Tag Archives: Economy

Memories

I found some photo’s yesterday or so, photo’s of The Kranz, a Bed & Breakfast I visited long time ago. And I think I wrote about it earlier, but I’m not sure if it was in this site or in my Dutch blog. And the main photo is this one:

The Kranz terrace view. .

As somehow that is the view that lead me to The Malasag House. But while thinking, I have always liked ‘ends of the world’ and ‘highest points’, and while writing I guess many people do, although I think I have it a bit more than average.

And I still want The Malasag House to be a bit the same, full of guests, full of people, enjoying the beautiful view, the beautiful venue, meeting people or us, or not. But until now I didn’t really succeed and I still don’t know why. Or yes, I do, but I don’t know how to fix it, as it has to do with my relationship. And the weird thing is my partner is the one who is sociable, apparently caring for people. And he loves gardening and keeping the house in order, making the house nice, for guests. But somehow he doesn’t want paying guests, want people to pay, meaning we don’t have enough money, not even to maintain the place. And yes, of course I would also like, love to invite people for free, give them everything they want, everything they need, as we did before, when we still had money. But as of the moment we can’t, so why not find another way, why not just ask for some contribution? I’m quite sure people would be willing to help, willing to help to let The Malasag House shine. But somehow my partner doesn’t want to, is too embarrassed or something. And of course I need to honor that feeling, but in my feeling everybody loses, as now we can’t share the house, share a nice, beautifully maintained resort type house. A house worth sharing, a house worth keeping, a house worth maintaining. And I still didn’t find a way to deal with this except ‘work, work, work’, meaning everybody, including my partner, say and think, complain ‘he is always working’, which is true.

So this brought me back to my previous partner, the partner I was with when visiting The Kranz. And he always also experience me working. And complained about it. And yes, I also experience I’m kind of a workaholic. But I don’t know any other way to pay the bills. Except for something like indeed sharing the house in a paid Bed & Breakfast type of way. Or winning the lottery or something.

And I don’t know how other people do this, how they pay the bills. As until now I didn’t find another way.

And yes, I’m complaining again. But wouldn’t you if you couldn’t travel anymore, didn’t have a car anymore, couldn’t maintain the dogs, couldn’t have fun with your partner going out, especially if that were things that brought you together, kept you together in the beginning?

Well, wanted to share some other photo’s with a nicer story, like me with a Cheetah. And while starting this sentence I didn’t feel like it, but while writing I’ll just put that photo here, below.

Cheetah on lap. .

And that photo was taken on the same holiday, at the Tshukudu Game Lodge, I think the best place I ever visited on a holiday, and yes, also one of the most expensive, but it was worth it, more than. And I still remember the morning walk with lions and an elephant. And the cheetah on my lap as you can see on the photo. Very impressive and kind of scary, because I remember touching the tail of one of the lions that was with us, and it was a lion’s tail, certainly not a cat’s tail, a pet’s tail. And the cheetah was a young cheetah, and it scratched me, no not bad, but again, a predator’s touch, not the scratch of a cat or a dog.

And yes, I miss that life, I miss the life where we could basically do what we wanted, having enough money to travel, maintain the house and garden, go out, visit friends, invite friends. And I don’t know where it went or why it didn’t come back yet. As I know much more now, have much more life experience, know more how to get things and stuff. But somehow it didn’t happen yet, somehow I can’t find the inspiration, can’t find the inner strength to get there, again, and this time better, this time for real.

But yes, the last was and is what this site is all about, finding success, finding inspiration to success, inspiration for success. And persistent I am, but something is missing. And I still don’t know what. But I’ll get there, I have to find out, I have to be who I really am, I have to be who I really can be.

What about you?

Love what you do

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Just read this quote:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

And I love what I do, but somehow something is missing and somehow there is too much what I don’t like to do. And while thinking I loved more to be the manager of Active Discovery Designs instead of being the whole of Active Discovery Designs what i am now. As today most of my day was spent on doing all kinds of errands in the city, like doing bank transactions and paying bills. And yes, I kind of like that also, but it meant I arrived home at the end of the afternoon and started working something like 5pm.

Mitsubishi Pajero And looking back I see many of my mistakes, but I also don’t know how I could have done it differently. And that is still what is bothering me, what is keeping me busy thinking: how can I make it work, how can I rebuild Active Discovery Designs in a way that would work. And the image of Active Discovery Designs in my mind is quite clear. I see the building and I see 200 people working there. And I see myself in a black Pajero going there, something like being the CEO, something like managing the whole thing, giving it direction.

