Digital Games : Now and Then , and what's next

I still remember my first digital game. It was back in 1981 where I first got the Nintendo Game and Watch. The first set was the Parachute Games followed by the Octopus. Our family stayed in Johor Bahru and my parents bought it in Singapore. It was a family games. Even my mother played the games. But most of the time concured by me and my elder brother. 2 years after that we moved to Kedah. Nintendo Game and Watch was still the market leader until the released of new digital games like the CASIO Western Bar and the Kung Fu Games. It has much better sound compared to the Nintendo Game and Watch. I can still imagine the sound until today. That killing sound distracted almost every single kids to put it in their wish list.I was hoping to get one too but I guess my father refused to buy one because my sister just bought me a computer game called Vectrex. It was like a small TV with joystick. Better sound system and required cartridges to change from one game to another. It has no color but with colored plastic filter for every single game. Not bad for video games in the early 80's. My sister was so generous to purchase another video game called the Tomy Alien Chase. Its smaller but has good sound too. The only thing was , it has only same game. Capturing the alien and place them into the cage. Pretty boring but better something than nothing. I can still remember the sound of that game until today. Probably video games sound have been embedded in my brain, and it is hard to get rid of them.

Being a teenagers during the boost of electronic games has really caused headaches to parents.The video games arcade has been my second home after school. Video arcade emerged so rapidly in our town. The famous games during the time were the 1942, Raiden, Street Fighters and those car racing games. On contrary, my parents were not so conservative about it. Probably they knew that stopping kids from going to video games equals stopping giving food to them. There is always a limit in liking something. Its how you discipline yourself or your kids to be liking it efficiently and positively. This is way to subjective to be discussed.

That was 25 years ago. Kids nowadays are facing a bigger cyber world madness with games that can link to almost every parts of the world. My kids who are 5 and 6 are yet to join the bandwagon. But in 3 to 5 years time I guess they will too. Their first digital game was the Game Boy SP. It was the only game that last long in their posessions. It's durable too. I would rather invest those kind of games rather than Barbie Dolls or Ben 10 Omnitrix which only last few days before they landed everywhere on the floor. Something that ignite mumbling manuscripts from my wife. My wife, on the other hand also enjoys the digital game. But she only likes Tetris or puzzle kind of games. That motivated me to get another digital game which is the Sony PSP. Now almost everyday PSP becomes the soulmate of our family members. My daughter loves the puzzle games just like her mother. My son loves the action Games like Ultraman, Transformers , Ben 10 and car racing games. My favourites are the Soccer game and the RPG : Star Wars : Force Unleashed.

On the other perspective, Cyber Cafe business is also doing good even in a small time where I live. If 25 years ago parents having problems to find their kids in video arcades , now I can see parents having headaches to find their kids in cyber cafes. A friend of mine approached recently on acquiring a cyber cafe for business. It was a good proposals though I dont really feel like doing it at the moment. Though you like something, doesnt mean you like to manage that something. Probably it is a sunset business as it has been there more than 10 years already. What's next ? Anyone can guess ?

The Diamond Story

The first time I watched "Blood Diamond" was at a restaurant while having supper. It was an intermittent attention as I was with friends who could tell you story better than Steven Speilberg. Since I could sense the movie quite interesting, I bought a DVD and watched the movie at home.

On the other hand, I bought a motivational book at Popular Book Store on the way of getting rich. It came with an audio CD which I appreciated very much. Though I like knowledge, I have to admit that I prefer listening much more than reading. It can goes parallel in deed. Driving and gaining knowledge. The story is about diamond mining in Africa. It was narrated by a deep voice man. Something like Sean Connery's voice. So when you listen to the story, you could actually imagine the guy is so serious on telling you this. Since I already watched the De Caprio movie , Blood Diamond, more or less this story has the similarities in terms of the challenge and pursuit for weath in the midst of the social turmoils.

Its quite interesting to know that my friend Master Mary uses this story as his ice-breaking story whenever he does his marketing, brain-wash or conduct classes. I do not know whether this is a true story or not, but it is worth for mind digestion.

The story goes like this : (Again, the introduction of this story sounds like Blood Diamond or Revenge of the Sith movie, but trust me, it is not)

Long long time ago, far far a way in a galaxy, in Africa, people were crazy about diamond mining business. They migrated from one place to another just to find diamonds. They killed each other because of diamonds (you can see this scenario in De Caprio movie Blood Diamond). In their village, there were nothing much to do other than finding diamonds, breeding livestocks . But being in Africa doing the livestocks breeding business was pretty challenging. Food and water were scarce.

