Managers Mambo Jambo

If any of your family members ask you about job vacation for them, tell them to be a manager in Saudi Arabia. My prediction, they compensate a high degree of temperature with a generous amount of salary. Oops! that was a joke.

Here is the complete figures:




After i read the figures, now i know why Arabians have an enormous volume of beard. They have a lot of savings to buy a new medical treatment, just like Firdaus oil. *lol*.

The figure shown here is a cross-posting from The Economist's latest publication.

Well Sir, You Are Simply Lost Your Mind

This is exactly what happened when you put an asylum-refugee as your national president



Sometimes people are just crazier than you would ever thought. He said pluralism as his campaign's jargon, but at the end of the day, it was only a word in his bizzare mind. Poor Venezuelans.

World's Military Expenditure

I just read a short article in The Economist about military spending in several nations in 2005. It has been revealed that in terms of GDP percentage, Saudi Arabia spent the most among others nations on defence expenses, 8.8 % of its GDP. United States was placed on the second largest spender on military expenses which accounts for 4 % of its GDP. However, in the nominal level, US still way ahead compared with others nations. US spent $ 495.3 billion while Saudi Arabia only spent $ 25.4 billion. China is the second largest military expenses spender in 2005 nominal value which accounts $ 104 billion.



In my point of view, the figures is rather ambigous. Military expenses consists of several posts, namely military wages, operational expenses, weapon purchased expenses and many other components. It is unwise to compare a nation with huge number of soldier but a small amount of weapon with a nation with a small amount of soldier but a huge number of weapon availibility. Any comparison made between two particular nation can lead to a misconcept of what the strongest nation is. However, considering the availibility of the data, this is the closest estimation we can get.

Virginia Tech Shooting Tragedy (2) Updates !!!

Oh my Lord..

I can barely speak anymore when i read the latest news showing that one of the victims is a young bright Indonesian student who study in Virginia Tech. A 34 years old Indonesian, Partahi Lumbantoruan, was named on the victim's list of Virginia Tech shooting tragedy.

Details can be read here,here and here.

May the Lord give him a nice place up there and a strong soul for his families.

Virginia Tech Shootings Tragedy

My deepest condolences for the victims and their families. It's been a tough situation for many people around the world right now, especially when some crazy gunmen is around us and we can't notice them at all. Thirty three innocent citizens died with no reason at all is simply heartless.

World's Most Pleasant Cities

Quoted from The Economist in one of its latest editions,

"Zurich is the most pleasant city for expatriates, according to Mercer, a consulting firm. Its annual survey compares 39 measures in 215 cities, such as transport and crime. Singapore, Tokyo and London rank higher than New York. Baghdad is the world's worst place to live and work."

At least they don't put Jakarta on the bottom of the list. But it also leads me to another question,"If Jakarta is that bad, then i wonder how does it feels to live in any cities that is stated below Jakarta on the list?" and also "Singapore is good, if you can ignore their ignorance, then how does it feel to live in Zurich? It must be damn good...".

The World Beneath One Roof

If you read the latest edition of Newsweek magazine, you will find yourself as a one drops on the ocean compare with these genius persons. Fareed Zakaria, Thomas L. Friedman, Klaus Schwab and Richard Florida, they explain clearly to us, what are the challenges of the new world in the forthcoming year. They call it as a “flattening world”, the world consists of a huge competition among the people. From New York to Shanghai, all the citizens in this city work as hard as they can to get better living. They work very hard not only for an financial reasons, perhaps some of them are, but mostly they are working that hard because they realize that now the competition in the world is very tough and they are trying to be the winner of that competition.

The competition push them to work harder and longer in order to gain more knowledge and find a better way to develop their ability. Technology improves the quality of living around every corner on earth and also forces them to make continuous innovations of the technology itself. The challenges in the future is not only a matter of financial and physical competition but mostly rely on the knowledge competition. Those who are more adaptive to the development of technology and to the knowledge revolution will be the winner of the competition. .

Reading the articles in The Newsweek magazine makes you should ask to yourself: have you studied well?