Monday, June 8, 2009
Time for entrepreneurs?
Saturday, April 18, 2009
rK
I've just endured the hardest month of my professional career, and for what? Most definitely not the paycheck, its woefully inadequate, all I can say is that the experience has fundamentally altered the way I look at life.
The firm I work for took over the management of a failed company. The employees hadn't been paid since Dec. We laid off 127 people and it didn't make the news, we're not as sexy as Zain, no press conference, no hype, just cold hard termination letters oozing complex legal terms designed to shield us from liability. We retained a few senior managers and here they are working every day putting in the crazy hours companies in that industry demand.
I wondered why they even bothered, until I realised they truly love what they do. The fact that they are in a less than ideal situation, no pay, industry veterans in their fifties suddenly answerable to some fresh-faced 25 year old from a little known company and yet, they're OK, they come in to work , every day, to an office they used to rule , sit down and get to work, huddle up around the water cooler at 10 and trade war stories, "remember when the GM did..." , " remember the time the auctioneers took the Deputy GMs S-Class", they laugh off a situation which I cannot imagine happening to me, a situation that has happened to people around me.
I know people who have lost their Jobs for no clear reason, or for reasons they couldn't control, and each time I think "What if it was me?" and I start making a plan B.
A week later I'm back to my bad old habits, depleting my savings at an alarming rate as I enjoy my youth. I guess what I'm trying to say is we all need to have a plan B, we need to allow our minds to consider the bad as well as the good things we expect from the future. While we plan our MBAs, moving out of mums house, our push to get that promotion, start that company, buy that car, marry that girl, we should also consider the possibility that things may not go as planned, and make contingencies with the same urgency we reserve for the good things we want in life
rK out.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
mad memories
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
What?
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
ORIGINS AND LONGEVITY
I trust that the Consortium has complete, unabashed, unequivocal and utterly undeniable access to the thoughts that shall be expressed here with unprecedented ease. Indeed, you may ask, what does the Gift and the Guarantee mean to mine person?
First off the Gift: At the risk at being overly sentimental to the extent that I would be nigh comparable to a very very old (circa. 1950s) movie-star immortalized and epitomized by grainy black and white consistency, the gift is the simple fact that I have gotten to know such people as yourselves. Indeed, you all have been a live-action learning experience that I believe has been invaluable towards shaping the uncut diamond that is lil' ol' me.
The Guarantee: I am absolutely certain that the present status quo in which we are all still close and comrades-in-arms will never be compromised as we have been through many a tribulation together. If I were to state that we would still be reminiscing well into past-octogenarian years (if such a thing can be arrived at easily) we WILL still be reminiscing over the good old days with as much glee and fervor as we make them today.
So, let us ponder the origins from which we all stemmed prior to "finding each other"?? for lack of a better term as well as contemplating on the longevity that we shall certainly attain because true BOYZ-n-GALZ THAT ARE PART OF THE BOYZ will always remain true despite such small things as spats, dis-n-dat, financial crises, nuclear fallout, hurricanes, typhoons...
You get the picture.
The Sizzler aka The Soaring Falcon, has arrived.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Going kuku: starting a poultry farm
Poultry farming is the practice of raising poultry, such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, as a subcategory of animal husbandry, for the purpose of farming meat or eggs for food. The vast majority of poultry are raised using modern farming techniques.
Free range:
Free range poultry farming consists of poultry permitted to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner.
Modern farming:
There are basically two types of chicken farms. Those that produce eggs and those that produce chicken for meat. In Egg producing farms, birds are typically housed in rows of cages, called batteries. Environmental conditions are automatically controlled, including light duration, which mimics summer daylength. This stimulates the birds to continue to lay year round. Meat chickens, commonly called broilers, are floor-raised on litter such as wood shavings or rice hulls. They are raised indoors in climate-controlled housing.
Free range
Advantages
Free range poultry production requires that the poultry have access to the outside. In some cases this means the poultry are raised on pasture of enabling the poultry to move around, foraging for their natural diet and living in cleaner conditions than in batteries. In some farms, the manure from free range poultry can be used to benefit crops.
Disadvantages
The practical construction of a free range poultry farm can present more problems than the battery alternative. Finding suitable land with adequate drainage to minimise worms and coocidial oocysts, suitable protection from prevailing winds, good ventilation, access and protection from predators can be difficult. Excess heat, cold or damp can have a harmful effect on the animals and their productivity.Unlike battery farms, free range farmers have little control over the food their animals come across which can lead to unreliable productivity.
Modern farming
Advantages
In egg producing farms, cages allow for more birds per unit area, and this allows for greater productivity and lower space and food costs, with more efforts put into egg laying. Modern poultry farming is very efficient and allows meat and eggs to be available to the consumer in all seasons at a much lower cost than free range production. The poultry have no exposure to predators and disease risk is significantly reduced.
Disadvantages
The practical construction of a free range poultry farm can present more problems than the battery alternative. Finding suitable land with adequate drainage to minimise worms and coocidial oocysts, suitable protection from prevailing winds, good ventilation, access and protection from predators can be difficult. Excess heat, cold or damp can have a harmful effect on the animals and their productivity. Unlike battery farms, free range farmers have little control over the food their animals come across which can lead to unreliable productivity.