Inspirational Proverbs - Part 1

"Man is a pupil, and pain is his teacher."
- Alfred de Musset

"It's not because things are difficult that we don't dare;
It's because we don't dare that things are difficult."
- Seneque

The wise man asks himself the reason of his mistakes.
The fool asks others."
- Chinese proverb

"By trying often, the monkey learns to jump from the tree."
- Cambodian proverb

"With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes silk."
- Chinese proverb

"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man,
but sooner or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can."
- Bruce Lee

Scam or No Scam: How do we differentiate?

Today's Blog is about scams which people are going through, but most of the times it is difficult to recognise it at an early stage whether it is a scam or not. OKAY, so lets begin, people generally receive a mail like this:

Greetings.

Our company ALM is pleased to offer you a well-paid part-time vacancy for the position of administrative assistant/sales support.

You'll work at the convenience of your home, part-time.

ALM, a luxury goods company, presents the best off-season luxury finds from the most prestigious international designers and collectibles from the rarest collections at irresistible prices.

Candidates for the job should possess excellent organizational skills as well as the ability to efficiently multi-task. Ideal candidates have a strong focus on day-to-day operational excellence, and a personal style that builds trust, and inspires loyalty. The candidate should be motivated, proactive, be able to learn and adapt quickly.

Other duties of the Administrative Assistant/Sales Support include, but are not limited to:

. Incorporating effective priorities for the virtual office function

. Administer day-to-day financial responsibilities for clients

. Reporting online daily

. Preparing brief summary reports, and weekly financial reports

Salary part-time: 1,800GBP/month, plus commission.

Location: United Kingdom

If you are interested, please reply to : Leta@uk-groups.net with your short resume.

Best regards,

ALM.

So what would you do when you receive such emails. Ideally people search for:

1. The email address:

Now, if you search the email address, you might get a legitimate company or many links referring to that email address.

2. The names of the sender:

The names of the sender ideally are not helpful as they might be the actual names of good people who have no connection with this scam.

3. The name of the company:

Ok, you might go for the name of the company. Well, you could Google the name of the company, but sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Technique:

So how do we resolve this in just a few seconds, the idea is simple, just copy the entire text from email. For example, Copy the line to Google search engine "Our company ALM is pleased to offer you a well-paid part-time vacancy for the position of administrative assistant/sales support. You'll work at the convenience of your home, part-time." and the results would be definitely on your screen, showing you that it is a scam or fraudulent email.

The scammers often use different email addresses, some email addresses are real, but some are fake. Often they use the name of a well-known Doctors, Lawyers, Government Officials, etc. so when you search them, you will find it that it is a good person and the company are genuine. The important thing that the readers can do is to know the source and whether they have actually applied for any such vacancy.

You can read in detail about the above scam on this forum: http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&p=36862

What are the things you need to do when you are in London as a Student?

The first thing is to book the seats near the exit and book for window seat (it’s optional). The reason for booking the seat near the exit is it will save a lot of your time in the immigration process. As you come out of the plane, try to walk faster and reach in the front of the queue. If you are visiting for the first time, then the immigration officer will ask for your X-Ray of your chest. If you do not have the X-Ray of your chest, then it would waste roughly 2 to 3 hours as most of the students would be arriving in the same month or same period and there would be a queue of 2 to 3 flights.

When you reach London's Immigration desk, the first thing that will be asked to you by the immigration officer would be:

1. Why are you here or the purpose of your visit to London, United Kingdom?

2. Where are you going to stay?

3. Documents in Support of your answer.

Please remember to fill all the necessary details on the application form given to you at the beginning of the journey by the air plane staff. This will save a lot of your time and your journey would be hassle free.

Travelling to your destination:

Generally students book a Taxi or ask someone to take them to the hostel or shared house or flat depends on your preference. If you could not find one, then options are available on the Airport, which can be arranged when you reach London's Heathrow or Gatwick Airport. It is always better to book in advance your journey and where you would visit.

Accommodation:

Accommodation in London is becoming expensive due to the heavy demand for student accommodation. You can find cheaper accommodation outside the Central London which is Zone 1. London is divided between zones 1 to 9. Zone 1 being the most expensive i.e., for example, if you buy a Juice or a Sandwich, it would be 0.50 pence to £1.00 costlier than the other zones. Having said that, it depends on what the students prefer. There are also places in Central London, whereby you can get cheap food, but that I can cover in a separate blog.

Flats or shared houses could go anywhere between £100 to £200 per week per person, whereas zone 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 could go anywhere between £50 to £100 per person per week depending upon the type of accommodation preferred by the students. Some of the best places, which provide decent accommodation, are International Students House, YMCA, Youth Hostels Association, London and many more, but these three provide good quality accommodation at a fairly reasonable price. There are many other places which do provide breakfast plus dinner in a shared house for £55 to £75, but it would be covered in another blog.

