In 2012, I graduated as a student from the University of Nottingham, which is known as UNMC (for those who study in the Malaysia Campus).

Today, after one week long spent around my alma mater, I have to admit that it has changed a lot and definitely, better than before from an infrastructural point of view. In addition to better infrastructure, the students also benefit from the better facilities put at their disposition.

For example, the canteen is now a step above! The hygiene condition has improved considerably. Students are encouraged to return their plates, and cutlery at the collection corner. There is no more cash transaction through the “somewhat inefficient” coupon system. The eating areas look definitely cleaner, less smelly and more enjoyable for your every day meal time.
The downside, from what I have heard, is the cost of eating has gone up together with a decline in the...

From 4th to 6th September 2014, over 50 young leaders in their communities converged towards Lisbon for the conference themed “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Europe.”

Being an aspiring entrepreneur and community innovator, I seized the chance to attend by hoping on the first train to Lisbon (Ok, it wasn’t the first train but still, it was a train.)

Instead of story-telling what happened. I started thinking during my 3 hours train ride back to Porto what would be the ideal content to share. I am going to break down my thoughts into 4 points:

Bridging the inter-connection between Hubs.

The Global Shapers Community is growing fast. With over 300 hubs located all over the world, it is will soon reach 500 by the end of 2016 (my prediction).

What does this entail?

More young leaders being inter-connected. There’s a need for better platform to enable these inter-connections...

I grew up in a multi-cutural society and the first country where I went to, happens to be another melting pot of culture. Growing up in a cultural diverse society taught my written and unwritten “codes” of conduct. Some would call it, values.

In a sense, culture has such a great importance to me that I am now seeking environment whereby I believe the culture is suitable for me, if not, well-matching with mine, especially when it comes to work and living with other people.

Anyway, this post is about startups and their culture code. How they define the internal work culture and relationship with their stakeholders. I strongly encourage startups to follow this path of developing with your core team (& entire team actually) the culture you wish to live everyday at work.

I selected my top 5 but won’t be listing them in any preferred order,

Hubspot

Possible

Asana

Zappo...

Today (Sunday), I went to the Flea Market in Porto. While it was not my first flea market, it certainly was my first in Portugal.
And until today, I had never been on the other side of the table!

The picture below taken of my first flea market’s stall. None of the goods are mine. I was the lord of sales and ensured safety of the goods, high performance from the sales team, and inspiring the team (and the buyers) from time to time with my energy. (Ok, this is just a joke. I was simply helping out.)

This is the full-team with the 3 ladies, who were the top sales person ever, more or less.

I have 4 lessons to share out of my flea market experience, which can be applied to my everyday life. Hope you will learn something too.

Lesson 1

Patience is golden.

“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”― Molière

Anecdote from the flea market experience. We started our...

Disclaimer: I am open to read more books. Please recommend (:

[1] Data Science for Business: What you need to know about data mining and data-analytic thinking

Amazon’s description: Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the “data-analytic thinking” necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.

Why does it matter?
We live in a big data world. Whether you are an economist, psychologist or accountant, data-analytic thinking could help you one way or another. I also think that learning to analyse data in a systematic “or” by putting yourself in a constraint settings, could provide you with insightful information.

[2] Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Happier Life

...

I am going to share a very simply hack to all those of you who have the painful task(s) of entering tons of data (whether it is names, emails, etc) manually.

Ready?

Bear with me.

The story.
I was given the tedious tasks of manually inputting information from a pile of paper (dating from 2009/2010) onto word/spreadsheet document. This is a basic administrative duty which is fundamentally ABC, whereby ABC stands for Annoying, Boring and Cumbersome.

Being highly growth-driven and with a strong entrepreneurial mindset, I had to find a hack around this situation.

By now, you could have guessed.

I scanned all the pages of the document and got a pdf file in return. Still, having a pdf file is not actionable.

So, the next step is to use an online OCR.

And then it is well-done. The pdf can be converted to word or spreadsheet format.

That’s it (:

I have recently renewed my web hosting and domain name for another two years and the expiry date is somewhere in June 2016.

What does this mean to me?

One Thing

I have 2 more years as a “runway” to figure out how to build a proper web presence.

What could I possibly do?

Many Things

From a personal website to a bootstrap company website, it is up to my creativity and imagination. I will figure out something.

What do I have in mind, at the moment?

Two Things

Using the web hosting to “host” my personal web page and my side project(s) - One side project at the moment.

Using the web hosting to run experiments for my various side projects, that is, to validate my ideas.

What about you?

Do you have a web presence?
It could be [Linkedin](pt.linkedin.com/pub/pascal-sam-soon/29/821/974/) or Facebook or Twitter or any other social network. It could be a stand-alone web page...

Meeting New People

Regardless of your location, do make it a must to meet new people on a regular basis. In my current city, I do so once to twice a month which is not recommended. When I was living in Asia (Hong Kong and Singapore), this would happen on a weekly basis.

*Seek introductions by browsing through your already existing network or….

Tell People What you Want

Sometimes, it is great to share with people within your network what are the things that you wanna do, learn and know about. I realised that sometimes it does not work but when it does, it works wonderfully well. Give it a try. Tell more people that you wanna do something and perhaps, someone out there is listening and will respond to you.

Network Fund - Investment Principles

I make it sound like a serious thing but it is not. Well, it is relevant and useful for many of us - people who are hustling all the time...

This article is a personal sharing of Saving for Travels and then, iterating over & over again.

As an avid traveler, I am taking a different steps nowadays, thanks to the economic crisis in Portugal. Below goes the simple article,

Save

Saving for your next Travel is as important as the travel experience in itself.

What can be done?

1. Start a “Travel Fund”
2. Consider “Saving for Travel” as a Fixed Expense, recurring every month.
3. And your “Saving for Travel” expense will go straight to “Travel Fund”.
4. You can create a “Travel Fund” in many ways. What I do is that I created a Fixed Deposit account, to which I would inject money into on a monthly basis. (It could be automated if your internet banking has the function)

How much to save?
It depends. Your travel goals will vary based on your situation and future needs.
Being extreme, I set aside 20% with the plan to increase the amount...

Simple motto on improving one’s life.

Lean

Go lean. Learn to live with less. In other words, be a minimalist.

*Spending Less.
*Owning Better Quality.
*Focusing on What Matters the Most.

Mean

Sometimes, be mean to yourself. Don’t reward yourself immediately. Learn to delay gratification.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

*Know What You Truly Want to Achieve
*Have A Plan.
*Prioritise.

If you can practice the above points, delaying gratification (or being mean to yourself) will help you.

Mean

Again, be mean. This time, it is about seeking the law of averages.
Learn to buy “Just Enough”. Identify what could work for you under law of averages. Test non-stop until you find yourself a sweet spot.

Quick Example:
How many meals can you cook with 500g of macaroni?
How many packets of 500g of macaroni do you need?
Assuming you want to prepare the meals for yourself, how...