I cant really remember the name of the main character of this story, let say I name him as "Drogba". Sound familiar ? Ok, so this Drogba was a father of 3 kids (you dont have to remember how many kids he has, because this is not related at all to the main theme of this story).

Drogba too heard about the diamond mining business. Everyday he kept on hearing people getting rich and make a big leap in their life. Drogba lived in a small village in Africa One day Drogba decided to sell off everything that he had, the piece of land inherited from his family, the small hut and a Harley Davidson he won in the Nescafe Contest (dont get de-focus of this additional information, keep on reading, you almost get to the climax of the story). So, Drogba moved out from the village and sold the land to his cousin named Usin Bolt (well, this name came to my mind in 9.69 seconds). Usin is a middle class man who dont have big dreams in the diamond business, so he doesn't really mind raising cows and goats for living.

Drogba and his family moved to another place knowned as Unggalagala (pronounce as UNG-GALA-GALA) , 500km from the Kalahari Dessert (where they shot the movie God Must be Crazy Part II) where he heard about the Diamond mine. He set up a small hut just enough for his family to live, but he does have a home theatre set with a build in WIFI (based on the original story that almost corrupted, but please continue reading, the climax is there, be optimistic). Drogba was very hardworking, day and night he went for diamond mining. Came to the extend where he had to use scuba set to explore the underwater treasures. Years went by and Drogba still could not find the big bang he was looking for. One day, Drogba was mining at one of the well and suddenly there was an earthquake, the land slid. Drogba was belived to have died, buried underwater from the rock debris. No one found his body. Leaving only his swiss army knife as the evident. He engraved " Diamonds are Forever" on his swiss army knife. You can find it on E-Bay for your collection if you may.

Remember Usin Bolt , Drogba's cousin ? The man who bought Drogba's land. He was still doing the livestock breeding business. Well, he was doing quite ok.Usin heard about Drogba's demised . He was so relief that he did not follow his cousin's foot step searching for diamonds. One day, while Usin was preparring to go back , one of the goat went missing (just like P Ramlee story, Ahmad Albab...). So Usin went searching for the goat, with only one mini Maglite in his hand. The land that he bought from Drogba's was quite big, about the size of 5 Wembley Stadium . So walking across the land was time consuming, but what to do, he doesnt have any vehicle. The day was almost dawn, Usin still couldnt find his goat. His GPS had turned to night mode. The missing goat was no where in the radar screen. Frustated and exhausted, he stopped by a stream located on his land to get some fresh water. Praying to God for his goat to be found, Usin sat down and sighed. Looking into the flowing water. The place was calm, peace and tranquility. Only the sound of the running water and the rhythm of the wind. Out of sudden Usin saw something fishy in the water. Its not the fish, but some glowing lights you may call. Glowing big rock (hint : almost the climax but not yet..). Usin took his maglite and shot the ray into the water. He stood up, walked slowly towards the water. He tried to pick up the rock but it was pretty heavy. Being an athelete (he was a school soccer player), Usin put his fullest effort and picked up the rock. Its about a size of a tool box. Thinking to substitute the rock with the missing goat, Usin was hoping his wife would be happy to see that. Usin went back to his house with the shiny rock, without his goat of course. Upon reaching home, his wife stood anxiously at the door. Usin handed over the rock and told her about the missing goat. She was so angry and upset that he lost the goat and brought back the useless rock. His wife kept on mumbling all night about the missing goat, and the rock that looks like a bonsai tree.

The next morning, Usin went to town and told his friends about his missing goat. And he also told them about the strange looking rock. A beautiful rock indeed. None of his friends was interested to hear his story. Most of them were busy playing games, updating Facebook and Youtubing at the internet cafe. Usin felt upset upon his friends response. So he decided to post the photo of the stone in his own blogspot. Usin also decided to throw the rock back into the river as he could not stand his wife mumbling about the missing goat day in and day out. Days passed by without any breaking news. Usin has never talked about that story neither to his friends nor his wife eversince.

