For all you currency investors and speculators out there, here is a chart showing the exchange rates of EURO vs USD and EURO vs SGD.

Remember, my blog is meant to be humorous and all posts are to be not taken seriously nor to be taken to be hundred percent accurate. Thus, when you use the data here for investment analysis or decisions, you are going to do so while laughing to yourself and having an overall sense of humor, and are going to say “Ha ha ha, this blog is so amusing, I shall not take this advice too seriously.”

Thanks for reading the disclaimer, now, although that has been said, the point from the above two charts is that you can use it as one source of information for making investment decisions, but only as one source, you still need to consider many other sources.

What I can offer is a small amount of analysis that can answer your question: Should I buy Euros now?

As we all know, you buy something when it is low-priced, and sell when it is high-priced. Like in Mafia Wars, the Facebook game.

So, if you buy the Euro, when will the price rise again?

Observe the below two charts to find out:

The point is, that although the Euro is low now, it has been low before, and even lower, prior to June 2003.

Another point is, it could take more than 3 years before the price of the Euro rises again, IF the chart data will replicate itself in the future, AND IF confidence in it went to what it was like after the Euro was just introduced.

The euro became the official currency for 11 of the 15 European Union’s countries on January 1, 1999.

So why are we talking about the Euro in the first place?

We all know that Greece just said “GG” (Good Game in geek-speak) to its economy, meaning that it just got screwed. Poor Greeks, I mean they were portrayed to be really good in Age of Empires with their Centurions and Hoplites, really powerful game units which dealt alot of damage.

Seriously speaking, Greece now needs help from alot of EU countries to bail itself out. Greece itself is not such a bad economy, with a GDP that is ranked 25th in the world

Rank Country Intl. GDP$
25 Greece 29,882
26 Spain 29,689
27 Italy 29,109

Coincidentally, there is trouble of credit in no. 27th on the list, Italy, as well.

So, why are we talking about the Euro, again?

Because for you, you may be able to make some money in the Forex market.

Because for speculators, this may be a good time to look into Foreign Exchange, especially of Euros and USDs.

While doing so, you need to consider your time horizon. When will the Euro rise again so that I can sell the Euros that I had earlier bought?

In conclusion, observe the 10-year charts that I have painstakingly created, due to all the formatting I had to do with Excel.

Then, incorporate it with your other knowledge on other investments you could be making (Gold, Equities, etc.) and make a good decision where to place your money.

And don’t forget to give me some of the dividends when you make it rich!

Sources and Further Reading:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100517-710033.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLEHeadlinesAsia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece
http://www.investingcontrarian.com/global/the-eurozone-and-greece/
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/exchform.html

This post, like all my other posts, should not be taken too seriously. After all, my blog is meant to be humorous.

To begin with, I do not know why, but in Singapore, computer science starting salaries are lower than the salaries of several other faculties. I include a link below on the starting salaries.

Of course, most of us make career decisions where we get the highest salary.

And, we need to get into a job that pays well.

And yet, that sometimes leads to heart-wrenching decisions having to be made. For example, not being able to pursue an interest in computing for a more lucrative career.

For some background information, I studied Computer Science during my A Levels for 2 entire years. I studied C++, databases and 3D Studio Max. And I programmed several systems. There were around 19 males and females in the entire Junior College who chose to study Computer Science. That is little in comparison to the 100 or more students studying Chemistry etc. instead of Computer Science.

The problem is, which I see, is that the Singapore government does not respect Computer Science very much, over other disciplines which are seen as more prestigious.

This blog post is not to discredit other faculties or courses. This blog post is to advocate the belief that computer science has to be much more encouraged, with much more funding.

What is astonishing is how a general Business Administration degree is seen as more prestigious than a computer science degree in a local University.

This is not my personal opinion. It is what I have heard from friends and classmates in the 3 local universities in Singapore over 4 years. It is even supported statistically. See below:

Course Salary
Business Administration (Honours) 3,389
Computer Science 2,970
E.Commerce 2,774
Information Systems 2,918

And for the engineering people:
Course Salary
Computer Engineering 3,103
Electrical Engineering 2,912

See here for more information:
http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post-secondary/files/ges-nus.pdf

Some holier-than-thou people might explain to me that it is passion, not starting salaries that motivates people.

They fail to overlook the fact that passion does not really put food into your rice bowl. Passion does not get you very far when you want to buy that new house or that new car. This is a materialistic society. No doubt there are elements of chasing your dreams, doing good for charity, and social causes, but, a high income is still a desired part of us. Material needs are intrinsic human nature.

Why do I feel frustration with the lack of salaries of Computer Science/Information Systems and E-Commerce/ Engineering graduates in Singapore?

