small theme park with rides and stalls all targeting kids.

We also enjoyed the Avilon Arc Zoo which has very few animals but just enough to ignite the animal-loving flame inside every child's heart. I especially liked the fact that you can interact with most of the animals there.

Aside from a small arcade area, there was also this huge play area with walls and floors made from inflated plastic/rubber. It was perfect for my son as he was still recovering from his operation.

All in all my son enjoyed his stay here and intend to bring him back if I will have the chance.

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A Likely Very Good iPhone Alternative

I have been thinking of buying HTC Touch HD next to buying an iPhone.  Being fond of Windows Mobile phones for several years now and either way my Windows Mobile powered Palm Treo 750v is nearing its end-of-life, HTC Touch HD seems to be a good choice for my needs.  Until I saw the demo of the upcoming Palm Pre.

I had a good experience with Palm especially the support and updates that it gave for my Palm Treo 750v.  I have also been very dependent on this PDA phone.  In fact, I find days wherein I am at a lost when I don't have my phone readily at hand especially when I was working as a Project Manager for my previous company.

Palm Pre is an upcoming mobile phone from Palm using a new OS, the webOS.  What's good about this phone is that it seems the company had put in great effort to study what is currently actually useful phone hardware and software features on other phones out there and cram it into this phone.  Undeniably, it has functions very similar iPhone like flick navigation, good integration with the internet, mutlitouch, and a big screen just like any other phones aiming to de-throne the iPhone.  As a plus, it has a sliding qwertyu keyboard which is something that I missed with the new phones today that are all screen like iPhone and Touch HD.  And another plus is the gesture portion of the phone sitting with the home button at the bottom.

From the demo, the webOS looks pretty solid and the phones response time is great!  I just hope that this phone will also have a seamless media synchronization much like the iPhone with iTunes as I also like to listen to music and watch videos in my phone.

If everything goes smooth with this phone's release in the US under Sprint, I am going to buy this phone.  So goodbye HTC Touch HD and goodbye windows mobile hehehe!  But first I need to save money for this.  Looks like this will be a pricey one but hopefully worth it.

[Preview Videos]

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