Last Meal
Last meal in the mountains in the North of Portugal.Cabbage with olive oil.
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Cabbage with olive oil.
If you have a brand you can resist anything
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Politicians have zero power!
2 explanations here.
French politics - If you make life miserable for the business man he will move to other places.
Automation - There is a slow destruction of jobs everywhere. You can delay but you can't avoid it completely.
Result: Politics rotation. Each Government is not re-elected ever. The other party just have to wait.
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It pays big time to nº1
From the WSJ
It is so difficult to be in the top 100 in any sport in the world. However only the top seeded players make real money. This happens in business & in Sports. The nº1 makes 10 times what the nº32 makes. I don't want to look at nº100............
I guess with sponsorship the difference should be even bigger. It pays to be completely crazy during some years to be nº1 whatever it costs. To be nº 100 in the world you have to work hard. To be nº 1 you have to be maniac. Normal people are nº100 or less.
In business is the same thing:
“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”
It's not only in Tennis is in everything.................
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Only the nº1 makes real money
Burger King Defends Plan to Buy Tim Hortons
If there is no growth the only guy who makes money is the nº1
The strategy of Burger King is to cut costs & cut costs but that goes only so far.... they need to Buy Tim Horton's and squeeze the costs of them.
If the PE of the market is 20 if they cut 1 b of costs they will increase the value of the company by 20 b!! That is their plan, no better products, no better brand, nothing just to cut costs.
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Portugal has something to offer the world..............
The BOOM Festival ! Once every 2 years only!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6fEWTg5FAY
Boom's main focus is to integrate a sustainability ethos with arts and culture. By design, it does not provide corporate entertainment or sponsors. The key goal is to provide a transformational festival for people of different ethnic backgrounds, nationality and ages. In its own words, "Boom is not only a festival, it is a state of mind. Inspired by the principles of Oneness, Peace, Creativity, Sustainability, Transcendence, Alternative Culture, Active Participation, Evolution and Love, it is a space where people from all over the world can converge to experience an alternative reality."
The festival is entirely funded by ticket sales. It does not use corporate sponsors, which eliminates marketing that is seen as visual pollution.
Well i don't know why people go but apparently the Festival is a big success, all tickets (35,000) are sold out well in advance of the Festival. People come form all over the world. From the videos i guess people want to escape from our world. During 10 days people really escape! Peace & Love.
For people who want to escape from our world Portugal has also a different offer. If you buy a house in the mountains in Portugal you can get:
1.Cheap house
2.Beautifull envoirment & decent weather. Wild Horses near your door.
3.Local neighbors that you can exchange products with
4.You can have your cattle that goes to the field on their own in the morning and come back at night to their stables (They don't get confused)
5.You can buy or cook your own bread
6.You can have a bit of civilization with internet
7.Decent & cheap Hospitals at 50 km
8.A church
9.You can go to restaurants very cheaply
10.You can invite you family & friends in a very cheap way for some unforgetable hollidays
11.You can live in harmony with nature.
12.You can bath in a river with very cold water and drink it while you bath
You can have your AYN RAND world in a easy way. In the country side you have to produce anything and trade with your neighbors. There is no state to fund you. If you don't work you are not respected.
I guess people call this Downshifting!
Downshifting is a social behavior or trend in which individuals live simpler lives to escape from the rat race of obsessive materialism and to reduce the “stress, overtime, and psychological expense that may accompany it”.[1] It emphasizes finding an improved balance between leisure and work[2] and focusing life goals on personal fulfillment and relationship building instead of the all-consuming pursuit of economic success.
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There is a way out...........
Workers always lose, Economics always wins!
Technology get’s better, cheaper and faster in a way biology can’t match
This is a scary video but it's true!
what is the way out for humans?
I have posted about this in the past
It's the human touch. Be nice with everyone.
All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend.
Mark McCormack
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A view from my room
A Pic with low quality (i-phone) from my hotel room in the North of Portugal.
2 more pics, one with my oldest son in the top of Geres and some wild Horses near the Hotel
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Get lucky, Move to a big country
A good student (with the same IQ, results, etc...) in Portugal and in Germany has very different prospects.
why?
Because with Globalization & Internet people want the best in the world. In Portugal there are very few products that are sold everywhere in the world. Perhaps corks & some wine. All the rest we buy from the best. My kids want a Playstation, an I-Phone (they don't have), drink Coke, and eat horrible fast food. I want the best bicycle (Specialized) the best shoes (SIDI ), etc... I buy books from Amazon. If i want to learn about Anything i just listen to a video from the best teacher for free online.
With information why not to buy the best in class. The best in the world?
Germans & American companies strive to produce the best in the world, and often they manage it. With size they can afford to do more research and be even better. They can pay and hire the best.
In a small country the local producer that thinks about the local market when their clients get smart is doomed.
Think Global or die. All the companies that think local probably will die when clients get smart.
So the best students in Portugal are moving to work for the best companies in the world even if they work from Portugal. In Portugal we have mostly companies thinking about the Portuguese market & the Portuguese client. And these are shrinking with their business. Almost all Portuguese companies want to let go most of their workforce.
What to do? work in protected industries (no competition from abroad), tourism, hairdresser, mechanic, all things manual or move to work for companies that think Global and are still growing.
Big get Bigger is the name of the Game.
There are almost no BIG companies in small countries. There was NOKIA (not anymore) and some other miracles but unfortunately the BIG get Bigger is not stopping!
Get Lucky means to move to places where to have a good job is not a miracle just normal.
to do that you must work for a company that was a good product or a good brand (probably both)
PS You can stay in your country & represent some foreign product that is going to kill the local producer (almost forgot this classic business)
If you are a good football player like FIGO & Ronaldo both from my club SPORTING Lisbon if you want to make money and win the champions it's better to move to the clubs that want to win everything. And they will. Like in Business BIG get Bigger is the trend in Football.
