CHANGING PHONES

Bought a new phone 2 Sundays ago to replace my aging and dilapidated Sony Ericsson P900. I didn’t purchase a new phone out of mere fancy but rather, I did so out of no choice. With scratches here and there, chipped edges, and crack keypads, using my P9 has increasingly become difficult even tortuous at times. And so with a heavy heart, I had to forego my old phone, my favorite phone. I love my P9 because it is the only phone that I actually “bought” for myself. Don’t get me wrong but I had phones before my P9 but I didn’t actually “choose” those phones. Rather, I rely on my brother’s or my sister’s recommendations on purchasing a new phone. You see I’m not what they call a “gadget enthusiast” and frankly to me, a phone is a phone is a phone. As long as it could make a call and send a text message, it’s a “good phone” for me regardless of the model. All that changed when I bought my P9. I like my P9 because of its metallic casing and the fact that they advertise it as a PDA phone for the executive and I’m a sucker for such (It turns out that the P9 is the cell phone of choice among DLSU MBA). Anyway, one of the most important reason I liked my P9 is that my P9 has a “Jotter” function, which is actually a notepad for me to write anything I want and that is important to me since I had a habit of scribbling down my thoughts whenever it popped up (I have a notoriously poor memory). Way back in high school, I came across with “famous quotes”, those “sacred” words of advice that came out of the mouth of the “sages”. I immediately fell in love with it and I began to earnestly find and collect these quotes. By the time I’m in college, I was not only collecting quotes but am also writing a few of my own (which I term “my thoughts”). Back then, I always carry a pocket size notebook that fits my shirt pocket to write on (a bit of ancient history; back then, there was no handheld device to use to write down my thoughts, cell phone were just in the drawing board and I’m the only one in class who carries a pager, “Easycall”). After college and for sometime in business school, I stopped writing down “my thoughts”. It is not because I ran out of ideas but because I don’t have anything to write on. I got tired of “carrying” a notebook (in fact, I never did bring anything to business school except for a ballpen). And it is under this situation that I got my P9 and it is why I loved it. For 4 years, my P9 was my companion in solitude, my confidante in silence. And now, when I am changing my phone and transferring my P9’s content that I realized how much my old phone has kept much my thoughts over the past 4 years. These thoughts are very personal to me. They are the very crystallization of my thought process and I’m sharing it to those who want to listen.
05/03/04: Life doesn’t wait for anyone. Take charge and siege the day.

05/05/04: Life today is not an abrupt jump from yesterday but the summation of the gradual accumulation of evolutionary changes that happen in the past.
Elaboration: Events or things don’t happen out of the blue or suddenly or dramatically. Instead the seed is sown way, way before in the past and builds over the years until it becomes “noticeable” to the extent that it is abrupt, sudden, and dramatic. If you want to be a step ahead, notice the little things along the way and be prepared for it for these small incremental changes would become a major event in the future.

05/08/04: The 4 models of “perfect man”
1. Confucius’ “Sage – King/Gentleman”, a morally upright but aggressive man.
2. Plato’s “Philosopher – King”, a logically thinking political/military leader.
3. Machiavelli’s “Prince”, a legally upright but ruthless leader.
4. Nietzche’s “Superman/Caesar with a Christ’s heart”, a compassionate but ruthless and aggressive man.
The underlying theme is balancing compassion with aggressiveness or to be an upright aggressor.
Elaboration: Different philosophers in both east and west have different conception of what is a superior man but strikingly, all of them tend to advocate a man who is aggressive but is within the bounds of human compassion. In short, aggression isn’t really wrong as long as it within a certain bound.

05/08/04: Everybody loves a hero, even the rich but especially, the poor and the weak.
Elaboration: Actually, I was I think reading about American history then in Wikipedia and I was reading about President Andrew Jackson, a populist in his time and I was comparing that to the electoral situation in 2004 wherein candidates are turning to populism to win elections and that middle and upper class rhetoric are riling strongly against “dumb” populist candidates who are perceived to be incompetent and incapable but what little they know that election is not about choosing capable leader but rather it is about choosing a “hero”. The Americans are very good in choosing heroes for presidents as in the case of Andrew Jackson.

