Someone help me get my driving license quick! I feel like a loser not having my driving license even though I’m already 18. Every time I go back to KL I see my friends driving around town, I feel jealous. They are driving their Hyundai, Peugeot, Volvo etc but me? I still have to rely on public transport.

It’s not that bad in Singapore coz of the top class public transport system here. But going back to Malaysia for holidays I’d really feel the need for a car. But the worst part is I have no time to learn driving till after my A-levels next year the earliest.

Now, for those having cars out there especially my friends in the US, I’m sure all of you need some Automobile Insurance Policies right? It’s illegal to drive on the road without the insurance policy right?

And from stories I heard from my parents, insurance policies differ from each user based on their driving record and all right? I remembered my uncle who did not want to claim a smashed up windshield from the insurance company so as to keep the premium low.

Anyway, the next time you want to get a quote for your automobile, why not try this company - Advantage Auto Quotes who sells all types of car insurance including. You can even get an Online Insurance Policy here. How cool can that be?

*brought to you by Advantage Auto Quotes*

I was surfing around blogs last night and somehow, somewhere I stumbled upon some blog writing about Blogsvertise and how the blogger managed to earn some money out of it. So being my curious self, I followed the link and signed myself up for this service.

So how does this Blogsvertise service work? It is quite different from other paid-blogging services. Its competitors require you to go and compete for a limited number of opportunities for the blog task, but Blogsvertise on the other hand will assign the blogging task to you. We as bloggers don’t need to endorse the product or sevice but just have to mention and link back 3 times in our entry.

More importantly, how is the payout rate? Its websites state that payout rate for new accounts typically range from $4 to $25. However the average payout rate is around $5 to $15. To me that’s quite a nice worthwhile figure. So what are you waiting for?

My dear friends,

One fine day, say if you decide to suddenly take the plunge down to Singapore to further your education (like me :)), what are the things that will make you spend time to worry on?

Choosing an educational institution like colleges, universities or polytechnics? Certainly. But what other things that you will have to factor in before relocating, the very thing that you have taken for granted all these years?

Is it a room and a bed to sleep in at the end of the day? Most definitely. But coming to a foreign location where you don’t even have much information on room rentals, how do you expect to get a value-for-money deal?

Or in other scenarios, if you are a local Singaporean/PR/foreign student/foreign worker looking for a new place to stay, at a bargain price by cutting out the middleman aka agents, where’s the best place to find good deals?

*jingles*

Introducing roomsDB.net - rent a room in Singapore

Whether you are hunting for a master room, a common room, a big condo or a HDB apartment, you can find it all at this website. RoomsDB provides free listing for room rentals in an easy manner. It’s so simple to use, any primary school student can navigate this site.

Clicking on the Read Offers button brings me to this page where there is a whole long list of rooms listing. And what’s even cooler is that when I hover my mouse on a particular listing, all the important particulars will come out without me needing to do any clicking.

I find this feature extremely useful and saved me a lot of time. Great rite?

Ok, what if I’m totally clueless about the market price of rooms in Singapore? Well, well, well. Our good webmaster/founder Sebastian had came out with this new average price feature where if I hover my mouse on the price tag, it’ll show me the average prices of similar rooms that had been posted on the website. At least with this feature I have a better safety net of not being conned into an expensive room rental agreement.

Now, for those who want to rent out their property, roomsDB also allows you a simple and easy way to list your property without any registration. Just click on the Post Offer button and you will be instantaneously transferred to a form where you’ll just have to fill in the particulars of the room that you want to rent out. It’s that easy and the best part is everything is complete FREE OF CHARGE!

I like roomsDB. Sebastian, being a foreign student like me really knows what foreign students really need. Well, currently I’m still staying in a hostel, but once I’m done with hostel in a year’s time, I might need a room to stay here and roomsDB will be my #1 resource/research place.

