Ube-Macapuno Salad

I'm going to try this simple ube-macapuno salad next week (I hope). I still have this persistent cough for over a week and the doctor advised to stay away from sweets and cold drinks for the meantime.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup ube jam
• 1 pack instant gulaman
• 1/4 cup (300ml) Alaska condensed milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup macapuno preserve
• 1/3 cup toasted pinipig
• remaining Alaska condensed milk
• 1 pack Alaska Crema

Procedure:
To make the ube gulaman cubes, place ube jam, Alaska condensada, gulaman powder, and water in a pan. Cook over low heat until gulaman is totally dissolved. Pour in a rectangular mold and let it set. Cut into cubes.

In a bowl, blend Alaska condensada and Alaska crema. Toss in ube gulaman cubes and pinipig. Chill until ready to serve.

Serves 8.

Scrubs for Women

Five years ago, I took up a short-term course in Medical Transcription. Our instructor was great and I enjoyed every activity we had. On our second month, we were required to wear scrubs and I was very excited to have one. I always admired people with medical training wearing scrub suits. They really look neat! Aside from that, scrubs are loose-fitting, comfortable clothes. It's like wearing your pajamas while working!

I bought mine at a local store. The designs were very limited though. I didn't have other options. That time I didn't know that cheap scrubs could also be bought online. We were lucky to have our on-the-job training at one of the clinics nearby. They impose color-coded scrubs on their employees/volunteers to differentiate positions. We were wearing maroon scrubs though I'd prefer pink scrubs for women like the photo posted above.

Anyway, if you are working at a doctor's office or hospital , you may want to check scrubs for women here, http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Women/

5 traits of a successful lifestyle-product exporter

Filipino design has received acclaim and accolade all over the world. Each year more local designers and entrepreneurs are looking at the export market. But what does it take for a neophyte in the home and fashion lifestyle export sector to make it big?

Rosvi C. Gaetos, executive director of the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, shares the secret traits of successful global entrepreneurs.

• Passionate. "Do not lose steam. A lot of new designer entrepreneurs who venture into the export market easily lose hope when they face challenges, a little bump here and they opt to close down. You will only survive if you have the passion to push through for your dreams even when times are rough."

• Creative. "It is a very competitive industry and the competitive edge of Philippine design is the creativity. A lot of successful designers would think out of the box. Creativity plays an important role in the success of the business."

• Innovative. "This industry is all about innovation. Either you innovate or die. You have to have the flexibility to use non traditional materials or non traditional techniques in developing your products."

• Skillful. "Filipino artisanship is recognized worldwide as one of the best. No other country in the Asia-Pacific region can lay claim to that."

• Business-savvy. "At the end of the day, it is still a business that you have to run--do accounting, inventory, and sales. You need to have a business sense in order to succeed. You must know your market and know what it needs or want."
  

source: http://www.entrepreneur.com.ph

The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of
coffee....

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty
mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.
He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the
golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space
between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things---God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favourite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else---the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you. "Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

All About Attitude

Jerry is the manager of a restaurant.

He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant.

The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude.

He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time.

How do you do it?"

Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood.

"Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it.”

"Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life."

"But it's not always that easy," I protested.

"Yes, it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.”

"You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood. It's your choice how you live your life."

Several years later, I heard that Jerry accidentally did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business. He left the back door of his restaurant open one morning and was robbed by three armed men.

While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him.

Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Want to see my scars?" I declined to see his wounds but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared?" I asked. Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.

"In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked. "Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything."

'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!'

"Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.'"

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy your life or to hate it.

The only thing that is truly yours that no one can control or take from you - is your attitude, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.

~Author Unknown~

source: http://www.allmoneymatters.com.au

How to start a salon business

Almost every mall in Metro Manila is said to have two to eight beauty salons.

According to the 1999 Job Demand Survey of the Levittown Beauty Academy, salon owners receive an average of 174 clients a week. But a chair, a mirror and a pair of scissors are not the only things you’ll need if you want to start a salon business.

Lidwina Morales, owner of Lid Salon in Malate, Manila, invested P500,000 initially on equipment and her parlor’s interior. Janett Pineda, a franchisee of David’s Salon in San Pedro, Laguna, bought the franchise for P2 million and took over the parlor in November 2002.

But you need not spend big bucks right away. Patrick Bishop, author of Money-tree Marketing, says “Don’t overspend. Buy used equipment or rent a space that was a beauty salon previously, but is vacant and includes all the equipment.”

Pick your location well

In a salon business, you must pick your location carefully. One won’t go wrong picking a mall. You'd also want to cater from Class A to C. Spend time looking for a good location and an area that would give you a comfortable size. Consider a place near a restaurant so that it would be convenience for your customers to buy snacks in case they get hungry. It’s also a good idea to pick an area with lots of foot traffic if you think you’ll depend on walk-in clients.

