The Calamity in The Philippines
Christmas is coming! Do you feel the joy?
Unfortunately some of our brothers and sisters in the Philippines may not be able to enjoy the joy of christmas.
So as you may already know (or not), a devastating flood hits the Philippines a few days ago.
Disaster agency officials said Tuesday that 957 people have died so far as a result of the floods which began in the early hours of Saturday, while 49 others remain missing.
About 143,000 people were affected in 13 southern and central provinces.
The Office of Civil Defense says some 7,000 houses were swept away, destroyed or damaged.
I am indirectly affected by this situation
I am indirectly affected too by this disaster, because one of my assistants is severely affected by the disaster. She lives in the area but luckily she is okay and her house is not swept.
In the state of chaos, she wrote me an email (because she is supposed to send me a daily report of her work).
Here is some of her emails:
Hello Sir Andrew,
Thank you for your early christmas gift. Sorry I wasn’t able to send you my daily report last night because a typhoon struck our place and heavy rain poured without stopping. My sister woke me up around 2am in the morning because the flood was rising from our garage up to our living area. The situation happened in a fast forward mode. In just a split of seconds, our floor was covered with water. I was praying that the Lord with stop the flood. Thank God we are all safe.
My cousin’s house was washed out by the flood. thank God she and her husband is now safe. As I look at the pictures in the facebook. The whole city was covered with mud and there were so many dead people lying on the streets and everywhere. It really breaks my heart seeing those people whose lives were taken by this typhoon.
It was the first time that our city experience this kind of disaster. Our city now is in the state of calamity and I do hope that God will help those people rise again from this experience.This is one of the greatest tragedy we experience here in our place. The people in this town didn’t expect that the water will rise that fast since we are rarely visited by typhoons.
Please help us pray that we can survive this calamity and that the typhoon will not create more damages anywhere.
Thank you for your understanding.
I am speechless and began to Google the news. It is horrible.
And then the day after she wrote me this:
Hi Sir Andrew,
Sorry I haven’t updated you. Our internet connection is now okay but I haven’t done cleaning our house since there were mud all over the place. I also went to the place of my cousin and friends who were hardly hit by the typhoon to give some assistance since they were left with nothing. no food, water, shelter and clothing. So i gave some of my used clothing to them.
It really breaks my heart seeing the situation in most evacuation centers. And the whole city of iligan was a mess. We don’t know where to start.. streets were full of mud and we can’t scrape any of it since there were a lot of people that are still missing and the families of these missing people were still hoping that their loved ones were still alive. If not, they want to see the body. A lot of bodies were recovered under a thick mud.
I know God will give us strength and hope this Christmas. I gave some of my salary to my friends that was left with nothing. Lucky for me I still have our house and my family. I also have a friend whose her 2 sisters, 1 brother in law and 2 nieces were trapped inside the house. The water was above the roof so there was no chance that they can escape alive.
Let’s just pray for the souls of those whose lives were taken by this typhoon. It was a very tragic and traumatic experience for us all. And the sad part is, Christmas is approaching. I don’t know how long will it take to clean the mess in our city. I just hope that all will fall into places.
Thanks and please help pray. God Bless
I was so touched and moved just by reading the email. The next day Fenny (my girlfriend) and I sent a donation to her, so that she can use it for others in need. Note: she has been working for me for some time, hence the trust I have towards her.
This is the latest email I received from her:
We are okay now. our house is clean again and thank God it didn’t rain again from the day of the disaster. It’s just that everytime it starts to drizzle, I feel like there’ll be a devastating storm again. It was a traumatic experience.
I went to some part of the area to give assistance to my other classmates who are in need and up to now, there are still so many missing people and bodies that are still unidentified. We’ll just pray that their souls will be at peace. There were a lot of donations coming from different parts of the globe tending some of the their basic needs.
Tears fall from my eyes as I handed my classmate some of the money you gave. I told her to buy some underwears for her and her family. She hugged me tight and thank me. I told her that it comes from you and your girlfriend. they were so happy.
I am waiting for the package of a friend of mine, full of donations and then I will distribute it to the victims including the toothbrush, toothpaste and soap I purchased using your money. I also donated some of it in the school. I’m happy that there are a lot of people donating and volunteering, united as one in times of needs. about 80% of our city. Thanks a lot sir, it will return to you a hundred folds.
So if you are touched too and would feel to help those in dire needs by donating money, you can contact me to make a donation and I will make sure that your donation will go to those who are really in need. I will ask my assistant to provide proofs.
Considering the technology today, I think we can give a hand here despite our distance; and share the spirit of christmas with everybody.
You can donate via paypal here:
Read MoreKatherine Jenkins
I cannot believe my ears AND eyes!
Katherine Jenkins is a Welsh with amazing, radiant, stunning look but when she began to sing, my jaw dropped..
What a deadly combo of look and talent! She is almost too good to be true..
It looks like she was manufactured somewhere out of earth..
Apparently Katherine Jenkins is a very popular Mezzo-soprano with tons of albums already!
Wikipedia said Six out of seven of Jenkins’s studio albums reached number one in the classical charts between 2004 and 2008, selling a total of more than 4 million copies.