Bank Account:

The first thing to do when you settle down in your house is have a good rest and the very next day, go to your college or the university and ask for the Letters for opening Bank Account and Letter for the Council. It is very important to open a Bank Account as quickly as possible as other things are linked to the Bank Statement which is used as an Address Proof as well as transferring your salary to this bank. Without the bank account getting a job would become very difficult and it also serves as a reference for your credit history. Please remember that in UK everything is connected and personal details such as date of birth, full name and address lead to lot of ID frauds.

General Practitioner (G.P.):

The very next thing to do when you get a confirmation of Bank Account opening and collecting your admission letter from your college is to register with your nearest General Practitioner or G.P. You might ask why it is so important to register with G.P.... Reason for that is the registration times are limited and the G.P. will conduct a thorough check up of your body including blood, stool and urine samples. Please remember that this facility is free of charge and you can visit the G.P. in the G.P.'s visiting hours. 

The UK government has taken an initiative to give the medical facility to the students free of charge for which the students contribute towards the National Insurance. Now in case, if you are hurt or are facing some serious pain and have to see the doctor in out of hours of the G.P., then you are allowed to visit the Hospital in the Accidents and Emergency Unit. Here you would be asked about your registered G.P. details along with your other personal details and the type of injury or pain. 

Again these facilities are free of charge and hence the wait time could be approximately 2 to 4 hours depending on the queue. If you want to see how the system in the A&E works please see Mr Bean at the hospital in YouTube, the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iFZK9K3QB8. This will give you a fair idea about how the system works.

National Insurance (N.I.):

This is one of the most important steps for getting a Job. National Insurance has your Tax Code which makes sure that you do not get overly taxed, but it also keeps a check that you are not exceeding more hours of working time than you are supposed to do. In UK, students are allowed to work for 20 hours per week while studying and 40 hours in their holiday period for which they need to submit a letter from the College or University. If the students do not have a National Insurance number they need to apply to the nearest Job Centre where they are residing. For getting a National Insurance, you need to have a copy of 5 application forms or a minimum of 3 rejection letter before the national insurance number would be given to you. 

The best way to get it is to apply on www.reed.co.uk or www.totaljobs.com for Jobs, as they send you an application confirmation. Also the companies where you apply do send you a rejection letter. If you get an appointment letter before getting the N.I. then you just book the appointment and follow the instructions on the Phone. Make sure that you have copy of the bank statement or account opening letter, which has your address on it, application or rejection letter, college admission letter and ID card and your passport with you.

Emergency Phone Numbers (999):

Another important thing is to save this number 999 for any emergency like theft, accident and ambulance service, racial abuse, harassment, etc. If you face any of these or are witnessing any of these, please call on the above number ASAP. The police or the emergency facilities will arrive immediately within 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the situation, but they do come.

Job Application:

OKAY! You have done all of the above as per the sequence, now the next important thing is Job and where to search for it and how to apply. Some students might take Job, some won't. This section is for those who want to know how they can apply for the Job. Some students carry with them lot of photocopies of their resumes or curriculum vitae's of 2 to 3 pages. This all is fine but depends on your profile. If you get the job that you want than go for it with this format, but if you cannot get into your field and desperately need a job then you can make these changes. This has helped many students, hope it helps you as well.

Firstly, make sure the resume is a one pager as most of them employers would not even look in detail. Secondly, visit all the high street shops and ask for a job personally and how to apply. Some might take your resume or some might ask you to fill the form. Please do so as per the best of your knowledge. If you still can't find a job, reply with your comments and I will try to respond.

Today, I have given you some of the basic information on what are the things you need to do in your initial period when you are in UK. This information has helped many students and they are now doing well in UK. Please feel free to write the comments or suggestions or if you have any queries with any other thing. There are still many things to share, things like where and how to find cheap accommodation, where to find cheap food, cheap places to shop in London and many more.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Cheers and Best of Luck for your future.

Rohan

Why I chose HTC Desire over iPhone?

This blog is about my experience with HTC Desire and my reasons for choosing HTC Desire over iPhone.

Today I am going to share some of my experiences with my HTC Desire and some of its cool features which I have used recently to my advantage, hope it helps you as well.

People have often asked me the question as to why I chose HTC Desire over iPhone.

My answer was simple: HTC Desire is not iPhone, but a better version to iPhone.

Firstly, IPhone runs on Mac OS, whereas HTC is powered by Android Operating system. With Android OS and Android market 60% of the stuff is free, whereas in Apple Market there is hardly any stuff you will find free, most of the things are chargeable.

Secondly, HTC is a multi-tasking phone compared to iPhone. In iPhone you can runs only one task at a time, whereas in HTC you can run several tasks at a time. For example, you have your browser on one side, music on the other, antivirus running in the background and navigation panel running side by side.

OK! you might ask what the use of such multi-tasking when you can only see one screen at a time. Point taken, now consider this, I was travelling to south London in an unknown place by bus and I did not knew how to reach the location. I had a copy on my email and I used the browser to search the exact address using Google maps.

