The Filipino Entrepreneur

Have you seen a square watermelon? look at the picture on the left side. I’m not kidding. This watermelon is being sold in Japan for around 10,000 yen ($83) while regular oval watermelon costs $15-$20. Quite expensive eh? here in the Philippines it won’t cost that much if you will grow it locally. There are abundant sources in the provinces but because of our poor transportation condition all of those supplies can’t reach metro manila in perfect condition and most of the time it cost higher than it suppose to be.

Then how about the square watermelon, are we able to make those like what they are doing now in Japan? looks like its not harder that we thought. I saw website that sell polycarbonate casing (Fig. 1 below) to mold the watermelon during the growing stage . Obviously you can’t shape it when it is already fully grown because the peel is already hard. You just have to put the fruit still attached to the vine inside the polycarbonate casing and let it grow until is occupies all the space inside and forms a cube or a square.

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This Chinese new year many people anticipate having good luck in their side. Many of those who want to change their luck or just to be lucky bought lucky charms and follow those Chinese traditions for attracting wealth and prosperity, good health and peace. But just to be honest with you I don’t rely much or depend too much on those things even if I have Chinese blood, (hope you don’t mind telling you this) but sometimes I do. For example I follow some advice from Chinese astrology and wear lucky charms. There is even a website in Chinese astrology I found that tells about what is your lucky element from the five elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth). It is said that based on the five elements, the weakest element you have is your lucky element which you can get depending on your birthday ( try it here: find your lucky element ). So if you know your lucky element you should wear or have things made from that element. For example, if metal is your lucky element, you should wear objects made from metal like jewelries or sleep on a bed made from metal. Then how about if fire is your lucky element? maybe it’s ridiculous if you will wear fire or burn yourself.

It is also said that Year 2008 is a Chinese Brown Earth (Soil) Rat Year. Why did the Chinese name the year 2008 as the Brown Earth Rat Year? Chinese calendar used the Stem-Branch system to count the days, months and years. There are 10 Stems and 12 Branches in this system. Stems are named by the Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth). The Stem sequence order is Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire, Yang Earth, Yin Earth, Yang Metal, Yin Metal, Yang Water and Yin Water. Branches use the animal names.

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I have a newsletter from Tessa Stowe which is I think similar to other newsletter I got about how as a salesman you should treat your prospect. In summary, it’s about you letting your prospect do the talking and you the listening in order to make the conversation more appealing and not repelling. I think even the most aloof prospect can be tamed if you will follow her advice. So read on….

What To Say If Your Prospect Only Has 10 Minutes

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When you think of aerial photography, you would think that you have to ride on an airplane or a helicopter to shoot pictures from the sky looking at a bird’s eye view. Since you need airplanes to take photographs, you need an aircraft to fly you to the air and thinking of such a business, you will be discouraged enough to know how much an airplane would cost or just to rent one, you might have second thoughts if that would be profitable. It’s because just renting an airplane, even an two seater Cessna airplane would cost more or less 8,000 pesos an hour. I’m not sure if the amount I mentioned is accurate. But back then in 1987 when I was still taking up flying school it already cost 2,500 pesos an hour with a Cessna 152 airplane. It’s the cheapest and oldest trainer airplane around. It would cost you much more if you buy one and the maintenance cost would be a headache unless you have lots of money to burn.

So how would you think of having an aerial photography business if that is one of your dream? that is where AeroEye Asia, an aerial photography service provider can be your inspiration. They use radio controlled helium balloons, radio controlled airplanes and helicopters, and ultralight and full size general aviation fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft (helicopters). Maybe they have a large capital so they have real airplanes and helicopters but those model aircrafts they are using although not cheap, can still be affordable. As a RC aircraft hobbyist myself in the past, I have read in magazines about radio controlled airplanes with a camera inside where you can shoot photographs remotely using your radio controlled transmitter ( the box where you control your aircraft with an antennae). Back then is was not easy to install a camera because there were no digital cameras then and most of them are heavy and bulky.

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News about the acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft is all over the internet and they say that this is due to Bill Gates wanting to compete with Google in online domination. And it will be purchased for US$44 billion dollars approximately. But just looking at the situation, the reason why Yahoo! is shrinking is due to the fact that more than 3/4 of search engine market was already dominated by Google (see Fig 1 below). And even if they merge it will have not much impact on Google. Yes Microsoft dominates the software industry but internet is a different thing. Although Internet explorer is the most popular browser in the world, still, it’s really the people themselves who will decide which search engine to use unless IE browsers have a built in blocking plug-in that will block anything that comes from Google. But that idea will tarnish Microsoft’s reputation and Google will be in a win-win situation.

Fig 1. Read the rest of this entry »