Tag: Singapore

All information about Singapore

business, culture, technology

Social Media And YOU

chicpencil

As of yesterday September 7th, the world population is estimated at 6.9 billion. Surprisingly, the number of mobile phones across the globe is not far behind. According to Wikipedia, mobile phones population across the globe is approximately over 5 billion.

The battle in the mobile world has upraised during the last decade. Whilst ten years ago, owning a personal mobile phone was restricted to the upper class of the society, today, a mobile phone is but a commodity. In Singapore, you can observe that the working class population, an individual within the range of monthly income of SGD 2,000 (+/- 10%) owns at least 2 mobile phones.

In China, the mobile subscribers population is approximately at 1.3 billion and the mobile phone population is at 900 millions. India is not far behind with a 1.2 billion subscribers and 850 millions mobile phones.

The fragmented competition for the mobile industry paved the way to the various mobile phone operating systems – Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s Blackberry OS 7, Samsung Bada, the good old Symbian, Palm’s WebOS, etc.

Aside from the mobile phone operating systems, the stiff market competition gave the pressure for the mobile phone operators to be at its best. It also has created a key trend in 2011, that is the social media networks.

In social media networks, the consumers are analyzed based on their mobile phone behavior and their location based patterns. The numbers that you frequently dialed from your mobile phone is being understood by analysts paving the way to creation of various social media models in order to provide you with the best mobile subscription package that fits your lifestyle.

Location based services on the other hand, analyses the places that you frequently visits. In countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and even Malaysia, you will notice that a change in your location gives the way for the various advertisings that targets your location. Sometimes, just entering the malls, you will be bombarded with various SMS or text messages from mall boutiques giving away discounts or sales.

Aside from the purely telecommunications social media analysis, mobile applications are also being used for majority of consumer based study. Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) is one of the key source of social media information. It is said that Twitter gave the consumers ‘the freedom of speech’. Hotel and tourism reviews mobile apps (Tripadvisor, Kayak, etc) are also a major contributor for the said study. Foursquare (http://foursquare.com) uses the location based approach in terms of social media. For the businesses, location based marketing paves the way to understanding the location patterns giving the consumers the based packages and promotions that suit their travel, shopping, dining lifestyle, and the like.

While there are a lot of advantages of social media, the major downside of social media networks is the consumer privacy. It can sometimes be exploit and can be used against a consumer for variety of reasons.

As always, I always mention that if you don’t want to be traced and searched, the best way to do so is to turn off thy mobile phone. However, these days not using a mobile phone is like living in the prehistoric stone age.

In our modern world, the business and technology keeps on innovating in order to thrive. And in order to compete and thrive is to give the best to the market audience.

And that is YOU.

Related Post: You’re Tagged And Analyzed

Til next time. Au revoir.

Citations:

– Various citations. Please contact the author.

culture, health, life, psychology, relationship

Sexaholics – Are You One Of Them?

chicpencil

Some of us has already come across the word “Sexaholic or Sexaholics”, a term that correlates to sexual fixation. A fix to addiction via sexual activities.

Like any other addiction, a sexaholic behaves the same; when the urge starts to kick in, the sexual fix needs to be satisfied.

Though the sexaholic statistics still remains a mystery, most of the known sexaholics are from the male gender. Yes. Men. I believe it boils down on how the male species are genetically wired and how men and women are being perceived by the society. Famous names who were rumored to be under the treatment of sex addictions were: Tiger Woods, David Duchovny, Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, among others.

How can a person become a sexaholic? 

The difference between sex addiction and the other variations of addictions (drugs and alcohols) is the method of acquisition. Drug and alcohol addiction would involve a certain threshold and a dependency to an object. It all starts with small amounts of drugs (cough syrup, heroin, etc) until the tolerance increases and addiction kicks in.

Sexual addiction on the other hand does not involve tolerance and no dependency either. Sexual desires emanates from the brain. A desire can lead to a strong sexual fantasy and the search for sexual partners kicks in. Sexual partners can be anyone, it can even lead to paying dominatrices. There is no object dependencies in this manner; for sexual addiction, it is all in the a person’s mind.

In this sense, there is a fine line between sexual addiction and the regular sexual desires. Sexual desires become sexaholism will all depend on the reasons why sexual activities satisfy the cravings or the fix. For a sexaholic, when the sexual cravings are satisfied, he/she becomes a better person, accepted, everything becomes a better world. The same cravings will happen again and the same satisfaction is justified.

Most common cause of sexaholism is depression, a struggle within a person’s internal self when a person feels rejection. Like any other addiction, the basic need of approval and acceptance is still the core of a sexaholic’s wants, needs, and desires.