One day, a guy name Atkinson came to town. He was so eager to find Usin. He asked around the town and finally got to find Usin at the Cyber Cafe. Usin was playing PC games when Atkinson greeted him. Usin was very surprised to see Atkinson, who dressed up like Indiana Jones, came in the middle of nowhere. Atkinson told Usin that he saw the photo of the rock in the internet posted by Usin few weeks ago. Usin was poked by that snippet. Finally someone at least pay attention on his story. Usin immediately took Atkinson to the river where he threw the rock. The rock was still there and they both picked it up. Atkinson was so amazed and surprised upon seeing the rock with his own eyes. "This is unbelieveable", said Atkinson astonishingly. " Holly Cow !!". You are the lucky one....". Usin was kind of bewildered with Atkinson's remark. "Who are you, sir ?, Usin started to put his interest. Atkinson explained that he is actually a diamond specialist from England and the rock found by Usin is believed to be the largest diamond ever found in the world. (hint = this is supposed to be the climax of the story, so hope you hold on for a while). Usin still could not believe what he has just heard. Surprisingly, within 2 hours, the press crews from Al-Jazeera , CNN, Bloomberg and RTM2 of course, came to the scene. Usin became a multi-billionaire in split seconds. One tycoon by the name of Kiyosaki had made an offer live on TV asking Usin to trade the diamond for 10 billion dollars. Usin gasped for awhile. How much is that ? 10 billion . He has never had a calculator that can calculate that amount of money. He asked the TV crew whether this is really live telecast or some sort of bloopers program. The crew nodded seriously. Usin took a deep breath, looking straight towards the camera and told Mr Kiyosaki right on his face (just like those dudes in WWF) " Listen Mr. ......I love my wife..., I love my kids..., I love my life....YOU.....COMPLETE ME....(read like Tom Cruise in Jerry MacGuire).But YOU DONT HAVE TO SHOW ME THE MONEY !!!!...., I am not stupid. My wife will kill me if she knew I bring back 10 billion instead of that darn missing goat !!. Usin grabbed the microphone from the man and said "...if anyone of you can find me that darn goat, this stone is yours....and I really mean it..."

That afternoon Usin went back to his house with his missing goat. Not one goat, but 300 of them. Upon reaching the house Usin yelled at the door " Honey...we are rich !! we are rich !! But his wife is no where to be found. Suddenly his little kid came from the kitchen and said " mommy watched daddy on live TV just now...mommy said that she is leaving this village for good. Before she becomes a murderer..". Oops, forgot to mention, the wife name is Rihanna. She moved to the United States to open up a shop selling umbrella.

The morale of the Story :

Lesson # 1 : Diamond is actually inside you, you just have to find it and it will shine. Dont really have to go far to find the diamond.
Lesson # 2 : You may be poor now but one day who knows , luck might come to you, be patient.
Lesson # 3 : A good husband can make a bad mistake if he listens to a good wife that make a bad decision without knowing why he should be listening at the first place. Capish ?
Lesson # 4 : Dont always post everything on the internet, save some for your wife and kids.
Lesson # 5 : Drogba should have invested in Money Mastery Program or read Rich Dad Poor Dad , so that he could sell his land at a higher price to Usin.
Lesson # 6 : Usin should have bought a Sony Playstation or PSP so that his wife will not be seeing him on TV. And none of this could have happened.
Lesson # 7 : Light travels faster than sound, that is why sometime you think a person is bright until you hear them speak.
Lesson # 8 : Attitude is important, bad attitude may turn up to be your liability in future.

The Birth of Ignite Revolution

2009 is the Birth of my first company , Ignite Revolutiuon. I got this name spontaneously at the Registrar office. Well, not really spontaneously, I had the term Ignite in my mind two days before that while I was doing a Business Update meeting at my current company. "Ignite" based on the dictionary definition means to cause or to start to burn or lite something,and revolution on the other hand means big change in terms of social, technology or achievement. That is what i concluded when I chose the name. It has always been my dream to ignite something big and I am very sure I will achieve that. With some effort, focus and help from friends and family. I still hold the motto of Scholarship, Virtue and Service for my company undertakings, which I uphold from UUM motto of " Ilmu, Budi, Bakti". I was engineereed there, at least I should be carrying some values to the community. I guess the motto make much sense now. The other motto is "Finis Coronut Opus" - my secondary school motto that means "Effort is the stairways to success". Make sense huh ? I have not specified the core business of company as year 2009 is an experimental year. I have tried out property management and service marketing, its quite challenging. It requires knowledge, creativity, problem solving, follow up and perserverence. But I learnt a lot from my father when it comes to property management. I learnt some from the books of Mr Kiyosaki and Mr Trump. Though it's not apple to apple comparison but the concept somehow leads to the right direction. Some people say that involving in Malaysia business equals to involving with politics and government, well to certain extend they are right but not necessary all the cases. Probably that is why I have invested some time understanding the political turmoils nowadays. And I have tried to involve my self with political movement. And am still trying to adapt my mind to it. You may say politic is dirty but I cant figure out yet what is not in today's world when it comes to human interaction and money.