Now what I did was, I kept the browser window open and pressed Home button on my HTC Desire, that meant my browser window is not closed and I could go to another application. I used Google Maps to see my location and scrolled through the maps and found my destination and started following my location on the Map. At this moment, I kept on pressing the Home button to locate the exact position and as soon as I saw that the Navigator is showing the exact spot where I had to reach. I alighted from the bus. And you know what, it was super correct. I alighted at the correct spot without knowing or asking anyone where to alight or the stop name. Sometimes it’s very difficult not to know the stop names or the indicators in the bus are not working or you just might miss the stop.

To me HTC saved my day...hope this trick would save your day as well. To use this trick, you need to download, Navigator or Google Maps on you HTC from Android Market. Ideally is already installed along with the browser. Again the browser can open multiple windows.

The above is one such incidence. Here is another one. In blackberry or iPhone the emails use Push technology i.e. only when you click on the mails they would not download. In Blackberry, it only downloads after every one hour, but in HTC Desire, the mails come instantly and they notify you as soon as you receive any mail in your In-box. A very handy tool when it comes to important emails to be received on time. This particular facility is so handy, that I simply picked up HTC without any trouble.

Another feature of HTC Desire is its sleek design, which at par with iPhone and offers 5 megapixel camera. Compared to iPhone the music may not be that great but it is alright. Another feature which HTC has given in its Desire edition is FM Radio. Although many people may not think this as handy, but trust me you cannot listen to the same music again and again for a long period of time. Even though I have of 5000 tracks of music, yet I want to listen something else on that particular day, which may not be present on my mobile. IPhone users may say that you can view YouTube Videos on iPhone, but so are the users of HTC. YouTube Videos are readily viewable on HTC Desire itself.

There are many more feature which I will reveal as we go along, for the time being...it is Good Bye...Good Night...Adios...Shabba Kher and God Bless.

Thanks for reading...Rohan.

How fair is fair trade?

Has anyone ever asked the question on how fair is the Fair Trade?

People often confuse Fair Trade with Organic food. Some of the materials like cotton could come under organic as well as Fair Trade. Coffee for instance comes under Fair Trade, whether it is produced organically or not is another question.

Prices:
If we look at the prices of Fair Trade goods or for that matter Organic products, they are often sold at a premium. Does it actually cost that much, is a big question. Again people believe that by buying these goods they are actually helping the farmers of the third world country. One can argue that it is a noble cause, but why is it that the customer only has to pay the price. Has any company actually given any subsidy for discounting the prices on these fair trade goods? Will it not help the consumers as well as farmers both at the same time?

For example, normal Banana sold in Supermarket at 0.84p, whereas the fair trade and organic banana is sold at £1.14, i.e. a premium of 0.30 pence. Why only the customer should pay the premium.
Now if we consider that the profit would be just 0.10 pence for 1,000,000 bananas sold by supermarkets, than the total money earned by supermarkets would be £100,000. What happened to the rest of the money is unclear.

Accounting:
The balance sheet of every company shows the combined figures for the entire organisation, which makes it very difficult to find the actual cost carried on Fair Trade and Organic products. Companies and several other supermarkets do not show these costs separately.

Carbon Trading:
Carbon trading refers to the carbon emitted in the atmosphere via transportation or manufacturing. The aim of Fair Trade was to benefit the farmers in the poor countries, who are not able to produce enough due to unavailability of land or proper equipment to cultivate the land or money needed for both. Transporting of Fair Trade goods from one country to another will only increase the carbon emissions which is not conducive to the environment.

Large scale manufacturing a viewpoint:
We are forgetting the very basic reason as to why we started producing in bulk. The main reason was to reduce cost and optimum utilisation of resources. Now has Fair Trade answered these questions is unclear. Although the supporters of Fair Trade do say that they are helping the environment by doing organic farming. They also say that they are helping poor farmers by proving them necessary equipment and training as well as money needed to buy the seeds for cultivation.

Economics of Fair Trade
As per economics, raw materials often cost cheaper than the finished products. The developed countries buy raw materials from under developed countries and sell the finished products back to the poor countries thereby making sizable gains from the underdeveloped countries lack of manufacturing.

Conclusion:
To conclude, it is important to ask the question as to who is making profit from Fair Trade movement. Is it just another trick to make customers pay a premium in the name of poverty of third world and underdeveloped countries? How do we justify the carbon emitted due to the transportation of goods from third world countries affecting the environment? Again what about the local producers who have manufactured in bulk? What happen to those goods?
Although supporters of Fair Trade say it is a good movement, but I find it as just another way of making more money and making customers pay a premium in the name of helping farmers of poor countries. Fair trade simply ignores local farmers thereby creating further unemployment. Fair trade could be useful if the country is not able to produce certain goods which could be manufactured in the poor countries making it a worthwhile movement.
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Dear Readers,
I am happy to receive your comments in this regards.
Cheers,

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

I like this poem, due to the inspiration it gives me, to be the captain of my soul. It just goes to show how simple words can change lives of millions of people.