05/10/04: The problem with Filipinos is that they justify poverty by saying that we could not bring our wealth to heaven once we’re dead. Because of that, they forego work in favor of other people’s charity. It’s a stupid excuse for indolence and lack of ambition or goal in life. I do not for all intension want to bring my money to my grave but to use it to enjoy life and best of all, bequeath it to my children.
Elaboration: I am sick and tired of hearing the popular Filipino phrase, “if you are dead, you won’t be able to bring your money to heaven.” At first, I thought this is some self content ideology being preached by the church to the believers to calm down their “greed”. In short, it is a religious thingy. But the more I hear that phrase coming from “poor” Filipinos, the more I realize that Filipinos are using that as a justification of remaining in poverty. They seem to say, it’s ok to be poor since I won’t bring my money to heaven after I die and everybody dies, therefore what is the point of earning money?

05/11/04: Love is all hype and overrated. When you’re with someone you love, 80% of the time you’re miserable while 20% of the time, you’re happy. But somehow the relative short period of happiness outweighs the miserable 80% and made it more tolerable and even worthwhile.
Elaboration: Funny thing about Love is that although it hurts a lot, we continue to ask for more and I think this is the reason.

05/15/04: On the 2004 elections, the aristocratic elite and the “masaphobic” middle class relentlessly criticize the illiterate and ignorant “masa” for supporting an “uneducated” and “unqualified” candidate. As the election outcome shows, the so called “masa” are not blindly stupid. They elect persons who are perceived to be their “hero” or champion. Persons they perceived to protect their interest rather than those who have the capabilities or leadership qualities. Come to think of it. It’s a wise and logical choice.
Elaboration: This is what election is all about. It is not electing a capable leader but rather electing a person that one perceived to be “in the same interest as ours” and therefore would without hesitation protect our rights. This is the original concept of democracy and elections and not in choosing a capable leader because if we were interested in capabilities then we don’t have to go through an expensive election to find out who is the more capable one. We could simply have a national examination open to all or an IQ test or a quiz bee contest to find out who is the more capable one and we could be sure about the result, I mean numbers (test results) don’t lie. If that is the case, I’m sure I could be president someday.

05/15/04: The new model of a perfect man in the 21st century is The Perfect Competitor or The Competitive Man.
Elaboration: This is my proposal for what is a superior man, The Perfect Competitor, a man who aims to win in competitions of any form but observes the rules of competition.

05/27/04: Conflicts happens whatever one do. It can’t simply be avoided nor prevented from happening. Instead, conflicts could be managed to minimize the negative impact and to gain the benefits of it. Therefore, a conflict management system should be in place to manage conflict. Failure to manage conflicts would lead to emotional distress and loss of control initiative.
Elaboration: When I was a lot younger, I tried to avoid conflicts. In fact, I abhor them. But as I grew older, I realize that conflicts cannot be avoided or eliminated. It just happened and it is as natural as breathing. And I came to understand that the best way to face conflict is to manage it.

06/03/04: Little people read the news. Great men make them.

06/04/04: Due to advancement in communications and transportation technologies, executives’ span and reach of control has greatly expanded. As such it is possible for governments to remove all together the middle level of local government, e.g., towns, municipality, and even provincial government without hampering government’s efficiency. In this way, the government can undermine the power of the local elites and prevent centrifugal tendencies.
Elaboration: Again, I was reading about history and the growing complexity of governance with the development of multiple layers of local government i.e., village, towns, city, province, and region etc. Governments of the old had to rely on the local elite in order to be able to enforce their effective rule. It is ironic that governments had to decentralize in order to achieve centralization. All that would change in the advent of newer communication technologies. Centralization could be achieved without compromising local interest. Anyway, this not only applies to governments but also to all form of organization including business organizations.

06/07/04: Cosmetics and beauty is very important to women as sex is to men.
Elaboration: I really can’t fathom why women would go agog over cosmetics except for this comparison.

06/12/04: Frameworks, especially theoretical business frameworks are a guide to logical deduction of a situation leading to its logical conclusion. However, this is by no means should be a stifle to creativity and a chain to creative thinking.
Elaboration: As a graduate of business school, I am trained to use frameworks to analyze and ultimately arrive at a decision but sometimes I felt stifled, for I am constrained to think a certain pattern. In short, I’m no longer thinking “out of the box”.

06/15/04: Life is like a conveyor. It brings you there when you least expected regardless if you are ready or not. Regardless if you wanted to or not, you have no choice but to face it. Whether you have a plan or not, you have face it, react to it even without finesse. However, we still have a choice on which conveyor we want to be in.
Elaboration: There are things in life that you don’t have a choice or that the only choice you have is yes or no and not whatever but there are things in life that we could choose specifically, the path we would want to go and as in the poem, “The Road Less Travelled”, that makes all the differences.