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My House was Robbed during the weekend
Fortunately i had no documents or cash in the house. Since they didn't take our camera (i don't know why?) with all the pictures in the memory card we missed only some gold & silver items.
Some advice from the police:
If possible have 2 types of lock's in the door. If they want to break in your house they will do it. However if you have 2 types of lock's it's too much trouble & noise and the go to the next House.
If you have a safe in the house they will break it and if they can't do it they will ruin everything trying. If you don't have a lot don't have a safe.
This is the first time i am robbed ! not typical of Lisbon. Police say it's a eastern Europe gang that are only interested in Gold.
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Moving back in with your parents !
From WSJ
For Andrea Tarquini, a 44-year-old son of two pensioners, returning home was an extreme solution. He had left at age 22 and worked in a call center. He lost that job four years ago and tried to start a video production company. When it struggled, he was forced last December to move back home, where his movie posters, DVDs and books now contend for space with his mother's oil paintings and his nephews' toys.
"I feel guilty because my choices are falling back on them," he says. "My parents have become my social safety net once again."
If this was an isolated story but this is a trend. In Europe there are not enough job's for everybody. Not in Europe and in the world the situation is going to be the same.
why?
1.Automation. 1 Person with a machine can do the work of 1000 people
2.There is oversupply of almost everything. No one is building a new factory
3. Deleveraging People funded their purchases with credit for the last 20 years now it's difficult to borrow more.
4.Zero top line growth in the world. The only way to make more profits is to cut costs. Labor is a cost.
Only inefficiency can create job's!
We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.
John Maynard Keynes 1930
http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2014/06/be-nice-or-be-fired.html
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A good way to waste money!
In Portugal we built many football stadiums for the Euro 2004 that now are empty and no one wants to use & Pay. Waste of money to build a stadium to do 5 games.According to Zero Hedge in Greece is the same thing. All the facilities from Athens Olympics are also idle.
In total, Greece spent over $10 billion on the Games. "The Games were a lost opportunity, no doubt about it," admits former Athens 2004 spokesman Stratos Safioleas.
Sadly for the broke country, that is an understatement. Here, ten years later, is the wasteland which is all that's left of the 2004 summer Olympics.
The swimming pool where Michael Phelps won six gold medals is now completely empty
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-07/ten-years-later-greek-olympic-wasteland-photos
If governments want to spend money they should build 3 things and only 3 things:
1.Irrigation channels
2.River Dams
3.Solar parks
why? because they will return money forever. you spend the money now and you get a dividend forever. Don't build stadiums, shopping centers or roads.
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If you have kids read this!
From WSJ,
Programming Is a Trade; Let's Train Accordingly
If you're a young person who is thinking about becoming a computer programmer but can't afford college, you might think about skipping college altogether, says Ryan Carson, co-founder of an online coding school.
And he isn't alone. In interviews with other code-school founders, I heard the same story again and again: Committed programming students are getting jobs whether or not they have a college degree and whether or not they are starting careers or switching, midlife, from another field.
The only think that is in demand in the world is people who know how to program. It's simple. teach your kids how to do it. Do it now.
To learn Economics or management as i did 30 years ago doesn't work for the simple reason that what you learn doesn't work in the real work! Yes you read well, it doesn't work. When you finish management or an MBA you are equipped to say certain words, (downsizing, synergies, etc...) nothing more! It's a bit useless, to work at a real job with clients, etc... you learn more than in a MBA.
To learn Economics or management as i did 30 years ago doesn't work for the simple reason that what you learn doesn't work in the real work! Yes you read well, it doesn't work. When you finish management or an MBA you are equipped to say certain words, (downsizing, synergies, etc...) nothing more! It's a bit useless, to work at a real job with clients, etc... you learn more than in a MBA.
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Nice Advice
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Oversupply of everything = zero Growth
Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Italy returned to recession andGerman factory orders dropped the most since 2011 as political
tensions and slowing global growth threaten the euro area’s
recovery.
Italy’s economy shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter
after contracting 0.1 percent in the previous three months, the
national statistics institute Istat said in Rome today. German
orders slid 3.2 percent in June from May, data from the Economy
Ministry in Berlin showed. Both reports were worse than forecast
by economists in separate Bloomberg News surveys.
The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people
― Karl Marx
― Karl Marx
the way i see the world is
1.Oversupply of everything
2.No need to build a new factory because the existing factories are working at 60%
3.No need to hire new people
4.Lack of demand
5.No room to grow demand with leverage or borrowed money
In this environment there is no top line growth. To me the only place where is still possible to make some money is in companies with some monopoly/brand. But these companies are getting expensive.
How did we sort this kind of problems in the past?
with a war and the destruction of the capacity
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This actually works
An aspirin a day could dramatically cut people's chances of getting and dying from common cancers, according to the most detailed review yet of the cheap drug's ability to stem disease......
There would be an overall 9% reduction in the number of cancers, strokes and heart attacks suffered by men and a fall of 7% in women.
Cuzick acknowledged that people generally did not like taking pills for a long period, although, he said, some were "more than happy to take multivitamins for many, many years without any clear evidence of benefit. It is a regular habit."
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/06/aspirin-could-dramtically-cut-cancer-risk-say-scientists-biggest-study-yet
Well i have noticed that taking multivitamins is worthless for the bike. No visible benefit. No feeling stronger. I guess the body cannot use the chemicals when they came in a pill vs when they are in the proper foods. It's better to take 1 ASPIRIN a day instead! there is a visible benefit. 9% reduction is a lot!
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