Invest in good equipment

It’s better to buy good used equipment if you can get it. If you prefer new supplies, shops like Hortaleza and Accessories and Beauty Equipment stock everything you are likely to need. It is also important to buy high-quality shampoos and chemicals for nail care, hair treatment and coloring to please your clients. Try to charge reasonable rates, but do not compromise on quality.

Train your staff

Now it’s time to recruit good people for your parlor. Your staff should have the technical expertise especially in hair coloring and styling using international standards as a benchmark. They have to undergo regular training to update them on new products, hairstyles and customer service.

Ricky Reyes Learning Institute offers a three-month cosmetology course that costs P14,900 and includes hair cutting, coloring, perming, styling, make-up, manicure and facial treatment. The Classic School of Cosmetology in Binondo, Manila, offers short courses in hair coloring, blow drying and scalp manipulation, among other things, for P1,500 to P4,000.

Salon franchises take care of personnel training and provide equipment and supplies. They take care of almost everything—even bookkeeping and accounting and the preparation of the payroll. You just wait for your monthly dividend. It’s up to the owner if he wants to visit the parlor once in a while.

It’s important to keep your employees happy to avoid high staff turnover. You may consider giving them salaries apart from commissions. Salon Studio follows a chart system where suppliers reward parlor staff selling their products.

Price your services well

Salon Studio uses celebrities like MTV videodisc jockey Donita Rose and former Binibining Pilipinas-World Daisy Reyes to promote the chain. Reyes Haircutters believes in charging minimal fees for maximum profit. Continuous research is very important to know the latest trends. Think how can you innovate.

According to Les Reyes, founder of the Reyes Haircutters chain of beauty salons, there are a few things you must know about the business before investing in it:

• Naming your salon after yourself may not work in the long run. There are icons in the beauty salon business who have successfully built a business around their names. The downside is when they die or grow old, says Les Reyes.

• Find your niche. Your target market will determine your choice of location, pricing, promotion strategies, and brand image. Reyes Haircutters is very clear about its market positioning—it’s a clean, well-designed salon offering quality services to the masses, and it doesn’t compete directly with Ricky Reyes and David’s.

• Conduct your promotions during lean hours. Few customers usually come in between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon. To boost business during off-peak hours, Reyes Haircutters offers 40-percent discounts to senior citizens and free haircuts to infants.

• Keep a profile of each customer. Les Reyes plans to develop a card that will carry valuable facts on each customer. If a client’s regular hairdresser is absent when she visits the salon, whoever assists her simply swipes her card on the computer to obtain information on her preferred services, likes and dislikes.

• Assign a person to handle inventory control. Assign accountability for releasing parlor supplies to a stock clerk. He alone should have access to your inventory to make it easier to prevent or control pilferage.

• Measure the amount of chemicals needed for each type of service. Know, for example, the number of haircuts and hot oil treatments you can provide using one bottle of shampoo and moisturizer.

• Be a hands-on manager. How much money you make is a function of the amount of time you spend in the salon. You have to be there because it will greatly affect the sales, the energy and the customer service, among others.

source: http://www.entrepreneur.com.ph; photo from http://www.cruisereviews.com

Forex Trading

Forex trading is an international exchange market whose daily average turnover is more than 1.5 trillion dollars. The word “FOREX” is abbreviated as FOREIGN EXCHANGE and in broad manner we would say it’s a market where one currency is traded for another and this is done in the hope that one can make profits on any losses or gains in the movement of currencies.

The trade of currencies is done in pairs i.e., the currency which one buy’s in the belief that in future its price will rise, the trading term related to this is called “the long position” and the other to sell in belief that its value will fall in future and the profit is made by buying it back on the lesser value, and the trading term related to this is called “the short position”.

The whole profit making in FOREX depends upon the movement between the 2 currencies which is not so high, so to make huge profits, one has to buy hundreds of dollars worth of currency at a time. Independent brokers and currency dealers make up a small percentage of FOREX TRADING but the major part comes from the banks, investment management firms and brokerages and according to The Wall Street Journal, the top ten currency traders which includes Deutsche Bank, UBS, HSBC, Barclays, etc., account for almost 73% of trading volume.

The trading can be done 24 hours a day except on the weekends, so it provides great opportunity for FOREX traders to work at their own conveniences. Due to its extreme liquidity and very high trading volume, the foreign exchange market is quite unique, but it said that FOREX TADING is not as easy as it seems so. A person new to FOREX TRADING should brush up his skills before getting his hands wet and should study both fundamental & technical analyses.

source: dailyarticle.com; photo from www.forexbreakthrough.com