It's yet another day, and you may be one of the few working hard, or the many relaxing and enjoying the fruits of labour (theirs or someone else's).
Then you get a call, or someone interrupts you. Things for the person are very thick, and they need an emergency loan. "See what you can do". Alternatively, they may be wanting to expand their business, which they copied from the one doing well across the street. After all, if its doing well across the street, or next door , it will do well here.
Some, like your neighbour, may be rude enough to knock at your door on Saturday morning, and after you take enough man hours to get to the door and respond, you find that they are sorry for waking you up. You then find out that they need some money to pay their house-help which they do not have, and you been very eager to get back to sleep, make the mistake of lending them double the money, change to be returned immediately and the rest by the end of the day.
As for your friend who needs some cash to celebrate Christmas before the delayed salary arrives, or is stuck at some border post after they overspend their meagre earnings and need to get back to Nairobi, you are kind and stupid enough to lend them.
As for the friend who needs to copy the business across the street, they go to the bank and borrow enough cash to buy a car and make a spirited attempt at copying the successful business. The bank happens not to trust their business sense, and asks them to provide tow guarantors, who the bank strictly vets. You end up being friendly enough to become a guarantor.
The biggest problem with helping people out when they are in the thick is that they forget that they owe you. It escapes me how somebody who was so broke could forget that you bailed them out of the problem. After making you alter your spending to save their skinny asses, they will get back to leading a normal life and leave you to absorb the cost.
Things can get worse. If you were stupid enough to become a guarantor, you may wake up one day to find the copycat business closed, all cleaned up, and you may also be rudely surprised to find that as of last evening, they no longer live in your town, and no one knows where they moved to.
As the bank raids your earnings to repay their loan, it may be an opportune time to think about that business and how you were the only customer.
At times, you wonder whether its actually beneficial to lend to friends who are quick at forgetting that they owe you. It may be better to refer them to professional lenders, aka Banks who know how to better deal with amnesia.
Maybe we can borrow a leaf from SavvyKenya on how to deal with difficult creditors via social media
Kenya, Africa: General life and a dash of ICT usually with a satirical and critical sprinkling.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Sunday, 16 January 2011
China Lessons: How to catch up in innovation
In my last blog post, we learned from the Chinese how we can be entrepreneurs by making up for what nature will not adequately supply. Well, like Kenyan TV stations and their Geoecopolitical features (Geographic-economic and political) features, one feature about a certain area is not enough, and we need a series of them, case in point, Southern Sudan). In short, we are now returning to China.
We are barely halfway through the first month of this year, and barely scratched this decade, but a lot has happened, in China, that is.
The United States once thought that China, fast becoming an economic superpower, was still catching up military wise. The US military predicted that the earliest China would test a stealth plane would be the start of the next decade. Well, they were wrong, by almost a whole decade.
China in early January "secretly" tested a stealth aeroplane in a publicly viewable field.
In related news, the Americans were busy conducting naval tests in the Far East, with some of their sophisticated naval equipment. The test was highly guarded by what we journalists may report as some of the world's most sophisticated technology. An even more sophisticated Chinese submarine happened to pop out of nowhere in the midst of the many Aircraft carriers. The Chinese submarine had managed to get to the midst of the naval exercise undetected. China swears by their God that this was totally a coincidence.
In what appears to be unrelated news, the Chinese have been busy using their computers. While we were busy trying to torrent last night's episode of CSI, or playing one of those 100 in 1 movie DVDs from China, the Chinese were busy snooping on computers and ICT systems of computers in other countries.
In fact, it took several years for some companies to realize that their ICT systems had totally been compromised by hackers in China. However, we insist that the fact that increased activity on the stealth Chinese jet plane began at the same time that several sub contractors of Lockheed began been compromised , is a coincidence. Lockheed is the main contractor tasked with supplying the US Military with stealth planes. At least 6 of Lockheed's sub contractor's were reportedly completely compromised by Chinese, over several years.
You see, Chinese hackers are so complex, that even Google, a firm containing several of the world's top ICT brains took a few months to notice that its systems were also been compromised.
Lesson here is that we should put more effort in training hackers, then snoop on the US, China and other developed countries. After catching up with these, we can then put more effort in Research and Development.