I was physically residing in Silicon Valley in California, USA, for many months. There, computer science graduates from Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley and Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon and several other top universities set up high-technology companies that are shaping the industry.

Many of these companies in Silicon Valley are founded by Computer Science graduates.

The best-known example is Sergey Mikhailovich Brin, and Lawrence “Larry” Page, both Computer Science students, from Stanford. They founded Google. Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard Computer Science student, founded Facebook. Steven Shih Chen, read Computer Science at University of Winsconsin Madison, Jawed Karim, also Computer Science at University of Winsconsin Madison. Both of them are two out of the 3 co-founders of Youtube who are Computer Science graduates. Well, the remaining founder Chad Meredith Hurley, earned a Bachelors in Fine Art, and was responsible for the design of Youtube. I guess it was not related to CS in this case.

Yet, the overwhelming evidence points that Computer Science can be a tremendous growth point for the economy. And innovation. As in Iron Man 2, Tony Stark’s father states, “Technology can bring about a better life.”

And some critics might point out that the computer science faculty in NUS is not from a top university. It is not therefore a reasonable comparison to benchmark it against Stanford or UIUC, top CS universities. They fail to overlook the fact that our computer science and engineering faculties are in fact very highly-ranked, according to objective third-party views.

University 2009 Ranking
Stanford University 3 Engineering & IT

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 25 Engineering & IT

National University of Singapore (NUS) 14 Engineering & IT

Harvard University 22 Engineering & IT

Come on, NUS Engineering and IT is ranked 14th in the world.

14th out of a few hundred universities in the world is outstanding.

Now, let us observe the Business School Rankings.

National University of Singapore (NUS) 20 Social Sciences

National University of Singapore (NUS) 23 Arts & Humanities

Honestly, I do not know if NUS Business School falls under Social Sciences or Arts & Humanities.

The only available categories are: Arts & Humanities, Natural Science, Engineering & IT, Social Sciences
World Rankings and Life Sciences & Biomedicine.

Maybe Business can’t be ranked.

Source: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results

http://www.topuniversities.com/university/576/stanford-university

Make no mistake, I do not want to come across that a Business School is not valuable. I categorically state that a Business School is extremely valuable and vital.

I do not want to come across as putting down anyone.

I do want to come across as promoting the Computer Science faculties in all local universities.

And not just in faculties, but in the job industry.

The IT industry is nascent in Singapore. It is not thriving, nor a source of prestige.

At a typical University career fair, the most attractive booths are operated by famous banks, as compared to gaming companies. Software companies are hardly even present. Microsoft and Google? Sorry, not present.

This is the reason why I left the Computer Science faculty after a period of time in it. I requested for a transfer to the Business faculty.

The lack of support, funding, promotion, and the overall perception of the Computer and IT industry is that these people are not even worth the market value of a Business student.

And make no mistake, this is not to say that Business students are not strong in comparison to Computer Science students. I am from the Business faculty.

There are certain exceptions. For entry to be a teacher in the Ministry of Education in Singapore, with an Engineering or IT degree, you can teach: Physics, Mathematics or Design & Technology in secondary schools.

With a business degree, you can only teach at the primary school level. It is salient that you will get paid more at the Secondary level compared to the Primary level.

Source: http://www.moe.gov.sg/careers/teach/applying/degree/

Yet, this does not lend enough credit yet to the Computer Science industry.

There are pockets of computer science graduates in Singapore doing outstanding work in Facebook apps and iPhone apps, or developing web-applications that are fun and cool to use. There are some who come up with excellent hardware innovations.

Let us not forget two Singapore innovations that have brought world renown: The Creative brand, and the Razer brand. Creative makes sound cards and devices. Razer makes gaming mice and computer peripherals.

Both have CEOs who are Singaporean.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/razer-to-expand-r-d-in-singapore-62031852.htm

And, as I mentioned before, we have many renowned App developers on the Facebook, iPhone and other intricate platforms.

But these are independent, and not a sweeping force as yet, and they have not changed the perception of the average Singaporean that much yet. The prestige level, and media attention given to Computer Science is not comparable to other faculties.

You just have to look at the local papers to get a feel of the large amount of advertising spending is given to NUS, NTU and SMU on their business schools and their graduate schools, or specialised engineering divisions. Computer Science programs are not as promoted.

And no, the solution is not to ask the government of Singapore to enforce more regulation in order to drive this growth in Computer Science.

Innovation and bureaucracy do not go together. For a famous example, watch a famous video of how local government officials in suits and ties try to act funky and innovative. In teenage lingo, we term that a “fail”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjLw28UVWEU.