But no, I don’t see the management team and the employees. As it seems they are not there, they are not in Cagayan de Oro City, not in The Philippines. So how will I get them here?

Mamma Mia!

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Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia! Strange, everything starts with a thought. Or not, as in this case it was a CD that we played in the car of a friend that we used last week to go for a day trip to Iligan. So my thought came from something I heard, from something someone else had. So the CD was a soundtrack of the movie Mamma Mia!, or as far as I remember not the real soundtrack, but at least the songs from the movie. And this made me also play the songs from this movie on my computer as I downloaded it quite some time ago. And next to this I also decided to download the movie as I really like it and like to see it in high quality. So yesterday or so the download was finished, so tonight I decided to watch the movie. And right from the start it caused a lot of memories and emotions boil up. The first thing I noticed was that the music was of high quality, the ‘5.1 thing’ or something. So I decided to move the back speakers on the couch as I wanted to enjoy the full experience of the music, of the technical quality of the music. And the quality of the movie on the screen and the quality of the music made me realize that over the last decades somehow technology has progressed a lot. And that it is kind of a miracle that I can watch a movie on a TV with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels in high quality sound with six speakers, six music channels. And I downloaded this movie for free over the internet, it is stored on the hard disk of a server somewhere in our office and it is streamed over the network in our house to the TV. And also the music I played earlier this week and that I am playing right now is stored on the hard disk of a computer and I think I also downloaded for free.

Memories

And this music means a lot to me, as my ex-partner was an ABBA fan and seeing this movie brings back a lot of memories from the trips we made together, especially to Berlin, when we played CD’s on the way in the car. And I remember those days as a very good time, as the time I enjoyed life the most, which was probably true when we first met, the first few years, the years that seem to bring back all those good memories. And the movie kind has the same subject, where Donna kind of goes back to ‘the good time’, which of course was also not really a good time, in perspective. And I did like ABBA before as before I met Nico I also owned LP’s from them. And so many emotions came up watching this movie and even right now, as I’m still crying. One thing that came up, next to the holiday memories, was that Nico once said that most of the songs of ABBA are about lost love, about love that is over. And I never realized that before he said that, and after being confronted with that I was never able to listen to the music I did before. And the song mostly related to that is Our Last Summer, which at that time was just one of my favorite songs, somehow even ‘our’ ABBA song, the ABBA song I related to our relationship. And it is still one of my favorite songs, especially the version from the ABBA Teens and now also the version from Mamma Mia!. And somehow it is still related to my previous relationship in a positive way, as we were supposed to grow old together. But we didn’t, still weird.

Musical

Wow, and so many things in my head now. I just want to keep on writing, tell my story, tell everything that is in my head right now. Like that I really admire how someone was able to use those ABBA songs to make a musical out of it, where those songs fit so perfectly that you would almost believe they were written for it. But of course it must be the other way around and what amazes me most is that many songs are being used in a way different from their original meaning, their original context. And I always thought the musical was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson but today I saw in the trailer that it was written by Catherine Johnson,

Growing (old?)

ABBA And it’s so weird to hear all those songs now, that were part of my growing up, my years as a teenager and a student, and later in the years of my first relationship. And weird that that is now so long ago and that things like ABBA mostly are only there for a relatively short number of years, where it was a big thing. And looking back a big thing for me as a teenager, as a student, where now I guess most younger people wouldn’t really know what ABBA is or was. And realizing now that the generation before me had other artists, other music they grew up with. Or not only music, but also other things. And that scares me sometimes, that I just prefer to use Windows XP on a standard computer with a 4:3 screen and don’t like to use a tablet or a mobile phone as a computer or to access things on the internet. And that goes even further, as I don’t like the recent structures for websites as these structures are more focused on mobile use with a relatively small touch screen and less for a computer with a mouse with a normal screen. So yes, somehow I’m starting to feel old, that there are things I’m just used to and comfortable with, where the younger generation seems to prefer other things. And no, not old in the sense of outdated or something or not willing to adapt to newer technology or something. Just old in the sense of being used to certain things and preferring not to change as the stuff I grew up with just suits me well and the newer stuff just does not suit me so well. But somehow weird, realizing to be of middle age and that there is a generation after me, that there are generations after me. And at the same time realizing that there were generations before me.