06/25/04: Emotions like anger are neither positive nor negative. Emotions are what make us human. The only problem with emotions is how we handle them or react to them. Emotions can cause us to behave irrationally, lose our focus and objectivity, and blinding us form thinking logically. Then again, emotions expertly handled can be a powerful motivator and a potent force for change. History could be said to be a story of a lot of angry people, angry of the status quo, of injustice. This causes revolutions that finally change the course of history.
Elaboration: The funny thing about reading history is that emotions had never quite figure in the development of events in history (at least that is how history is being narrated). Ironic because history is about the story of human beings and human beings are creatures of emotions. Furthermore, there are many of those who think that emotions are a liability to us humans (I was one of them before). I mean you get emotional, you do crazy stuffs that one would regret in the future. But thinking again, emotions are not bad. It is what makes us human without which we would just be some organic 386 computers attached to a loudspeaker. It is emotions that drive us, that make life “spicy” and colorful.

06/27/04: History repeats itself. It has repeated itself. It is repeating itself as we speak and it will keep repeating itself again and again if we don’t heed the lessons of history and remain vigilant about it.
Elaboration: A historian has the ability to see events or progressions of events beyond one’s lifetime. He could compress thousands of years of history into one gigantic panoramic view. And what is particularly distressing to a historian is that that picture is familiar to him because it is happening now. Not everybody is a historian and most people have a very short memory. As humans, we have the same need, the same want, and ran amok by the same emotion. And when we are faced by the same challenges, our choices for a solution is indeed very limited given the same need, want and emotion. As we such, we keep on making the same choices over the same problems and this in turn produces events that warrant us to make the same choice over again and again. That is how history repeats itself. The only way, we could “break” this cycle is to learn from the lessons of the past.

06/27/04: Life is all about inches. Crawling forward inch by inch and fighting every inch of it. – Al Pacino in “Any Given Sunday”.
Elaboration: “Any Given Sunday” is a football movie starring Al Pacino. The quote is an analogy of life and the game of football.

06/28/04: Westerners and many other people who believes in Christianity or the likes always personify evil as in good and evil are two entities battling each other for dominance. The objective of one is the total annihilation of the other. In this kind of thinking, a person could actually be 100% good. What is puzzling here is that the other cannot exist without its opposite after its destruction. How can we know to savor “goodness” when we can no longer abhor evil? How could we value life if there is no death? Good and evil exist as one in everybody and not separate. It is a result of choice. Hence, evil cannot be destroyed but avoided or suppress. If evil were to be “vanquished”, the lesser good will become the next evil.
Elaboration: The underpinning of this thought is the ancient Chinese philosophy of Ying and Yang, the concept duality of nature wherein one contradicts the other and also needs the other to exist. It is futile to totally remove the other from existence, instead, it is worthwhile to accept its existence and make a choice.

06/28/04: Faith is the individual belief of the human spirituality while religion is the organize worship of such faith manipulated by a malevolent genius.
Elaboration: Religion is an organization complete with a hierarchy and a doctrine. Faith is simply believing.

06/28/04: We humans live in a culture of death. We define our existence based on our impending doom. It is funny that people lived to prepare for their inevitable death.
Elaboration: Some people are obsess with leaving a legacy of their existence and spend a lifetime achieving it while others are into worshipping a supreme deity in order to ensure they have a “nice” afterlife and spend every minute of their existence to attain it but what happened to living the “now”?

07/03/04: Who are we to determine the fate of another person? By firing someone, we take away their financial income, their food, their hope and happiness. However, if we do not exercise the power, we could end up at the disadvantageous end of the deal. It’s killed or be killed. Sad but no choice.
Elaboration: The hardest part of being a manager to me is firing people. It sucks but there is no way around it.

07/16/04: What is the value of infinity? If we could determine the value, then we could be gods! To our forefathers, hundred, thousand, millions, billions, and trillions are mind boggling and for all practical purpose then, equal to infinity. To us, those figures mean nothing. We aren’t going to be mind boggled at all. Infinity is a limit and a barrier. Putting a value to it meant that we have overcome a limit.
Elaboration: Infinity is a concept. It signifies that things are unreachable, things that are unfathomable. If we could mentally convince ourselves that it is reachable, is everything else impossible?

08/01/04: Don’t be afraid about the end of a chapter, there is always a next chapter. Don’t be afraid about the end of a story. There will always be a new story. Don’t be afraid about things coming to an end, there is still tomorrow. The sun still comes out tomorrow. There is still life tomorrow. There is still hope.
Elaboration: Sometimes we have a hard time facing the end be it in a relationship, a career, a project, or even a book. To the extent, we can’t see what is beyond the end and that we get afraid of the coming end and we tried to delay it but we had to realize that things do comes to an end and that there is life after “the end”. Just move on.