I repeat, innovation and bureaucracy are not friends. A government is by definition, a bureaucracy. So less government regulation or implementation of organisational structures in any way similar to governments. No hierarchies please.

But I am sure that government funds would be much appreciated by the Computer Science industry. Not just that, but industry subsidies and priorities in national planning will be of much help.

Computer Science is an emerging and relatively new field of study compared to disciplines like Chemistry which have been around for much longer.

Being a new industry, it is full of opportunities and economic growth.

The message I want to bring across at the end of the day is the answer to the question on Why I left Computer Science in a local university.

The Computer Science industry is not just as exciting or lucrative enough yet in Singapore, in general, compared to other industries.

The passion of the students in Computer Science is not that high yet. They do not yet see excitement and fervor.

It will be a fallacy to pin down my excitement on wishful thinking, or that what is done in the USA, like in Silicon Valley, or other tech hubs around the world, cannot be done here.

Critics might claim that New York and London, two great city centers, are financial hubs rather than computer science mega-hubs. They overlook the fact that a city is what its citizens make it out to be. We can be computer science powerhouses if we want to. We do not need to emulate these centers and be financial hubs.

In China, Beijing and Shanghai house powerful Computer Science companies. One of them is Baidu, China’s largest and still-growing search engine. Incidentally, both founders studied Computer Science related fields. One of the founders, Robin Li studied Information Management.

All in all, what I want to bring across in this blog post, is that computer science as an industry needs to be much more vibrant, exciting and respected in Singapore.

And you can help. You can change your perceptions of what Computer Science students can do.

I do programming, and I know several languages, albeit not as good as a bona fide Computer Science student. Although I am a Business student, my core belief is that technology, and in this case, for very typical companies in Finance, Marketing, Logistics, etc., my value-add for these companies, is that technology changes the game.

Technology, and in this case, IT, totally allows one company to win another in the business world. Stop seeing IT as a support function.

You can change your perception now and give this industry more attention. And you can tell your friends about this article and send them the link.

Last of all, whenever you see a programmer or a Computer Science person, don’t call him a geek.

Give them some respect: the application you use everyday, Facebook, is created by one of them.

Other Sources:
http://www.moe.gov.sg/careers/teach/faqs/#entry-requirements
http://www.topuniversities.com/university/444/national-university-of-singapore-nus
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?execbios
http://bschool.nus.edu.sg/tabid/1575/NewsID/177/Default.aspx?view=news
http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post-secondary/files/ges-nus.pdf

This is my call to people out there who like to post Seth Godin’s articles or Guy Kawasaki’s articles or some other “guru” on the topic.

Sometimes, the quality of articles that these people write are not particularly of any worth, meaning they really sound like an average person’s complaints

I mean that is not to say that thee people are not notable people. They may be published book authors or veterans in the industry. But some of their blog posts are just plain average.

And the thing is, just because it comes from a “guru”, people re-post these articles as though they were masterpieces.

For example here is a post on Seth Godin’s blog:

No new customers

What if a rift in the time-space continuum changed the universe and it was suddenly impossible to get new customers, new readers, new donors or new viewers?

How would that change what you do all day and how you spend your money and what you measure?

What if you tried acting that way now?

That post added very little value to my current thinking, and it could have come out of a cab driver or a student in secondary school. It was a bunch of questions, some of them rhetorical, no solutions were provided, and it was lame. Yet, people still re-post these as wisdom.

This post is a call. A call to start writing your own views.

I propose 3 beneficial, but provocative and radical changes to how workplaces should be run.

They are:
1. Introduce 2 kinds of resumes in hiring: the Work Experience/Education Resume, AND the Moral Resume. The first resume should be the traditional resume. The skills based one with work experience. The second one should contain a list of what the person considers to have done good in his life. There will be listings of community work, family time, friends time, and his good to the general public. An example is provided in my post below.

http://lexleong.com/uncategorized/moral-and-ethical-resume-cv.htm

2. Have an Integrity Department. Many companies now have a diversity department. This department ensures people of all races and religions are hired. Meritocracy rules. But Integrity is fundamental to not just success, but being a good human.

We just have to see corporate greed or exploitation around the world’s best MNC’s. The news is not just Enron, but Lehman Brothers, and in governments like China and Indonesia which report graft and corruption. Frankly, very few institutions are corruption or ethically clean. Let us change this fact with the Integrity Department.

3. Have a No-Bad Behavior Department. Many companies have backstabbers, gossipers, bullies, sleep-around-to-get-around people, thieves, and the like. Such a department would of course have compassion. There would be people who have bad behavior because of certain circumstances. But the problem is when these people are chronically having bad behavior. Or it is in their personality to think that way. We must thus root them out. I am not encouraging punishment to them. But I encourage that these behaviors be deemed negative in their performance reviews.