Apart from property , I am also trying to link my company portfolios with servicing business. Why servicing ? Because this requires a minimal amount of money for start up. and i dont have much to spend around. That's where I found a friend who is so keen of doing servicing job. He introduced me to the world of business arts. We kicked off our first project teaching the communities doing Fruit and Vegetables Carving. We partnered with Kulim Community College as they have the facilities that we need. Though I love arts very much, this kind of art requires more than skills, it has to do with passions and imagination. But I still want to continue doing this as part of my business experiment. My friend whom I called Cikgu Mary Think Big. He wants to make a giant leap of this art to the world level. And it is part of our plan to explore more of this skills at our neighbouring country, Thailand, where the art is believed to have been originated 700 years ago. My friend somehow has the interest on Feng Shui too . He told me that one Chinese Sifu told him that he will success in food industry. And he sees fruit carving as the baseline of his success. On contrary, I see this as an opportunity to bring the servicing business with almost zero capital to move ahead. Lets see what will happen next. Hope the income tax folks wont be chasing after me as the profit is not really significant. Only the knowledge is priceless.

Another portfolio that I am looking forward to expand is photography. Photography has always been my interest since I was a kid. I still remember that I wish my sister to buy me a camera as a birthday gift back in the 80's. In 1981, my father bought a classic SLR Camera. But I was very hot hot chicken shit as it was hard to use that camera, I was 7 then. Anyhow , photography continue to part of my interest. With the new DSLR technology, photography is made so easy. That's why I dont mind involving this as my part time income. I like video shooting too but it requires lot of time and research to master the skills and to process and edit. There are courses available but having too many things to do at the same time is really a challenge. Laziness is no doubt the biggest constraint that put me in mediocrity in the photo business. Like any other business, photography can be a big boom business too. There should be a way how to break the code to get rich in this business. Something Donald Trump migth not recommend but it is worth doing something that you like and getting some bucks into your wallet. So I this is a keeper of my Ignite Revolution portfolio.

Ignite Revolution and my wife :
I have never known after 9 years of marriage that my wife has the talent in doing sales. I have always underestimated her in doing sales based on her introvert characteristic . But in 2009, I decided to give it a try in small retailing business. I started off with the handicraft business. I have 3 partners by then. This is also an experimental business. Its a Labu Sayong business, or described in Wikipedia as earthenware, gourd-shaped jars for keeping drinking water cool. It was just a small capital start up. This is where I saw the talent of my wife doing sales. In just 3 months, she really sold the goods and become the champion of the sales force (at least we got break even in 3 months) . This business is not to say very successful or very failure, but what I learned is that product knowledge, marketing strategies , consumer behaviour, costing and follow up is the key element to success. Though we stopped the activity after 5 months, I was thinking to KIV this business for Ignite Revolution. I learned a great deal of doing the research, dealing with people and solving business issues. With the initial talent shown by my wife in doing sales and book keeping, I have moved another step to getting another business that is more suitable for her. The ladies accessories , clothing or women apparels. She is doing great. And I can see her passions in doing this kind of business. Arguments is almost inevitable in starting up a business with her. Decisions making make it worst sometimes. Not to add financial issues. But we made it somehow until the business runs quite smooth. Again, the profit is not really big but as a green man in this field, I would rate the business as Exceeding Expectation. Surprisingly my wife can have her own network of people to run the business for her. She started off with immediate family members, colleagues and now outsiders started to approach her. Its still long way to go. She needs to adapt more style in doing a bigger scale business. And this is definetely one of the core business under my wife supervision. Hopefully she can have her own shop to run this business soon. My daughther who is turning 7 next year shall be her right hand to run the business. Yes, I am brainswashing her to run business, so that she will be getting rich 20 years faster than me. Though you have seen so many time I use the term "rich", rich is not everything of course. There is a reason why I want to be rich. I will story that in the next note. On the other hand , my son (5), has not shown any interest in money making business at the moment, he likes expenses indeed. I will train him slowly not be a liability. I hope that he will continue my business in future. Lets see how it goes.