Sebastian is great. He has the brains to realise that there is a huge demand for a user-friendly rooms rental portal and he has the guts and marketing technique to go all out to succeed. How I wish I can come out with some big idea like his and implement it…..

And he seems to be doing great. His site now lists Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong as microsites. And news is out that in a short time, Malaysia’s own version will be coming out soon too!

Technorati Tags: room rentals, condo, HDB, RoomsDB

This book is my current reading material - Good to Great by Jim Collins. I bought it from a second-hand bookstore at Bras Basah for S$18.

I’m less than halfway through the book but I find it exceptionally insightful reading it. Anyway, if you are wondering what kind of book this is, it’s a business-management-leadership book. Basically it speaks about the qualities that cause the companies to transform from being good to great.

“Good is the enemy of Great”

That’s the first sentence of the book; a statement with maximum impact.

So far by reading the book I learned a few things that make me question myself.

1 – Good is never enough. I look back at myself and I’d realised that for a very long time I’ve settled for just being good. What must I do to transform myself to be great? Have I settled for the mediocrity notion?
2 – Disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action. Am I a person with discipline in my thoughts and actions?
3 – Humility + Will = Level 5 Leadership – Humility. My parents always advised me to be humble, but up till this point I find it extremely hard to practise that. How?
4 – Good-to-great leaders don’t talk about themselves and are not I-centric - How? What is my real purpose in life? What am I really gunning for? I’m a big talker and one secret desire that I always have is to desire to brag. This correlates with number 3.
5 – “Good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes” – These Level 5 leaders don’t chase stardom. What am I up to? I always tell people do something for the right reasons. But am I practising what I preach?

I’d just realised, I’m very far away from being a Level 5 leader. What constitutes a Level 5 Leader? Level 5 leaders “build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”

Not being self-centred and being humble. Perhaps I gotta learn more through AJ’s servant leadership programme. And put into practise for real. Coz it won’t hurt being humble.

Credit for Bad Behaviour. If buying offsets can excuse excessive carbon use, why not other irresponsible acts?

This is a cool article that appeared in the latest edition of Time magazine (July 9, 2007, pg 17)

For most JC Economics students, you would most likely completed studying about Market Failure and the solutions to counter Market Failure….And one of the solutions to counter environmental problem is to have a tradable carbon permit scheme to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Based on this tradable permit idea, the writer, Michael Kinsley wrote about a myriad of other applications of this concept in our life. Some sort of new capitalism I would say.

“The genius of carbon credits is that it opens up a whole new inventory of things that people can buy and sell. And there is no reason that the principle should be limited to environmentalism”

What sort of other applications can this be applied in? Already it’s complicated enough for the concept to work in the environment area….

“For example, how about a “bad parenting surcharge”. It would work like this.
Suppose you come home after a hard day of work, and there is your acne-ridden, foul-smelling brat of a son - if, indeed, he is you son, which is hard to believe - playing video games with his friends. Your living room is strewn with Dorito crumbs and other detritus that doesn’t bear close examining. Needless to say, the lawn has not been mowed as promised. How would you like to slug him? You know you shouldn’t. But what if by slugging him, you could actually reduce the total amount of child abuse in the world? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

What’s needed us a market in child abuse credits. Somewhere in the world there is a parent who is slugging his kid every night. For a price, he would refrain for a night, or even two. By paying that parent not to slug his kid twice, you gain the right to slug you kid once.

It’s a win-win-win. You get to slug your id. This other father gets the money. The other guy’s kid is happy - he gets a night off from being slugged.”

Sounds too optimistic to be true…And for me, it’s an idea that is incredibly theoretical in nature and has absolutely no chance of seeing light in reality…

A market in child abuse credit? Laughable….And how will the system work? How will you know that the parents will be honest? There is absolutely no measuring or accountability system in place….

A creative idea, but a real theoretical one indeed…..What do you think?

Technorati Tags: carbon, Market Failure, bad parenting surcharge