High inflation rate accelerated the M-shape society formation

During the parliament meeting on 23 June 2008, when answering a question from Tan Sri Dato’ Abd. Khalid (Member of Parliament for Bandar Tun Razak) regarding the hiking price in petrol, food and other commodities, our Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Amirsham A. Aziz stated that if we move the poor line condition (paras garis kemiskinan, PGK) from the current RM800 to RM1,500 (which reflects the actual situation more accurately), the national poverty rate in Malaysia will rise tremendously from the current 3.7% to 24.3%. He also mentioned that the government has risen the definition of low income group for those with monthly income less than RM2,000 now.

Frankly speaking, living is really very difficult for Malaysian family with household income below RM1,500 nowadays. Even those with income below RM3,000 can sense their situation as "new poor" in the M-shape society. Data from the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) as revealed by Datuk Amirsham above indicates that at least a quarter of the Malaysian family has fallen into the poor now.

If this critical situation is not tackled promptly and effectively, we can foresee an increase in crime rate and potential social instability that might risking to possible violent actions, which has already happened in certain regions on the globe now. We hope that our government, the ASEAN, UNESCAP, and all other international bodies can look into the situation seriously and come out with workable remedy plans to ease this globally affected economic condition before it worsen further.

Meanwhile, for us as citizen living in this hard time, we have to strive in finding our ways from falling below the poverty benchmark. As the inflation is fast moving, saving alone is not sufficient, we have to increase our income level to fight the rising poverty line, that might gone up to RM4,000 if the petroleum price climbs up to the scary US$200 per barrel. (I hope this will never happen, at least not in the near future.)

By the way, if you are interested to read about the debate in Malaysia parliament meeting on 23 June 2008, especially Page 6, you can click here to download the official statement document.

SocialSpark - social network for both bloggers and advertisers

Nowadays, there exist quite a sum of social networking websites which form virtual community for bloggers to get to know each other and getting publicity for their blogs. There also exist several blog advertising marketplaces where advertisers wanting to promote their websites, companies, products, services, etc. can look for suitable blogs to put their advertisement.

SocialSpark is a new concept evolved from the famous PayPerPost marketplace that get the best of both worlds. It brings both the bloggers and advertisers into the same community, encouraging them to have more interaction with each other. In fact, the boundary between bloggers and advertisers is seemless, and a user can even hold both identity at the same time.

Users in SocialSpark can vote for a user, a blog, or an opportunity with the Props and Drops option. Those with more Props will have higher position in listing and get more exposure. Opportunity for bloggers in the marketplace comes in 3 types:

• Sponsored post - similar to the PayPerPost concept, the advertiser is paying for qualified blogger to write a specific article in their blog.


• Blog sponsorship - this is a Pay Per Day concept whereby qualified blogger will be paid daily for putting up the required advertisement (normally in the form of widget, icon, logo, button, link, etc.) in their blog.


• Spark - this is a free opportunity for bloggers to promote each other, such as you write something about my blog in your blog, and in return I'll write back something about your blog in mine.

I've joint SocialSpark since 18 June 2008 and feel happy to make friend with the bloggers and advertisers in the community, visiting each other blogs and proping each other. Here is my profile page in SocialSpark with the URL at http://socialspark.com/bloggers/the-8th-voyager.

SocialSpark is a pretty new social network just started a few months ago. However, IZEA the team behind isn't new as they have experience in successfully running the renowned PayPerPost marketplace. To date, SocialSpark has a community of about 8,000 bloggers and about 1,000 advertisers. The number keeps on growing daily in a fast pace, as more and more people are getting known to it. Why don't you sign up and join the community too?

You can participate to monetize your blog with the various opportunities in SocialSpark as long as you are 18 years or older, your blog is verified by their Customer Love, and the following Code of Ethics adhired:

• 100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure - you must disclose each sponsored post by putting a specific Disclosure Badge inside the post.
• 100% Transparency - your participation in SocialSpark marketplace will be made viewable by the public.
• 100% Real Opinions - your sponsored post must be honest and genuine.
• 100% Search Engine Friendly - to avoid being penalized by the PageRank system of search engine, sponsored links must carry the "no-follow" attribute.
  

You can easily differentiate my articles in this blog which are sponsored by SocialSpark from others, as all the sponsored articles will have a button similar to this one:

and yes, this is my first sponsored post.

Identifying and getting your dream job

For most of us as employee, it is undoubtedbly we have to spend at least 1/3 of our time in a working day for our job, and it is estimated that most people work for a total of 60,000 hours over a period of about 30 years in their lifetime. Remember our "HISC₅"? Career definitely forms one of those important elements that make up our life.

Are you happy with your job? Have you identified your career goal and found your dream job? Would you rather be doing something other than what you are doing now?

Loving what you do, having interest, being passionate and always be motivated are some of the key success factor to us to excel in our career. Being on the right track of career is in turn a key success factor for our life value, social status and financial rewards.

Noelle Lim has featured an interesting and excellent 12-pages article in the July 2008 edition (Issue #83) of Personal Money magazine which I find is pretty inspiring. In the article, she elaborated on the 4 steps to land your dream job, namely:

• Define your dream career
• Find out more
• Network and gain experiences
• How to nail that job

Along with the article, there are touching stories of 6 people who are bold and determined to leave their comfort zone and pursuit for their dream job, and they succeed. Featured on the cover page of the magazine, they are:

• Claire Kwok - from finance associate to fashion buyer
• Nazrin Hassan - from managing a busines in CIMB to giving entrepreneurs a helping hand in Cradle fund
• Alexandra Wong - from sales manager to writer
• Fiona Lim - from SAP team lead to photographer
• Toh Kong Eu - from chemical engineer to tap dancer and destiny consultant
• Rosie Hong - from marketing manager to MD of marketing agency

If you are interested in this topic, I encourage you to read the full article in the July 2008 edition (Issue #83) of Personal Money magazine.