I urge all Kenyans to vote for me in 2012, and we shall snoop and spy our way to a super power, economically and military prowess.
Meanwhile, I urge the Americans to continue been deeply divided over whether its Democrats or Republicans. This gives the politicians a bigger problem to worry about than a snoopy competitor thousands of miles away.
We are barely halfway through the first month of this year, and barely scratched this decade, but a lot has happened, in China, that is.
The United States once thought that China, fast becoming an economic superpower, was still catching up military wise. The US military predicted that the earliest China would test a stealth plane would be the start of the next decade. Well, they were wrong, by almost a whole decade.
China in early January "secretly" tested a stealth aeroplane in a publicly viewable field.
In related news, the Americans were busy conducting naval tests in the Far East, with some of their sophisticated naval equipment. The test was highly guarded by what we journalists may report as some of the world's most sophisticated technology. An even more sophisticated Chinese submarine happened to pop out of nowhere in the midst of the many Aircraft carriers. The Chinese submarine had managed to get to the midst of the naval exercise undetected. China swears by their God that this was totally a coincidence.
In what appears to be unrelated news, the Chinese have been busy using their computers. While we were busy trying to torrent last night's episode of CSI, or playing one of those 100 in 1 movie DVDs from China, the Chinese were busy snooping on computers and ICT systems of computers in other countries.
In fact, it took several years for some companies to realize that their ICT systems had totally been compromised by hackers in China. However, we insist that the fact that increased activity on the stealth Chinese jet plane began at the same time that several sub contractors of Lockheed began been compromised , is a coincidence. Lockheed is the main contractor tasked with supplying the US Military with stealth planes. At least 6 of Lockheed's sub contractor's were reportedly completely compromised by Chinese, over several years.
You see, Chinese hackers are so complex, that even Google, a firm containing several of the world's top ICT brains took a few months to notice that its systems were also been compromised.
Lesson here is that we should put more effort in training hackers, then snoop on the US, China and other developed countries. After catching up with these, we can then put more effort in Research and Development.
I urge all Kenyans to vote for me in 2012, and we shall snoop and spy our way to a super power, economically and military prowess.
Meanwhile, I urge the Americans to continue been deeply divided over whether its Democrats or Republicans. This gives the politicians a bigger problem to worry about than a snoopy competitor thousands of miles away.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
The Chinese way to become an imaginative entrepreneur
How enterprising can one get?The Oxford Dictionary describes an entrepreneur as a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit. A very simple definition. Most of us aspire to make money in life, and to be our own bosses, hence we can safely assume that most of us aspire to be entrepreneurs.
However,most of us start off employed as we wait to kick off our entrepreneurship skills, skills which we never end up practising. Some of us, when employed, try out some form of entrepreneurship through small scale businesses, such as card making, drawing, cooking mandazis or chapos etc.
Well, you may argue that during creation, they may have forgotten to bestow you with a certain skill or talent that you can practise for some loose change. At the same time, you may also claim that you were not born with a silver spoon, be it a table or tea spoon, in your mouth hence your capabilities to try out any business are limited.
At the same time, you will read of how the Chinese , and a times the Indians, are very entrepreneurial and are now selling to the rest of the world resulting in a booming economy. At times, you may even wonder what the Chinese have that you do not.
For starters, imagination. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be quite imaginative, way imaginative than nature, like the Chinese are.
You see, the Chinese have discovered that you can process goods from crops, or even animal produce. Well, this has been happening for ages, so it is not something new. However, to get animal or crop produce, you need suitable climatic conditions to either rear the animals or grow the crops. This do not happen everywhere, and most of the times, demand in certain geographical areas for a product like milk, honey or wine may outstrip supply.
In such situations where demand outstrip supply, you can either bring the product in from other geographical locations where supply is higher , or you can modify climatic conditions to increase supply. Modifying climatic conditions can be done in ways such as greenhouses and irrigation.
Better yet, as an imaginative entrepreneur, you can actually create your own product. If milk, honey, wine and even eggs or flour are not sufficient enough where you live, you can emulate the Chinese and create artificial products, or modify the natural ones so that you have a higher quantity of a product under short supply.