08/27/04: We can’t win everything nor we have to in order to be victorious. We just need to win the more important ones. We can’t have everything but we don’t need everything to be happy. We just had to have the most important things in life.
Elaboration: Sometimes we do things just for the sake of doing it without realizing that we don’t have to do everything to make us happy.

08/27/04: Money isn’t everything but it buys ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE. That’s good enough for me.
Elaboration: The quote, “Money isn’t everything” is a good quote except that when it became an excuse for being “lazy”. Remember, money may not buy you everything but it does buy you the rest of the things that can be bought.

08/29/04: Don’t judge a book by its cover, judge it by its content. However, for a reader who haven’t read or seen the book, it’s the cover that entices them to read the book and judge them later.
Elaboration: In the end, presentations and first impressions do counts regardless what other people say.

08/30/04: The meaning of life:
1. Life ends and continues.
2. Life is everything that happens between birth and death.
3. Life is the one possibility to have a million more possibilities.
4. Life could be a meaningless 4 letter word or a vivid and lively 100 discs DVD or an interesting volume of books.
Elaboration: If you lay dying and suddenly a genie pops up from nowhere and wants to give you one last wish, what would be your wish?

09/03/04: I have a lot of teachers that taught me about knowledge and skills but only a handful of them that I consider my mentor that inspire me and taught me about life.
Elaboration: Once in a lifetime, there comes a person that teach you not only knowledge but also wisdom. Cherish it.

09/03/04: Even geniuses need an inspiration and a mentor.
Elaboration: Some people needed a guide to get going in the “right” path while others simply needed someone to point the way.

09/06/04: There is no crueler fate than a man with a broken will and has lost hope.

09/06/04: There are things that changes and there are things that doesn’t change at all. There are things that changes which you can’t do anything at all. There are still things that change which you can choose what it would be let alone choose not to.
Elaboration: Sometimes change happens when we least expected and we have no say at all but there are times when changes are laid before our eyes to choose. Make a choice.

09/17/04: Leaders are individuals who make ordinary people do extraordinary things, Andrew Grove
Elaboration: The classic definition of a leader, the ultimate motivator.

09/17/04: It is extremely important that you show some insensitivity to your past in order to show the proper respect for the future. Robert Goizueta
Elaboration: Sometimes, the past can be a burden especially a glorious past, for this “past” becomes a sort of a formula of success and henceforth, shapes our expectation, which in turn constrict our freedom of action to craft a “creative and effective solution” against future challenges that is totally different from anything in the past.

09/17/04: Indifference kills an organization by making it less susceptible to change and thus unable to adapt to its environment.
Elaboration: The theory of challenge and response of Arnold Toynbee states that civilizations that still exists up to this day and would continue to exist in the future were able to do so because these civilizations had an effective response to the challenges that threaten their survival. Individual indifference in my point of view tends to make us individually “numb” and shrugged off challenges that threatened our collective existence and this would in turn hamper our collective response which would eventually result in our demise.

10/23/04: The only thing that separates me from my glory, my success, my goal, my future is me.
Elaboration: I am my worst enemy.

10/23/04: There are many revolutions in history like the industrial revolution wherein technological breakthroughs comes in droves within a 50 to 70 years span. The developments afterwards are merely innovations. We are now seeing the end of a revolution that of the computing revolution. A new revolution has dawned and that is the genetic revolution. Elfren Cruz.
Elaboration: Well, this is the topic of my professor’s discussion during one Christmas party. He was talking about the world we’re living in from a historian and a businessman’s perspective. We are currently living in an exciting time, a world between two revolutions, the end of one and the beginning of another.

10/26/04: The best thing a friend or a sibling or a parent or a spouse can do to a person he/she loved and cared is to believe in the person even if the person doesn’t believe in himself or herself.

11/03/04: You can outwit a competitor but there will always be competition.
Elaboration: There are times when we so hate our competitor that would do everything to “demolish” our competitor but lest we forget, competition exists and will continue to exist even if you manage to run your competitor aground.

11/08/04: The system of checks and balance is never meant to be a replacement of morality but a reinforcement.
Elaboration: In reading the history of democracy, the reason that political thinkers of the time came up with the idea of checks and balance is not to replace public morality totally but to make sure that all those in power to conform to the establish public morality by having someone “checking” the other. It was never meant to replace public morality of the ruling elite much like in our case right now in the present.

