The Royal Wedding !

Finally the big day comes to an end. Kate and Prince Williams' wedding was witnessed by more than 2 billion people worldwide on television. Wow now that's called viewership ! Even here in Pakistan all news channels spent the day covering the mega event and giving background knowledge on the royal family and the British monarchy.

Although the marriage was not as lavish as Princess Diana's but overall it was a nice event. It reminded of historical times when kingdoms used to be more common and people witnessed more of these royal occasions.
Wishing the couple best of luck for their future ! Long live the prince and the princess.

You can read the full story at yahoo articles, write here : The Royal Wedding

Heat !

Finally we're starting to feel the heat turn on in Karachi too. Its almost 35 centigrade outside. Personally i dislike summers, you sweat too much, get dehydrated ,get sun burns if you stay out for too long and if you're out of luck you might even faint due to low blood pressure. In short its really difficult to do anything in such weather.

Thanks to the power supply corporation there's also been an increase in power outages lately.Hot weather plus no electricity its a deadly combination !
To add to the misery my flu is back and its really killing me. Lets just hope it goes away soon.

Thats all for now. Take care all of you and protect yourself from the Sun.

PS: Conserve energy, turn off unnecessary lights and fans.

Mobile Spam !

First email, then messenger services and chat rooms now finally cell phones. Spam is everywhere and its spreading day by day. Most email service providers will boast that their filters have stopped or reduced spam content but it isn't true. Like all other industries the spam industry is also changing ....

So what actually is spam ? According to Wikipedia  spam is "unsolicited or undesired electronic messages" . In other words any unwanted,undesired, disturbing, annoying, irritating message is spam ! So how does it affects us? Basically advertisers use spam as a cheap marketing tool to push their products into our faces whether we're interested or not . The costs associated with spamming are minimal so it is preferred mostly by small businesses and of-course frauds who're always after your money.

Recently with the boom in telecommunication and decreasing cost of short messaging services (SMS)  spam has also made its way into the cellular networks across the globe.Spammers are now increasingly using mobile phones to spread unwanted messages.Spam SMS are really becoming a headache for cell phone users.

Personally I'm fed up of receiving texts about some new internet service in town, or the cheap substandard and probably fake viagra ads that i keep receiving on my cell. Seriously, telecom operators have to stop this otherwise we'll be drowned in a world full of spam.

Energy !

The recent increase in petroleum prices has brought across a new wave of inflation and price hikes not only in Pakistan but all across the world. Sometimes i wonder is this some kind of plan to starve out the poor and low income groups across the globe and reduce the planet's population ? Or is it the greediness of the ultra-rich oil giants to milk the world of all the wealth.

Anyhow we cannot control the global oil prices but we should at least do what lies in our hands. I fail to understand why Pakistan being a country that has numerous diverse energy resources relies so heavily on oil. We have unlimited supply of coal at Thar and in regions of Balochistan why don't we explore that area ? Why have we failed to attract foreign investors in the coal mining sector ?

Why don't we shift get hydro-electricity ? If a consensus cannot be reached on large dams we should at least go ahead with smaller units.Something is better than nothing.Then we have wind energy. Why don't we use our wind corridors to generate free, non-polluting electricity ?

Last but not the least we have the Sun on our side. We might be uncertain about most of the things in life but one thing is sure : The sun will rise everyday. We can look forward to the Sun to meet our energy demands. The world has seen exponential growth of solar energy in recent years so why should Pakistan remain behind in the race ?

A country having a diverse energy mix is least affected by fluctuations in oil prices. We will have to realize this fact and shift to other means to meet our energy requirements and the sooner we act the better it is. 

It's Over !

Finally the cricket world cup fever comes to an end with India winning the world title. Well most of us already knew that it would be India who would be taking the cup home due to their home ground advantage and the marvelous performance they gave in this entire tournament.

Nonetheless Sri lanka  also did well and kept fighting till the end. But as the saying goes "May the best man win."

Anyways...its over now and nothing can be done. So back to work everyone !

Pak-India Cricket Semi Final !

Finally the date all of us had been waiting for has arrived ! 30 March 2011 marks the beginning of a new exciting day. Everyone is set for the world cup semi final going to be played amongst India and Pakistan.

Although there's been some news about rain in Mohali where the match is going to be played but lets hope for the best.
For now, everyone keep your fingers crossed . Looking forward to an exciting match.....

8 Essentials They Didn't Teach You in School !

Lately, I’ve been simultaneously using less and less of what I learned in school while discovering more and more skills that are vital to success which were never even offered in school!
If I were to be 100% honest, probably the most valuable skill I learned in college was how to talk to girls (certainly a vital skill for happiness and success, but not what I was there to learn).
The economics classes? Nope, mostly academic mumbo-jumbo that is entirely useless to all but a handful of policy makers. The computer science classes? Hmm, maybe about 10% of that I’ve used, but it’s nothing I couldn’t have picked up with a couple good books, which I routinely do now. The history, English, philosophy, and physics? Aside from giving me a general understanding of the world and making me sound smart at cocktail parties, I can’t think of anything in there that I really use on a day to day basis.
Much of college gave me a bad taste for education. It made learning a real drag. I got through it to get the degree, but it wasn’t until after school that my education really began.
So what are the top skills that should be taught to every man, woman, and child who enters our education system? I’m glad you asked…

How to make people like you and network

For a skill so essential to success that affects every area of your life (from dating, to family, to work) it’s amazing how little people know about this. I can hear you saying…”I thought some people were just born with it and the rest of us were out of luck! You mean it’s something you can study?” Well, yes!
There is great power in knowing you can reach out to your network whenever you have a problem to solve, to be able to reach key influencers at conferences and meetings, to make an impression on audiences, to project confidence and trustworthiness, and to make friends with other successful people.
The shy folks lurking in the corners at cocktails parties will never reach their full potential as human beings because our school system didn’t place enough value on “being social”. President Bush didn’t get the best grades at Princeton, but boy did he know how to network, and look where that got him.
Required reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships.