This is well-documented around the world in many books on bullying, abusive behavior, and other politicking in the workplace. One good such book is: The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, a Stanford University Professor.

http://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/0446526568

That is all for my 3 radical changes. They are meant to make your workplace a better place. Propose these ideas to your boss or if you are the boss, implement these rules now.

I created this Moral Resume after thinking about traditional hiring methods which are superficial. This is a resume that is designed to showcase your moral side. I propose that this resume be used alongside traditional job resumes. It should be the new standard in hiring. It shows your ethics and the deeds that you have done for you to be a good person. Moral Resume

Remember: All my posts are meant to be humorous. Humorous means they are meant to be funny and they are not meant to be taken seriously. If you do then you do not have a sense of humor.

I probably don’t have all the qualifications to comment on how to get your interview success 100% of the time. I’ve passed my fair share of interviews, but have not been successful in many as well.

I’ll say that the 3 most important tips for me to you are:

1. Know what you want. You aren’t going to go into an interview halfheartedly. If you do just to test the waters, or to see what the company is like, then it is okay if you do not have success. After all, most job seekers now have a myriad of options, and so do companies. It is very hard to say that all the companies are amazing fits.

2. Do not be yourself, be someone the company wants you to be. This is obvious. Why? Example: Company X is a bank. Company X loves people who are calculative, fast and good with finance. Now, some people may say, “be yourself”. Okay, what if I am a lazy slob who is not good in mathematics, numbers, and am really slow. I may have my good points, such as creativity. Those same people who tell you to be yourself will then say, “Well, then you are not suitable for this bank Company X.” That is just plain ridiculous. Such people overlook the fact that some of the very best companies that people want to get into may not fit them at first, and that some people are looking to enter the company to implement change, not be changed. It is not everyday that interviews or job openings fall from trees. Not every company which fits your “original” personality is offering you a job. I therefore advocate you to be adaptable. See what the company culture is like. This is really difficult if you do not have friends or associates or some insider knowledge, so you have to use observation and Internet research. Nonetheless, this is essential.

3. Do not be afraid to be special. Be creative. It is your interview. Display unique characteristics. I am an advocate for being innovative. It is a strong litmus test whether employers are receptive to change from junior level employees. Some companies want you to go in and be an obedient peon. Being innovative helps you sort out which employers are open-minded enough to embrace the very best ideas of the freshest minds.

Go forth and do your best, young adventurer.

Adaptibility is the key to survival. One must change according to circumstances. And that is why most business strategies do not work, unless they change constantly. thus, books, authors, speakers have to change so often.

I’ll write my interpretation on what is Happiness, good health and money and how to attain them. All three concepts are intertwined.

You will observe that happiness can sometimes be adversely affected by money. and good health can be adversely affected by money.
Yet, obtaining good health and money can give happiness.

And, money can be boosted if we have good health and happiness. This is because we will be more efficient and pleasant at work when you are happy.

And why is money even critical, and placed alongside health and happiness? because money is essential for just basic survival. we need money to survive.

Happiness
1. Family which you need to care for
2. Friends which you need to help
3. Knowing that you followed right principles
4. Spouse which you need to care for
5. A sense of security
6. self-depreciating humour
7. non-interference or support from pursuit of Money
8. money
9. good health
10. religious belief and a religious community, that will include atheistic or freethinking beliefs if there are freethinking readers

Good Health
1. Good sleep habits
2. Good eating, food, and nutrition
3. Good moods
4. No psychological disorders
5. Good physical condition
6. Mostly healthy
7. Non-interference from work

Money
1. Proper 9-6 job
2. Savings
3. Correct Investment on the stock/equities/forex/property market
4. no frivolous spending
5. minimum of depreciating assets like cars
6. no loans and debts
7. no credit card debt
8. small business
9. Good health
10. happiness

In an effort to maintain the comedic level on my blog, I here provide some humorous videos. They are spoofs, or parodies, of Lady Gaga and Batman and Britney Spears. In no way do these videos represent my professional or personal image.

They are of popular pop culture, and so, even if the videos are not to your liking, you can examine them from a social and cultural perspective. For example, asking the question “What motivates our youth?”.

However, I think it’s better just to relax and watch this with a positive mind. They are purely for your entertainment. I hope you enjoy them.

At particular times of your life, you may not know what you want.

You probably have to associate with people who are very focused on what they want in life to get the mentality.

Try to do so, it helps for you to have clarity and focus.