How come I have never heard of her until now? I must have lived in a cave! (*plays Flinstones theme song*)
edit: oh that’s right, I never followed classical charts
More stuff from Wiki:
Between 1990 and 1996 Jenkins was a member of the Royal School of Church Music Cathedral Singers and won the St Cecilia Award, the highest RSCM award for female choristers.[4] She was also a member of the National Youth Choir of Wales for three years,[5] won the BBC Radio 2 Welsh Choirgirl of the Year contest (twice), and the BET Welsh Choirgirl of the Year competition. She was also awarded the Pelenna Valley Male Voice Choir Scholarship for the most promising young singer. At the age of 17 she won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music,[4] where she studied Italian, German, French and Russian, graduating with honours[5] and receiving a music teacher’s diploma.
Phew, that’s lots of award for such a young age!
Anyway she’s coming to Melbourne on October but it’s such a shame I cannot be there. She will be performing on Rod Laver’s arena.
So I will just watch her performing Parla Piu Piano/Godfather’s theme, on YouTube again….
Read More
Victory Loves Preparation
So a few months ago I watched this action movie called the Mechanic starring the badass Jason Statham, and in the movie Jason was given a vintage handgun engraved with a quote that really can’t get out of my head:
Victory Loves Preparation
A really powerful quote I must say!
Really you should aim for ‘victory’ in your life, be it in your career, in your family, in your relationship.
But having a goal is not enough. You need to take action and you should plan them by making action plans. Seriously, if you don’t make action plans and adhere to it, you will end up forgetting about your dreams and going to the wrong directions.
So you want to achieve financial freedom eh? Good, the question is, when do you want to achieve it?
How can you achieve it?
What are the resources that you need? What are the skills that you need?
Who are the people that you need to get in touch with?
One of the success camp I attended years ago taught me to put the answer of the above questions in a giant sized board or paper, and put it in a place where you can see them every day.
So let’s prepare for our victory!
Have a great weekend.
Youtube Superstars: How Much Do They Earn?
I remembered when my friends and I were watching Freddie Wong‘s channel for the first time and our reaction was something like “THAT’S AWESOME!!!”.
And then one of us pop out the question.. “Hey, they must be so rich, they can make awesome videos every week using expensive equipments that cost thousands of dollars”
Really?
Well, apparently it’s the other way round!
How can they make such a good video every week, with that much amount of work… it’s simply because they earn money with their YouTube channels! Apparently, when done right, a YouTube channel is a cash cow.
The Nigahiga Case
Let’s take a look of NigaHiga.
Nigahiga has about the highest number of subscribers on YouTube. This guy makes funny skits and comedy videos that gone viral.
He reportedly make about $151,000 a year! That’s $12,583 per month, $3,146 per week or $629.17 per day!
Where did he get all that money from?
According to this site, Youtube partners make money from several ways.
The first is from video views. Every 1000 person viewing the video will bring home about $2.5 to $5.
At $2.5 per 1000 views, if you get 3,000,000 views, that’s about $7500 at the minimum! And that’s per video! Let’s imagine these superstars with dozens of video with over 3million views.. how much money do they make? Ka-ching~!!
The most popular stars like Nigahiga will earn $5 per 1000 views, which sums up to approximately $5000 per video he put up (I believe should be more, as he has at least 3 million views per video).
And that, sir, is a good $$$ for something that you really enjoy doing.
($_$)
Still think that’s a modest sum of money? According to the previous site, the second way for people to make money from YouTube is through Channel views.
A youtube partner will make $.01 per channel view. If a channel has 1,000,000 channel views, the person will make $10,000.
Nigahiga got 141 million channel views. So he has made $1,410,000 from channel views alone. One million dollars!
And that’s still not enough to make us common viewers drool. These youtube partners still make money from video ads and sponsors. And they also sell T-shirts if you notice.
So is anyone interested to become a YouTube superstar? Just grab a HD cam like Flip or whatever, record your funny ideas and make it viral!
Read MoreThe Cure of Procrastination
Procrastination.. I love writing on this topic because this is another way for me to procrastinate my job..
Do you Procrastinate?
I do. Well, not all the time (finger crossed) but now everytime I do, I would remember what my girlfriend told me once:
“If you waste 1 minute every single day, in 1 year you would waste 360 minutes, and that’s 60 hours of wasted time”.
Anyway, let’s just get straight to the point, as time is money.
Here are some “medicines” that you can try to cure procrastination.
Time Management
If you are wasting too much time on Facebook, then set aside some time to only do Facebook. Read your status updates, see those photos, etc all you like during the time. After the specified period of time, close it and don’t ever open it again (and promise yourself to do 100x push-up if you do); instead, do your work like you are supposed to!
Take a break once in a while.
Chop The Hour
This is something that I learned from a good friend of mine; he chopped his time into tiny block of 10 minutes. I have tried to put this into practice and it worked great. Simply set a timer and for every task that you are doing, try to solve it within 10 minutes.
If the task is a big one, just chop it into tiny pieces.
I adjusted mine to 15 minutes.
Task Management System
Succesful time management always requires a good task management system a.k.a to-do-list. I don’t care if you are using your phone or simple, plain paper, make a to-do-list and do it. I believe almost every single phone in the world right now has to-do-list application built in, so why not use it?
I found that Remember The Milk is the best at this game.. they can remind you by email and even SMS. You can set to-do-list from your PC and then get reminded straight to your phone. Also if you are using iOS, they have it as an App too, just search RTM in the appstore. I believe they also have an app for blackberry and android as well.
Read Coffee at Andrew’s
It’s better than procrastinating!!
So that’s my few tips to help reduce wasted time.. Thanks for reading!