11/16/04: I exist therefore I matter.
Elaboration: Rene Descartes has a famous conclusion from his mental exercise, “I think therefore I exist.” But my question is, “do we only live to exist?” This is not some theory on predestination wherein everybody has a role to play in this world. My thinking here is that, we exists and we should make the most out of it.

11/16/04: You are what you do.
Elaboration: Based on Jean Paul Sarte’s philosophy of Existentialism. Actions define the person.

11/29/04: A true great man doesn’t need fame. People just remember him for what he did.

12/21/04: History is about people correcting the mistakes of the past with blood to set a path for the ideal future. Are we going to make our children correct our faults with blood so as to have a future for themselves?

12/21/04: Mencius once said that the duty of man is “to carry the burden of society till their death”. I disagree. The burden is not till ones death but onto the next generation.

01/07/05: Choice is given by the one who has power to the one who has none –Merovingian, The Matrix Reloaded. Freedom is not the right to choose between the choice given to us instead Freedom is the right to create the choices we are going to choose from.

02/13/05: My view of the Phantom of the Opera. Within the depths of the human soul lurk the horrifying darkness and the seed of man’s eventual downfall. However, within the same core lies the eventual redemption and ultimate salvation of mankind.

07/19/05: Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant. PT Barnum.

01/24/06: Excerpts from I, Robot. “Ghost in a Machine”. Random segments of codes linking to form an unexpected protocol and programs. Why is it for some who are in the dark would remain in the dark while others would stick together? And there are others who would seek the light?
Elaboration: This is an excerpt from I, Robot the movie. Of course, the movie talks about sentient robots but I do wonder about the “sentience” in human setting. Makes me wonder, how come each human being similar be they are to each in terms of a possession of a brain would be so different in terms of individual thinking?

01/24/06: How much we got? The answer is not in the clock. The answer is NOT MUCH and that is why life is precious.

07/10/06: Diversity is the art of thinking independently together. Malcolm Forbes.
Elaboration: This is given to me by Professor Cruz.

07/10/06: Isaac Bashevis on being asked if he believed in freewill or predestination. “We have to believe in Freewill; we got no choice.” Quoted in Fadiman.
Elaboration: Again, from Professor Cruz.

09/04/06: Hardwork is ain’t enough to succeed nowadays. Inventiveness, shrewdness, and risk taking are as important. In the agricultural era, hardwork is the only prerequisite to success for one cannot have a good harvest without it. In the early industrial age, hardwork is also the sole requisite of success since demand is great and the supply little, ones income depended on how much one can produce. However, in the era of hyper competition, it is not enough that you can deliver, you also have to outwit your competition.
Elaboration: When I was younger, my parents would always extol the virtue of hardwork but there comes a point wherein one would realize that no matter how hard a person work, you’re not reaping the kind of reward you’re expecting and this is why.

11/20/06: The faith revolution of the 20th century. There was a time when human life was uncertain and man turned to religion to give them certainty. There was a time as our world grew, those uncertainty vanishes and we question the necessity of religions. It is believed that as our understanding grew further, logic dictates that religion would no longer be necessary. But the opposite happened. As science advances, religion strengthened. For humans no longer turn to religion for certainty, we turn them for answer to the question, why we are here? What is this all about?
Elaboration: It is an observation of mine. How come a person seeped in the knowledge of modern science that tends to question the existence of an all powerful deity would surrender to such a belief of its existence.

01/26/07: The Socialist me. I encountered a beggar yesterday cleaning my windshield as I was waiting for the traffic. His intention might be noble but he is dirtying my windshield and I turned on my wiper in response and it hit his hands. I immediately regretted doing that. Here he is trying to eck out an honest living despite his poverty. He could turn to a life of crime but he didn’t and here I am turning an honest guy down. If circumstances were different, he having a good education and a bright future, he wouldn’t be cleaning my windshield. I should be more tolerant the next time.
Elaboration: Never to put a good man down.

02/20/07: This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the morning that makes waking up worthwhile. WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

02/17/07: We are not the same persons this year as last, nor those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. – Somerset Maugham
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

02/21/07: A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices – William James.
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

03/25/07: Celebrate for a nanosecond then moved on. Michael Dell
Elaboration: Success is fleeting and so should the celebration.