Sexaholism is all about the person and the society. Unfortunately, there are norms, culture, and tradition that is being shaped by society and the judgement to sexaholics can become a downside to a sexaholic’s acceptance of the problem and the acceptance to undergo therapy or medication.

How can you tell if you’re a sexual addict?

There are various societal groups that are willing to help for sexaholics recovery. An alternative and probably the best way is to speak to a psychologist or your shrink.

Online quizzes are also available in order for a person to recognize if there’s a hint of sexual addiction:

http://www.addicted.com/addiction-resources/self-tests/sex-addiction-quiz

Everyone deserves second chances. Recovering from sexaholism is more challenging as it requires a mind and self control. However, it still begins with acceptance of the problem and moving on to recovery with a healthy and happy support system.

While most of us lives in accordance and acceptance by society, we must understand, accept and support those loved ones whom undergone a cop-out, or even a Freudian cop-out.

Til next time. Au revoir.

Citations:

– Various citations. Please contact the author.

security, technology, tips & tricks, troubleshooting

Error 51: Cisco VPN Connectivity

chicpencil

Okay, so this is the first time that I’m going to write about sharing technology resolutions based on my experience working as a consultant.

Lots of enterprises today implement security standards especially when accessing their corporate resources from remote networks.

It is but a norm to use VPN connectivity in order to impose restrictions to qualified and approve personnels to allow to logged in beyond corporate firewalls.

Cisco VPN software is a common name when it comes to VPN access. If you are using Cisco VPN, it is likely that you have the VPN client tool that you normally launched in order to connect to your company network.

As I have downloaded the Cisco VPN client for Mac OS, I was trying to configure it to be able to connect to the customer VPN network. However, configuring the latest Cisco VPN client 4.9.x wasn’t that easy in the latest releases of Mac OS.

I was stucked with Error 51: when launching Cisco VPN client for Mac.

After searching the internet for all the relative resolutions, the below solution steps did resolve the problem I faced.

My Mac OS Environment: Mac OS X 10.6.7

Solution Steps:

  • Go to your Network Preferences

  • Click on the + button in order to add a new network connection. If you have locked your system settings, you have to unlock it first by providing an admin account of your Mac OS. The new network connection will require settings.
  • After clicking ‘Create’, you will need to provide the Server Address, etc…

  • Next, click on ‘Authentication Setting’…

  • Now this is where a little challenge begins. You have to provide the ‘Shared Secret’. If this is not provided by the Cisco Administrator, it is likely that there is a .pcf file that is provided to you which you normally import to the Cisco VPN Client tool in order to import all the config settings. In this case, since you are not using the client software, you need to do the following:
  1. Open your .pcf file in any text editor. Locate for the Encryption. Copy the value of the Encryption parameter.
  2. Go to this website: http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode
  3. Provide the Encryption parameter from your .pcf file. Hit ‘Decode’ button and —
  4. You will see the Shared Secret in clear text.
  • Provide the Shared Secret in the network settings. The Group Name is also provided in your .pcf file.

  • Click ‘Ok’ and apply the settings. 
  • Now you can test logging in and provide your password (based on your login provided).

That’s it! You should be able to connect to the Cisco VPN of your company network.

In summary, you don’t actually need the Cisco VPN client for Mac in the latest Mac OS X versions as you can choose the Cisco IPSec protocol from the available Network Preferences.

As a code of ethics for us consultants, it is but included in the Non-Disclosure agreement that we are not allowed to share any customer information (names, passwords, etc) that we are working on. The above steps are helpful to work on the technology resolutions. I recommend not to abuse the VPN decoder link.

Til next time. Au revoir.

Reference:

The name Cisco referred by this article refers to Cisco Networks (www.cisco.com)

culture, life, relationship, society

Singles Galore

chicpencil

The Asian continent holds the largest set of population compared to the rest of the world attributing to China and India.

It is indeed perceived that Asians in general will get marry otherwise singles will be pressured by society, family, and friends. This statement holds true with respect to ethnicity and religion. Few Asian races still follow the ‘arrange marriage’ protocol no matter how modern the society is. The value of family life is still being followed – a typical Asian characteristics of having to belong to a group or population rather than being individualist.

However, Asians like any other fast moving cosmopolitan residents are affected by the same trend that people choses to be single. A fast moving economy affects the psychology of residents where competition is likely to be sky rocket high. Residents would rather focus on career and personal achievements rather than creating a family which entails responsibilities and life balance.

Why do people chose to be single?

A question that is very hard to answer especially when you’re still single and you belong to the demographics of 30 – 40 years of age.

Is it hard to give up independence when compromise is needed in a relationship?

Singapore though the country population is still considered low is an example of singles galore.