How to speed read and the power of audio books

Yes, speed reading and speed comprehension is real. The nominal investment of time it takes to learn pays off in spades for the rest of your life. After all, how would your life be different if you were able to read an extra book each week?
The same goes with audio books. If you spend an hour per day in the car learning instead of cursing at other drivers or listening to Britney Spears, you will have attended the equivalent of an entire semester course. Every major book today comes out on audio book, and you can read (listen to) them all without taking any additional time out of your day. Why wouldn’t you?
Looking at all the “required reading” links in this article might seem a little overwhelming, but I was able to listen to them all on audio books while driving around town. It was actually fun.
Required reading: The Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracey

How to set goals and manage time

Want to know how to get anything done in life? Our school system doesn’t feel that this is worth teaching apparently, but call me crazy, I think it’s important (I’m probably preaching to the choir on LifeHack.org, but still).
The research that has come out lately is groundbreaking…everything from eliminating multi-tasking, using blocks of uninterrupted time where phone and email are off, prioritized to-do lists, urgent but unimportant vs. non-urgent but important tasks, etc.
If you have ever found yourself being busy all day only to wonder what you accomplished at the end of it, then you need to learn this stuff. Understanding productivity will give you such an advantage over other people it’s hardly even fair.
Required reading: Getting Things Done, Eat That Frog, No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs

How to read a financial statement

Robert Kiyosaki is fond of saying that the rich teach their children how to read financial statements and the poor do not. He is right. Schools have never been very good at teaching people how to get rich, probably in no small part because professors are generally poor and wouldn’t know how to teach it.
Yet with 95% of our population retiring at or below the poverty level, the economy in the dumps, and many people losing their homes to foreclosure, I bet plenty of Americans wish their school system had been a little more focused on money. After leaving college my friends could tell you the symbolic meaning behind the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tales, but they couldn’t tell you the difference between a balance sheet and income statement. Nice job school system!
Required reading: Cash Flow Quadrant, or this blog article

How to negotiate, use contracts, and not get taken advantage of

If you want to accomplish anything of significance you’re going to have to work with other people. Whether its contractors, outsourcing, employees, etc…there is a certain art to structuring good contracts with these people, knowing how to find good talent, measuring results, knowing how to fire them, and not getting completely taken for a ride in the process. School teaches you none of this and most people have to learn it from the school of hard knocks by literally get taken advantage of several times.
Required reading: I haven’t seen many in this area but one that comes to mind is Donald Trumps The Art Of The Deal

How to save and invest

Again, people are never taught how to build wealth, which is why we have a nation in credit card debt. Moreover, they are never taught the power of passive income streams and how to really break free from the rat race of working 9-to-5. There is a whole body of literature on this topic which is never even touched upon in traditional education.
Required reading: The Richest Man In Babylon, The Millionaire Next Door, or Ben Franklin’s The Way To Wealth

How to be successful in life

Sounds sort of broad, doesn’t it? Yet some people have devoted a lifetime to understanding what makes people happy and successful. There are the big three: health, wealth, and relationships. People need to find what they really want to do with their life (something few of us ever really think about). We need to figure out how to do scary things that would be good for us, break bad habits, how to let go of bad things in the past, etc. There is a lot to learn here!
Required reading: What To Say When You Talk To Yourself, When I Say No I Feel Guilty, Think and Grow Rich, The Way Of The Superior Man (Ladies maybe you can recommend a relationship book for women in the comments)

How to spread an idea and basic marketing

Finally, I’ll just say that the basics of marketing are something everyone should understand. Even if you don’t think you’re in marketing, you’re in marketing. If you have an idea at work, or want to get a raise, or want to convince your kids to go see a movie then there is something applicable from the marketing world. Even just picking out a good headline for something you’re writing so that it will actually get read requires some basic marketing skills.
Required reading: Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter, CopyBlogger, The Psychology of Influence

Conclusion

Until the school system comes around, I suppose its up to each of us to take care of our own education. That means reading, finding mentors, audio books, going to conferences, and of course blogs are a great resource.
What did you miss out on in school that you wish you’d learned? Or if you’re an educator do you feel there is a mismatch between what is taught and what’s important? Leave a comment below!

Brian Armstrong is a 25 year old entrepreneur who achieved financial freedom working for himself! Today he seeks to help others do the same as a writer, speaker, and consultant. Prior to becoming self employed, Brian’s work experience ranged from fortune 500 companies, to several small startups with less than 15 employees. In 2001, he ventured out on his own with his first company and was instantly hooked, starting two more in the next five years. Brian currently resides in Houston, TX leading authority on how to quit your job to work for yourself.