Chilean mining accident happy ending

What an exciting piece of good news! The breaking news of all 33 miners saved from the collapsed mine is the major broadcast of yesterday.

When the miner gets out of the chute, the whole world rejoice. The miners survive the initial despair and battle the hardship for 2 months. Thank goodness to their politicians that they are willing to spend the millions to save them.

Mining accidents happen frequently worldwide, many of the mining accidents can be prevented. Most of these incidents are due to poor maintenance, poor management, and poor safety knowledge.

Let us hope the world wide politicians monitor the mining working conditions, ensure their mining owners accept safety as top priority management requirement.

Property Monopoly

Walking in the streets of Vancouver,I find empty street front store every corner. Yet, the unit rent is incredibly high. From Gastown to Point Gray, triple net ranges from $55 to $80. No wonder a latte in Yaletown costs $6, I wonder how many cups be sold to recover the operating costs.

Funny as it appears, many empty stores stay empty for year. Financially, one would cut loss by renting the unit out at a lower rate. No sir, those income trust managers can afford to hold the rate high. There are plenty of innocent investors putting their savings into these trusts...

Across the nation, I can name a few property income trust holding a vast majority of property. Deal or not, their option not yours.

Culture - a collective mind set

Lately, I listen to a few business management audio books, many focus the listeners on a particular skill set or a social media phenomenon. Every year there will be new observation and new techniques to test out.

One of the audio book Delivering Happiness from Tony Hsieh captures my attention. The book is about Zappos, an eCommerce retail enterprise. There are indeed many valuable learnings throughout and in particularly building a Zappos culture. These days I keep hearing about culture building in many companies, except a lot of these talks are just talks.

Corporate Culture means changing individual behavior to the company's predefined mind set. In the past, there were many successful examples be it good or bad. The bad examples I mostly read are the corruption culture...so easy to adopt.

Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has provided the fundamental elements to build a responsible culture. In the 80's the book was so popular in the corporate environment that workshops after workshops were held to improve employees behavior. Yet, corporate after corporate has failed to provide the basic responsibility to their stakeholders. In 2009, 90% stakeholders globally were left without means to live.

Needless to say I am very impressed with Hsieh and associates to build a culture of "delivering happiness" to all stakeholders. I hope this culture will continue and being adopted globally.

The Manila Hijacking incident

The Hong Kong tour group in the Manila hijacking incident lost 7 members. In addition, there are 7 members suffered gunshot wounds. RTHK reports that a 5 member family lost 3 in the conflict. How can a lone hijacker cause so much damages?

Comments from the administration are equally harsh as the general public. Apparently, the inefficient police force is the prime target. Questions remains just how many victims are hurt or killed by the police? We will see when the Manila investigation is over, how much a cover up it is.

The hijacker is a former policeman, with full knowledge of the corruption scheme, taking such risk to ask for fair compensation. It is obvious the force has a particular interest to deal swiftly. Nonetheless, the dealing is poorly executed causing death to innocent foreign visitors.

With so much corruption in the world, tourism may be just another adventure for the risk seekers.

Natural Disasters - a tale of 2 countries.

Since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, large scale of disasters happen every year, thousands of fatalities pile up the record book.

Currently, the news media is watching like a hawk in the latest Pakistan flood crisis.

Why is Pakistan struggling so much to deliver aids to the victims? Where is the army? Where is the air force? Where is the government? Root cause investigation clearly points to corruption. CTV news reports Canadian government initially offers a mere 2 million dollars and under UN pressure changes to $30 million. According to the latest report, the donation is still 3/4 short.

In the last few years, China suffered as many natural disasters as any other countries combined. From the Sichuan earth quake to the ZhouChu mudslides last week, thousands vanished and millions homeless. I have not seen media coverage nor I see Canadian government pledge. Instead, I watch hundreds of Chinese tourists landed in Vancouver bringing Canadian tourism industry great hope.

What is the magic formula that separate Pakistan and China?

More or less corruption?

Living in Harmony

Many self help books identify the causes of fear and pain and provide the readers ways to live in peace. Many of these are devoted to the individual readers or the family.

How can countries live in harmony? Seems like an unsustainable goal.
Is country the sum of all evils? Only the ruthless, power, greed are in the equation.

American is the democratic superpower since WW2, however, the administration keep throwing their young people to battles, be it Korean war, Vietnam war, Kuwait war, Iraq and Afghanistan.
For what actual benefits these wars bring to the people of United States?
Is this realistic to use force to bring harmony?

What if everyone read "the 7 habits of highly effective people" to begin the journey. A long long journey for sure.

Local Weather

In the first week of July, Edmonton is wet and cold. So much rain that we hardly turn on the sprinkler. Relative to last July, this summer is less welcome. However, if I compare Edmonton to the rest of the world cities, Edmonton is the best. With temperature in the high 30C and humidity in the high 80s, what else can you do except hiding inside air conditioning rooms.

The climate is changing, the climate lobbyists are active. Their suggestions of clean energy are heard everywhere in the world. Let me see how many global meetings they will have for sheer discussions, the good old wine and dance sessions.

The world is spinning towards destruction not because of natural disasters. The world is spinning towards destruction because of government mismanagement. Corruption in all levels of government, in all levels of financial institutions, in all levels of NGO. Quality of living decreases for ordinary Joe like you and me, our savings, our pensions are disappearing at an exponential rate. What recourse do we have when some one abscond our funds? The answer is zippo.