Amazing

And I know I am often complaining about things not working, especially recently my internet. But being an engineer and knowing a bit about statistics it is amazing where we have arrived as humanity, e.g. being able to produce a TV with 1920×1080 pixels where all those more than 2 million(!) pixels, screen areas are just working, for years, without ever one of them failing. And that’s only part of the story, because that same TV has quite some chips and cables and whatever is needed to produce an image on the screen and to produce sound we can hear, in the case of the movie I was watching tonight even six channel music. And a lot of software, developed by many, many people over many, many years.

And the strange thing of our time is that especially the digital stuff is practically for free, as it can easily be copied, not only from computer to computer, but also over the internet. And copying is already as old as I am, as when I was a teenager I copied music from the radio or borrowed LP’s or CD’s to cassette tapes. And computer programs from floppy disk to floppy disk. Or later from CD to CD. And right now from DVD to DVD.

And another strange thing is that many products are also very cheap, like you can’t imagine how anyone can earn from it (anymore). Which I guess is also true, as we produce very many things with machines and in places were labor is cheap.

Distribution

And related to that I was, and the last year(s) often am, thinking how all these things can be produced while at the same moment paying the people who make or do all those things a decent salary. And this is a subject I wrote about more and will write about more. As being a software developer I am also confronted with cheap labor as software can be developed anywhere in the world now, even though the same thing has been going on for decades or maybe even hundreds of years: growing international competition. And having grown up in an industrialized, Western country I was on the good side of all this. But now living in a so called developing country I also see the other side of ‘Western efficiency’. And looking at the world as a whole, at the world economy, I start to believe more and more that we need some kind of different model to distribute the wealth, to distribute everything that is available in the world, either being products, digital stuff or services. Although the last appears to be the easiest, although with my experience with large companies delivering service type products the efficiency model doesn’t seem to work so well.

And looking at my download of the movie Mamma Mia! or other movies, do I feel guilty? No, not really, especially as I guess it may be very hard to buy that movie locally in the same quality, although that is something worth checking. And in the end I guess I even prefer movies in digital format as they don’t take up space but just reside somewhere on a (very small) hard disk.

But yes, somehow this creates, must create a problem for the movie industry. And my main worry is that if the movie industry can’t earn enough, there won’t be new movies of high quality anymore. But somehow famous actors seem to be still very rich and also movie studios seem to do well.

But somehow I believe we need some other model, as the giving side as the receiving side both seem to suffer. No, maybe not on the highest level with the most famous, large companies. But on the middle and lower levels.

Let’s find a way!

So let’s find a way, as we are close to a time humanity has always striven for: having goods and services without having to work for it. And technically we can, so why not organize it in a way everybody can benefit from it?

Tourism and Philippine business culture

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Today I had a very nice day out to the Tinago Falls in Iligan. And on the way we stopped in the nature park in Initao, a (very small) piece of tropical rain forest on the coast where we used to go for swimming. And it turned out they had built a very interesting and impressive canopy walk in that nature park. But, as I have heard more often than I like, it was “temporary out of service”. And fortunately I was fast enough to walk up the walk bridge leading to the canopy walk and was even able to climb up the stairs that lead up to the bridges that hang high in the sky at tree top level. So there was indeed a canopy walk here, kind of unbelievable. And it was impressive. And in my opinion it has quite a lot of tourist potential. But it was out of order because the platform connecting the stairs to the bridges in the tree tops had fallen down or something.

So someone had had a very good idea and had even been able to realize the idea. But somehow it was not realized good enough. And somehow I guess there had not been enough paying tourists or local visitors to maintain this canopy walk. Or it was just not built good enough.

So when I came down to fetch a camera and made some photo’s and wanted to walk up the walking bridge leading to the stairs again I was stopped by the caretaker. Which didn’t really matter anymore as I had already seen what I wanted to see. So I came back and was not sure whether to tell him that I already had walked towards the stairs and had even climbed the stairs. Which of course probably was not safe. But as I am interested in helping The Philippines, helping e.g. building the tourist industry I asked who was the owner. And, of course(?!), it was the government. Which in my opinion means that it will be very hard to build a tourism industry. As governments in general are not good in building ‘industries’. Businessmen are good in that. So in my opinion tourism should be driven by businessmen wanting to make a profit, which in the end they can only do if they provide good service, provide things people want. And yes, governments should create the conditions, some conditions to support businesses. And maybe provide infrastructure. And yes, maybe even build the canopy walk itself and indeed be and stay the owner of things like this piece of rain forest.