03/25/07: This is only the first step of the marathon. Michael Dell
Elaboration: The story goes that one of Michael Dell’s manager successfully opened a factory in Malaysia and as a consequence, was celebrating his success. Michael Dell sent as a congratulatory gift to the guy, a pair of running shoe and extolled him that this is the first step of the marathon. I actually used this to extol my students in the special class to continue work on their paper and defend it in their OCE, pass OCE and graduate, which some 50% of them eventually did.

04/14/07: Know your limits but never be limited by your limits.

04/22/07: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

05/29/07: If you can’t find the book you wish to read, write it. Prof Cruz

06/12/07: “Why independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be without doubt, because he who loves tyranny submits to it.” Jose Rizal
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

12/14/07: Only those who doesn’t possess power obey the rules set by those who possessed power.
Elaboration: Only the powerful set the rules, the rest just follows.

02/03/08: The world is dynamic. It’s constantly changing. There is no such thing as a status quo. For the moment a status quo is established, somebody is already working to overthrow it. People who are displaced by the new status quo, people who haven’t or never gained anything, people who are threatened by the new status quo and lastly people who wanted to grab more but couldn’t. They are the ones who drive change.
Elaboration: Ever wonder why the world is dynamic and change is the new reality. It is because of this.
There are two lasting bequest we can give to our children – one is roots, the other wings. A toast to all moms!
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice and to make an end is to make a new beginning. – TS Eliot
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

Live your life with so much love in your heart that if by mistake, you were sent to hell, the devil himself would deliver you up to heaven. Paulo Coelho
Elaboration: From Prof Cruz

04/10/08: With money comes culture and taste.
Elaboration: There is no point in maintaining an acquired taste or culture if you have a hungry stomach.

05/11/08: Well behaved women seldom make history, that is according to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Well, I completely agree. It’s the slut and bitches that we remember in history!
Elaboration: “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History” is actually a book written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a book that I came across during one of my visits to the bookstore but never read. Anyway, in most times in history, for women to get what they want in a male dominated society, they either have to wear a man’s pant or they could get into another man’s pant…..

05/15/08: In a free economy, not only people are given a choice but there exists a plethora of choices; a competition of choices. For a choice to win in this competitive environment, it is necessary for it to offer the RIGHT product at the RIGHT price at the RIGHT time at the RIGHT buyer.
Elaboration: In business school, we are trained to look in terms of product offerings, quality, price, service offerings, etc but to a customer, they do not see product offerings or anything. All they see are choices; be it tall or short; green or blue; now or next week. It’s all about choices. And market competition is not about competition of the best product or the best priced but rather it is the competition for the “better” choice.

05/23/08: There is no such thing as public governance. There is only public and personal interest. It is only when public and personal interests are aligned that we’ll have public governance otherwise, we have tyranny.
Elaboration: Just look at the present government.

05/24/08: The true measure of success is not how much profit was made during the good times but rather on the conduct of facing the tough challenges during the worst of times.
Elaboration: Remember evolution and the survival of the fittest? It is always easy to succeed when all the ingredients of success is laid on your feet. To succeed in a challenging environment, now that’s different.

From Robert Guizeta: Opportunity……… Ours to sieze…….Ours to live…… and ours to defend or otherwise, ultimately, ours to lose.

06/23/08: The most resilient businesses aside from food and medicine are cosmetics, porn, and politics.

06/26/08: A lot of people think that the world misunderstood them or can’t understand them at all. They never realized that the world has no obligation to understand them much less the desire to understand them.
Elaboration: Once in a while you came across with people who poured out their problems in PUBLIC, thinking that their problem is the only problem that the world needs to know.

07/15/08: Every disease has a cure or can be cured sooner or later. Stupidity has none.

07/24/08: Though power corrupts, power belongs to those who know how to use them.

07/27/08: It takes love to get married but it takes patience and toleration to stay married.

08/05/08: History doesn’t repeat itself. It’s the fools that keep repeating history!
Elaboration: History is a concept, a frame of observation. It doesn’t have flesh. It cannot think. It cannot react or pro act hence, history never repeats itself. Human beings on the other hand are the actors of history. To blame a mere concept for the repeated failures in history is irresponsible. Human beings, especially the stupid ones; the fools, they are the ones that keep on repeating history again and again and again because they never learn.

08/05/08: It takes a fool to bring down an empire and several geniuses to prop it up.

From my brother:
Money can’t buy you love but love is miserable without money.
Elaboration: Who ever said living in a shanty is romantic?

PostScript. My new phone is the Iphone clone and the twin brother of the Giorgio Armani phone by Samsung, the Samsung SGH F480 and I’m looking forward to write down more thoughts with it.