In 2010 Singapore census, the single population has raised to 32% as compared to 30% in year 2000.

Reference: singstat.gov.sg

Needless to mention that the single population is increasing in Singapore. Though dating is common within the diverse races composition, still a third of the residents prefer to be single.

Is education a contributing factor to a person’s singlehood?

Reference: singstat.gov.sg

It is interesting that in Singapore, based on the census statistics study last 2010, that men belonging to the population of 30 – 34 years tend to stay single with the follow qualifications:

  • below secondary
  • diploma and professional
  • university

While women within the population of 30 – 34 tend to stay single within the following qualifications:

  • diploma and professional
  • university

Could it be that magic of love is dying?

I do not believe such. The single population of 30 – 34 are most likely busy building their career as the workplace competition is high due to the multicultural populace of Singapore.

Another reason is that singles sometimes choose to be in such status due to the fear of commitments and responsibilities of marriage and family life.

When singles see their friends’ marriages are breaking up or have broke up, it impacts a silent trauma and fear to dwell to a married life.

Singlehood can be an art and singles are artists. Oftentimes, singles have a diverse range of activities, career, social life, and dating. Such activities can be stimulating to mind, body, and soul.

I often asked on the question of ‘How long do you still want to stay single?’

I just smiled and reply…

When I know then I know, when its time then its time, and when its the right person then he will be…      ~ Chic Pencil


Hold my hand please.

Til next time. Au revoir.

Reference:

Click to access findings.pdf

business, culture, international business, language

Would You Like To Speak My Language?

chicpencil

All the world’s a stage

– As You Like It by William Shakespeare

When I think about languages, the first person that comes to my mind is William Shakespeare. His creativity in his sonnets and plays has contributed to the expansion of English language. It was during his time when theatre plays has become popular as the form of entertainment.

Language is that aspect of communication which provides understanding to both the speaker and the listener (or the giver and the receiver). Needless to say, language plays the important role in business negotiations which is critical for company’s revenue.

He’s my nephew. Photo taken at Amsterdam, The Netherlands on September 2010.

Not everyone can speak the English language. And even English language spoken by Americans still possesses differences to the English language spoken by the British. In combination of culture, knowing a host country’s language is an added advantage for the international business negotiator. With Culture + Language, we can understand with clarity where the prospect customer(s) or the prospect business partner(s) are coming from. Not all languages are spoken, there are also the bodily languages that we need to understand.

Language is one of the challenges of an international manager or negotiator that need to overcome in order to win the business negotiation or implement the company’s global strategy.

Benjamin Lee Whorf is the known American linguist famous for his study of linguistic relativity. As per Whorf’s hypothesis, the language determines the nature of culture.

Whorf argued that words provide the concepts for understanding the world. According to Whorf, all languages have limited sets of words. These restricted word sets in turn constrain the ability of users to understand or conceptualize the world. Since language structures the way we think about what we see, it determines the cultural patterns.

Whorf’s hypothesis can also be interpreted as the most influential language has the control of economy and the world.

Although there are other studies conducted to disagree with Whorf’s claims, however, in my opinion, Whorf’s hypothesis and theory is true.

Taking into example the Southeast Asia region with countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines, these three countries are until now sharing words. Language between these three countries varies due to the colonization of different countries depicted in their country history. However, having been living, working, and communicating with these countries made me realized that we are still sharing few old words of which the meanings are exactly the same. And those words that we don’t have the commonality have been borrowed from the countries who colonized us. The behavior of the people or some aspects of culture vividly show similarities. When I consider comparing the country ratings of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions country ratings, it also shows similarities to some aspects of culture. Below is my analysis based using Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions of National Culture:

In conclusion, by basing from this example, the influence of language to other countries can be a tool to tap and to gain advantage during business deals and transactions to the host country. However, this is only the beginning or door opener for the international manager or business negotiator, it is still necessary to further understand not only the language that is verbally communicated but also the body language (implicit languages) from those countries belonging to the High Context Languages as distinct by anthropologist Edward T. Hall.

In the current economy, English has been the most common form of language used in business negotiations. As such, it is important for the international manager or negotiator to use the simplest English words (avoid the ‘slang’) in order to clearly deliver the message to the targeted audience.

As the famous Shakespeare once coined:

Brevity is the soul of wit.

It is through the simplest and precise words one’s intelligence is shown.

Til next time. Au revoir.

Citations:

  1. Cullen J, Parboteeah P, Multinational Management Strategic Approach 4ed, Thomson South-Western, c. 2008, pp. 641 – 643
  2. Benjamin Lee Whorf, “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf(3) Geert
  3. Hofstede Cultural Dimension http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php