True Capitalist – Entrepreneur – Maritime Visionary

  By pico | December 28, 2012 - 2:48 am |
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This is  a bit about Goh Chok Tong, a true capitalist, entrepreneur and maritime visionary. He was the chairman of Singapore Inc., he invested in many places around the world and he is still doing it now.

On Kra Canal

The development of Kra Canal of Thailand has been lots of going on in many forum discussions for years. Netters from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Singapore and other stakeholder countries develop assumptions and rumors on predictions, consequences and anticipation scenarios. Some even believes that Singaporean bribes some from Thailand administration key persons and parliament members to halt the plan.

Obviously, the canal operation will effectively reduce traffic on Malacca Strait. This makes some perceive Singaporeans are afraid to lose their geographical advantage. I have not yet see a poll result of how Singaporean see this, nor I will search for it. What interests me is about Mr. Goh Chok Tong’s pragmatism point of view in this.

Singapore’s position is a simple one. If the Thais find the Kra canal commercially feasible, go ahead. There is nothing we can do to stop it. It is in a Thai national interest. How can we tell Thais not to have the Kra canal for our sake? We have done our homework. We think the project won’t take off because the distance saved is short. The southern part of Malaysia and Singapore are natural destinations in their own right. People come there for cargo. So they may go through the Kra canal but they still want to come down south to pick up the cargo. If you want to use the Kra canal for Japan, those who do not require to pick up cargo in the south, how much money can you make from them? (Laughs). Our position is if it is feasible for you, go ahead and we cannot stop it (laughs) . . . If it is feasible, then what do we do, eh? We’ll invest in the Kra canal. The Port of Singapore Authority would then better function in Thailand with Thai partners. (source)

It’s obvious, he is a true capitalist, entrepreneur and has a sophisticated maritime mindset.

personal investment abroad

  By pico | December 1, 2012 - 12:22 am | , ,
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A friend of mine runs his own small shipyard since 2009. Prior to that he worked at a ship design company as a naval architect for about 5 years. He never made big number take home pay as a naval architect in that company, so that his shipyard investment in early 2009 was my wondering, noted that the Europe and USA were in deep monetary crisis at that time, nor he had no sort of business portfolio to be shown to domestic investors. Later on, he explained it to me.

“I took liberty to establish connection to a group of personal investors in Europe. Yes, they suffered too.. but it wasn’t like the major banking and insurance firms had. Fortunately, they saw opportunity to move their investment to some Asian countries.. which they think had well developed structure and actually fitted for personal investment rather than major bubbled thing,” he explained.

I was told, about €6 million was invested by that group which only has 35 personal investors.

I figured.. these personals were fully aware that their Euro can buy more business than in their homecountry.. yet, they foresaw invulnerable businesses away from monetary crises…

the state of not writing what is written

Aside

  By pico | May 16, 2012 - 1:20 pm | ,
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this is personal
I haven’t write much about internet and technology for years.. No particular excuse but simply for what question. 
There are written codes everywhere that you can read saying something is going to be something and other things are vanishing.. codes that tell some will misdirected and some will make fortune (wherein such condition is not fortune whatsoever because it’s simply known) out of something less valuable.. 
I read those codes somewhere not here although I wasn’t even being present there.. 
I read those codes from time to time.. and then had just realized that some was not for share.. despite all goodness of sharing principle, you know that you shouldn’t because it was someone else duty and yours were to act based upon instead.. 

Female Guitarist – YouTuber

  By pico | April 14, 2012 - 11:56 pm | , ,
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YouTube Preview Image
Playing solo is Juliette Valduriez, one of many young female talented guitarists you can find on youtube. Before youtube, I never seen Juliette nor any other female virtuoso perform anywhere.. except Jennifer Batten, of course. Today, I find so many videos show female talents on guitar.. some of them: yasi13, mssandrabae, sarah michelle, shanibanez,  andreiapasso, or some less youtuber but they’re there, like su, jess, this, this, this, and more..
Watching those video makes me think that I am not even close as a guitar player. They play difficult shred at very young ages, while I spent years to learn to cover a malmsteen’s solo imperfectly. Could this be an obvious example of morphic resonance that makes the next generation always do better than their predecessor?
Anyway.. I found a generic comment appears on almost all of those videos.. It says, “Marry me…”. These girls wouldn’t be worry much to look for their future husband.

the era of paramore by parawhore

  By pico | August 21, 2011 - 12:36 pm | , , , ,
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Two days ago, Paramore live at Ancol, Jakarta (August 19, 2011) proved that they deserve today’s the “best rock band” title. The Parawhore (paramore’s fans) enthusiastic responses just confirmed it. Am I not being objective here? For once, I feel like no need to be objective for this matter and I have every right to dictate my truth in this blog.

See this video, witness how the Paramore and Parawhore made my point..

Look at that amazing crowd! After that Ancol show, I’ve just realized that Indonesian Parawhores heart paramore to their bones.. I hope Hayley can endure this era of Paramore longer..

on musician network

  By pico | December 18, 2010 - 6:13 pm | , , ,
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On my sister’s pre wedding dinner at Rimini, Italy, I met my brother in law’s cousin (Edoardo’s cousin) who has an internet-music collaboration project. Name is Valerio Mastropietro, a passionate guy with great interest in music and the internet. He shared his thought about his project, what I called a musician network.. He, however described it as a music collaboration portal and communities.. We’d drown our selves on that particular for a while and continued it in Rome at his smokey music room… Then led me to write this..

Valerio’s basic idea is to exploit this technology medium (internet) for a better collaboration platform for musician everywhere. Few he said were about musician finding partners for song completion, music arrangement, sharing equipments, general music venue information, independent labels, distribution and more.. My dumb capitalist first thought was songs exchange between local musics. eg. Indonesian songs to be translated into Italian with few modifications on instrument or  music arrangement.. Well, dumb isn’t it..

I was so excited to get involve in that project.. until then I browsed around to find out about the existing music portal or specifically, a social network for musician. I found out these two sites very helpful: Which social networking site is most useful to you and list of social networking websites (wikipedia), which then I filtered it to get the musician related only:

Not all above is about music end to end music production collaboration platform. Some only do the marketplace. Anyhow, as an internet enthusiast, I feel that some of those actually has already has functions that Valerio told me. Oh.. yes, he did say that it would be much better if the project is done by musicians.. for whatever that means, I support his cause..

Finally.. please visit freemindfactory.com (currently only in Italian)

happy birthday to a friend

Aside

  By pico | August 14, 2010 - 9:13 pm |
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exactly a year ago my birthday wishes to you led us to a problem.. then few days later a calamity happened. That was the last friendly conversation we had..

I can’t undo any of those evil things I had done to you.. Surely I live it regretfully each day..

I wish you and Donita have a much better life today..

Happy birthday Nana Sutarman

sincerely yours

pico

the internet won’t be the internet again

  By pico | January 17, 2010 - 4:50 pm | ,
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Pranav Mistry from MIT demonstrates his experiment of integrating physical world with digital world. The way I see, this will be available on the market real soon, and of course will make gadget giants redefine their future gadgets. The idea is not new whatsoever, ‘the how to’ is recently revealed. If you haven’t watch his presentation yet, please do and share your comment..

This also create an awareness to software/web developers of what is going to be hot on the market in near future. The internet won’t be the internet again, because almost everyone and everything is in it, using devices and services to access the most organized informations. Just like Google has it in their mission..
However, worry not for everything is easy to find/to do.. The life and universe remains the biggest mystery..

Can Indonesian develop sort of devices? Ups.. Sorry the appropriate question is “would Indonesian develop such devices?”