Over the last two years, the Chinese have been caught adulterating powder milk, making artificial honey and recently making artificial wine.
In one instance, a farmer was sentenced to death for operating a training class in China which taught milk powder producers on how to add melamine to diluted milk so that it can appear to have more protein than it contained.
A second instance saw several wineries shut down over the Christmas period in China. One of the wineries was producing wine using filtered water, sugar, chemicals and grape flavouring. All I can do is pity those who were still sober after drinking bottles of this stuff.
In even another instance, the Chinese figured that they could do better than natural Chinese honey rejected in the USA due to high concentration of agricultural chemicals. The entrepreneurs went ahead to chemically manufacture some product that resembled honey. They even went ahead to ship the honey and repackage it in India , Indonesia and other countries so that it could appear that it came from those countries. The problem was that it was so cheap that the eventual buyer became suspicious and run lab tests on it. Well, it tasted like honey, looked like honey but was thinner than honey.
Well, at this point, am afraid of visiting China, and if I do, trust me to carry my own food and drink, or remain in a fast during my stay there.
Otherwise, these are important lessons on how we can be imaginative entrepreneurs, and make a killing while at it. A financial killing and kill several people who take toxic milk, honey or wine. Meanwhile, I am off to figure whether its possible to artificially produce cheaper eggs or whether de-colourised dirty water is a better short in arid areas.
However,most of us start off employed as we wait to kick off our entrepreneurship skills, skills which we never end up practising. Some of us, when employed, try out some form of entrepreneurship through small scale businesses, such as card making, drawing, cooking mandazis or chapos etc.
Well, you may argue that during creation, they may have forgotten to bestow you with a certain skill or talent that you can practise for some loose change. At the same time, you may also claim that you were not born with a silver spoon, be it a table or tea spoon, in your mouth hence your capabilities to try out any business are limited.
At the same time, you will read of how the Chinese , and a times the Indians, are very entrepreneurial and are now selling to the rest of the world resulting in a booming economy. At times, you may even wonder what the Chinese have that you do not.
For starters, imagination. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be quite imaginative, way imaginative than nature, like the Chinese are.
You see, the Chinese have discovered that you can process goods from crops, or even animal produce. Well, this has been happening for ages, so it is not something new. However, to get animal or crop produce, you need suitable climatic conditions to either rear the animals or grow the crops. This do not happen everywhere, and most of the times, demand in certain geographical areas for a product like milk, honey or wine may outstrip supply.
In such situations where demand outstrip supply, you can either bring the product in from other geographical locations where supply is higher , or you can modify climatic conditions to increase supply. Modifying climatic conditions can be done in ways such as greenhouses and irrigation.
Better yet, as an imaginative entrepreneur, you can actually create your own product. If milk, honey, wine and even eggs or flour are not sufficient enough where you live, you can emulate the Chinese and create artificial products, or modify the natural ones so that you have a higher quantity of a product under short supply.
Over the last two years, the Chinese have been caught adulterating powder milk, making artificial honey and recently making artificial wine.
In one instance, a farmer was sentenced to death for operating a training class in China which taught milk powder producers on how to add melamine to diluted milk so that it can appear to have more protein than it contained.
A second instance saw several wineries shut down over the Christmas period in China. One of the wineries was producing wine using filtered water, sugar, chemicals and grape flavouring. All I can do is pity those who were still sober after drinking bottles of this stuff.
In even another instance, the Chinese figured that they could do better than natural Chinese honey rejected in the USA due to high concentration of agricultural chemicals. The entrepreneurs went ahead to chemically manufacture some product that resembled honey. They even went ahead to ship the honey and repackage it in India , Indonesia and other countries so that it could appear that it came from those countries. The problem was that it was so cheap that the eventual buyer became suspicious and run lab tests on it. Well, it tasted like honey, looked like honey but was thinner than honey.
Well, at this point, am afraid of visiting China, and if I do, trust me to carry my own food and drink, or remain in a fast during my stay there.
Otherwise, these are important lessons on how we can be imaginative entrepreneurs, and make a killing while at it. A financial killing and kill several people who take toxic milk, honey or wine. Meanwhile, I am off to figure whether its possible to artificially produce cheaper eggs or whether de-colourised dirty water is a better short in arid areas.
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