But somehow in The Philippines the government is running many things that I think would be better run by business people, people looking for profit, people providing services and products in an efficient way at the right quality. And I have seen many things and even was involved in tourism related government projects. And I just see too much government involvement, like the government even running resorts and cafes and restaurants.

And somehow that doesn’t seem to work. And I keep wondering how that is in other countries, countries that are better in catering to the needs and wants of tourists and are better in also getting the money in.

So maybe really worthwhile how that is done in countries, in places that do have a flourishing tourist industry, like who is doing what there. Like what role does the private sector have and what role does the government have. And indeed,if cultural or natural tourist attractions have been damaged or ruined or destroyed if private businesses have too much power, too much control.

But I have seen better than here in The Philippines. So it can be done better and I guess I would like to do about that, for the people here, especially the poor people, and even for myself, as I still want The Malasag House also to cater to tourist needs.

So let’s see what can be done. As there are really beautiful and nice things to see and to do. Like I saw and did today.

What’s next

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So what’s next? I’ve learned a lot and somehow I progressed a lot, but still there are some things missing.

But yes, I am making progress and I’m becoming more careful. Especially more careful with people, more careful with choosing people.

As today I received an e-mail in reply to a request from me to meet a previous employee again. As I thought he might be one of the people who could be part of restarting my business. And please keep in mind the goal of my business has always been and still is to indeed support myself, but also to support Filipinos and the Philippine economy. But especially the last has proven not to be easy as it is virtually impossible to find decent staff. As it has been very easy to find graduates who were all willing to be trained, which they were and which I did. But in the end I found myself without customers, without any money to invest and without any people willing to support me, help me rebuild the business. As most of those people willing to be trained decided to look for greener pastures elsewhere after having been trained.

And yes, I made my share of mistakes and of course I am responsible for my business, not the staff, the people I hired. And yes, I guess my management skills and social skills are not the best in the world. But looking back I am starting to realize more and more that it is not only me that is the cause that my business is not flourishing, was not growing and in the end kind of stopped. And no, it was certainly not the fault of the staff I hired, the graduates who were just looking for a start and of course in the end left my very small company that was kind of surviving and in the end couldn’t really survive anymore.

But looking back, knowing what I know now I think the main reason is the culture, the Philippine culture that makes it virtually impossible to start a company that wants to do a bit more than standard stuff, a company that wants to stand out and wants to deliver advanced quality stuff and services. And you can’t do that with graduates. And you can’t do that in an environment where the good people go abroad to work. And you can’t do that in a culture where it seems people only want to work as an employee, work for money.

And yes, I know more what I want now and I am still determined to build the company that I have in mind. And yes, I know that is virtually impossible, here in Cagayan de Oro City. But yes, I know anything is possible and that persistence in the end normally pays off.

But yes, I was very disappointed with the reply I got today. As for me it was an e-mail to someone who I think might be willing and capable to help me rebuild the company, build the company I have in mind to not only serve customers, but also help Filipinos stay with their family, not going abroad. Build a company that can provide decent jobs to the people of Cagayan de Oro City. Help him earn more, have a nicer job.

And no, apparently he was not the right person to ask. As the first thing he did was demanding for solving issues with his Social Security plan. And yes, of course I know there are and have been problems with the payments to the SSS. But the reason is very simple: the company just never earned enough to fulfill many of its obligations to the government. And looking back I have never really earned anything from this company. On the contrary, I think I invested more than the company ever earned. And yes, my mistake with all my good intentions trying to build a decent company here. And yes, certainly for me, for my own income, for my own money. But also definitely for the staff, for the people in Cagayan de Oro City, in The Philippines. But they didn’t make it easy, just leaving mostly after half a year, after a year, after their being trained.

And yes, I guess this person doesn’t know all this, doesn’t know that I lost most of the money I had when I first came to The Philippines. And doesn’t know I lost a lot more, money I don’t even have a clue how to pay back. And my living in a big house and my supposedly high living standard is only a very small part of that.

And yes, I can imagine he is worried about his SSS. And of course I guess that is my problem, the problem of my company. And of course I am looking for ways to settle all my debts. But is the implicit where is my money really the first thing to mention if you are being invited for coffee or something, being invited to restart or cooperate in a business?