My Wifee just foundee Outee !!!

....that I have a blog....come on...just registered few hours ago..so what?? Her first remark.."well..you have plenty of time to do all these and less time on the chores ??...

my respond was ...."...I'm venturing into the world of business, technologies and challenges...so I do need one...I will create one for you my dear...

The Rules of 3 bucks : Story of Master Mary

I have a friend whom I called "Cikgu Mary", because of a joke he told me about a lady name Mary and a smart rich guy who used to date Mary. I dont think I want to share the story of Mary as it was just meant for fun and 18sx in nature. But Cikgu Mary has a point, he always has some thing to ponder about.

My friend Master Mary told me a theory about some people or groups that lack motivation to work and perform lower than what they should. He calls it " Because of 3 bucks salary.." or the Rules of 3 bucks.

It goes like this ...according to Master Mary, some people in the non-profit organization apply this theory to their working nature. Let's say that the salary of the month is 10 bucks, but in actual fact they will only perform the job of the 3 bucks value and save the 7 bucks for big event ( i dont know what kind of event is that). Why ? According to Master Mary, those who think they already have a secured job hold the principle of "there is always a work for me tomorrow" and no matter hard I work, my salary remains at 10 bucks. So why bother working harder. I will always get the 10 bucks at the end of the day. That is why when you have to make a deal with them, you have to top up another 7 bucks to catch up with the work standard that you expect them to do. I'm not talking about bribery or kickbacks but more on doing extra follow up, extra homework and some sorts of efforts that they themselves should have done it.

On the other hand, those who work with the Private sector is generally underpaid with the effort that they need to put it. The same theory applies, let say your pay is 10 bucks, but your boss will squeeze you for at least 50 bucks work value. Logically it should be that way. Private company is a profit organization. They must make money, if you as a workers just perform a 10 bucks job, then the company just break-even and may be forced to close down. So the extra 40 bucks is for the overhead, stakeholders margin, taxes and all sort of expenses before they give you the actual amount of salary, bonuses and probably some stock exchange or stock participation program. Make sense now?

And lastly, if you are running your own business or Business owner, than at the early stage you must work for the value of at least 70 bucks, slightly higher than working for private sector. Why ? Because you need extra money to roll onto new business opportunities plus the expenses you need to bare. So a word of advise from Master Mary, be prepared to work longer hours in the early stage of business ventures in order to succeed. And he really does.

This is only a myth of the non profit organization , but today one can see a drastic changes in the level of service in that sector. No doubt that some of them performs much better than those in private or business owner. Why ? It's actually more towards the individual motivation and sense of responsibility. Having a secured job doesnt mean you have reached the perfect life. In fact, no job is secured in todays dynamic world. Anything can happen and one should better be prepared for the worse.

So Master Mary's story make sense huh ??? Think and think about it...

Welcome to my Blog : Extended Kidz on the Blog

dear friends and readers,

It has been many attempts by me to do blogging business, but it turns out to be mist under the sun. Forgotten and never revisited. It has now come to my attention to say it out load the spirits of the unspoken and the journey towards perfection (borrow this phrase fr my boss). I have always admired few individuals who have successfully said it out load to the world. In their own way. One of them is Jerry MacGuire. And now Tun Dr Mahathir and son, Mukhriz Mahathir. What do they have to do with me and my blog? Though nothing much but something for sure.

I have always dream to transform myself to be the man of many characters. Nothing like Optimus Prime, nothing like Ben Tennyson. Non of them meets my expectation. Always like to think of myself as the sole wanderers of this globe and century, and yet to find the glory I am wandering about. Rover, wanderer , nomad , vegabond , call me what you will...(borrow from Hetfield). Note: To those who are not familiar, Hetfield is not a psychologist, motivational speaker , scientist, capitalist, communist or thinker, he's just the lead singer of Metallica...hehe...hey , why not, love the lyrics and melody...they bring memories of the old days, with circle of friends whom I trusted, and grew up with.

Till we meet again ..