Try this and get stuff for free!

Do you want to save on your grocery bills?

Every company has departments that handle customer satisfaction, and every company also gives away their product for FREE for various reasons. The reasons a product is given away for free is a customer with a complaint, a defective product, or for customer loyalty.

So what exactly do you do?

Go to your pantry and look at everything you have, from cat food to bread to cereal and everything in between. All of these products have an address for the manufacturer. All you need to do is simply write the manufacturer a letter telling them how you felt about the product. If you liked it, tell them what made you like it, and also be sure to tell them that you plan to keep buying it (they love hearing this!) If you didn't like it, tell them why. Tell them how they can improve their product and offer any other suggestions you can. These letters do not need to be long, a few sentences will do just fine.

Be sure to include at the end of your letter "I would appreciate a coupon or two to compensate me for the postage costs and time spent bringing this information to your attention."

Always include the UPC (barcode) off the packaging so that they know exactly the product you are discussing, and don't forget to put your return address on the letter! Over 90% of the companies that you write will send you a free voucher for a product! Note that these vouchers are not "cents off" or "Buy 2 Get One Free," these vouchers are usually for totally free items!
(quoted from Laura - secret mystery)

Pirate and me (2005 Springbreak@South Padre Island)

The largest swimming pool I have ever seen

Have you seen such as large swimming pool? (picture from Caines, Australia)

International Edition Textbooks

All major publishers have declare war with international edition booksellers. In the effort to reduce the import of international edition textbooks to USA, major publishers have make minor content adjustment to some international edition textbooks. Even when the title/edition/author are correct, there may be a slight difference in the content.

This action has worked for publisher. International edition textbook exporters have suffered enormous losses due to returns from end users for slight difference in the content of the textbooks.

As an entrepreneur, the course of actions taken by the publisher is a real good move. It can prevent further exploitation of the price difference between domestic US textbooks and the international edition ones.

As a student, however, I despise the action taken by the publishers. They clearly do not care about the rising education cost of Americans. It has created a burden for both parents and children, and exacerbated the indebtedness of average Americans.

In order to tackle this problem, I am now working on a website called www.esdena.com, which will launch at late September. This website, will serve as a marketplace for college and universtiy students.

The uniqueness of this website is its ability to incorporate local transaction. We acknowledge that it is a hassle for most sellers to ship their books, thus our system allows seller to choose to sell within their own schools, thus avoiding the trouble of book mailing.

Sorry for my shameless self-promotion, I will update you more later on my project and how it can help to lower education cost.

Diversity

In America, the concept of diversity is important. Education institution stresses the importance of diversity by admitting minority students who are less qualified. Corporation promotes themselves as a diversed workplace in order to attract customers, investors and employees.

In order to achieve diversity, institutions arbitarily put people, which they believe belongs to different category, together. e.g. In a commercial, there is 1 African American male 1 Anglo female 1 Asian male and 1 Hispanic female.

The objection of promoting diversity is to eliminate discriminations and categorization.

But hold on....

If it holds true that we should not discriminate or categorize others, then why should we diverse? Since the concept of diversity is based on having different categories in the first place. If there were no categories, we do not need diversity.

Aren't we supposed to be all the same? Whether we be Asian female, Hispanic homosexual male, White blond old lady.

If we are really all the same, what is diversity? And why diverse?

What's to be hyped about?

There is this home-based business phenomenon recently that everyone is hyped about. They talk about it on Entrepreneur magazine, on TV, on the internet, and even have their own magazine called Home Based Business.

But, what is to be excited about?

After all, home-based business is merely business that is based at home!!! Home based business is NOT a genre of business, it is just a stage of business when you are dirt poor and do not have money to rent an office.

All kinds of business can be home-based. Michael Dell started putting computers together in his dorm room. Google was created as a school project.

So before you get into one of these home based business scams. Think twice. There is no quick way/formula to success. There is only a unique idea, a good product/service and an aggressive marketing plan.

FAQ: Why don't you put any pictures?

Here you go. Happy?

Own your vacation home for a week?

Recently, buying and selling of Timeshare has become increasingly popular.

What is a Timeshare?

According to Ebay, "a Timeshare (Vacation Ownership) is the right to use a vacation property for a specific time period. Usually purchased in weekly increments, a timeshare can be purchased for a fraction of the cost compared to owning a vacation home. For example, the ownership rights for a Kauai beachfront condo may be divided into 52 weeks, with each buyer owning a different week. All the owners have guaranteed rights to stay in the timeshare while sharing costs."

Why Own a Vacation Timeshare?

- Have an ownership interest in your favorite vacation destination, i.e., Florida, Maui, Mexico, Park City, Palm Springs, London, New York, Greece?/li>
- An awesome way to spend quality time with your family
- Can lock in tomorrow's vacations at today's prices
- Exchange, trade, or rent (Orlando year 1, Aspen year 2, London year 3, etc.)
- Timeshare accommodations offer more room and amenities than most hotels
- A home away from home - fully furnished, most with full size kitchen
- Annual maintenance costs are shared by all owners and supervised by a management company, freeing you from the worry, hassles and inconvenience of owning a vacation home.
- Can pass on to your heirs

Would this type of "ownership" appeal to you?

Studying at libraries

Many people like studying at libraries. I personally don't. Partly because I don't like going to libraries, partly because I don't study.

Recently, my internet at home mysteriously died. For an internet communication freak like me, it means that I have to hang out at the library in order to go online. And I discovered another thing that I dislike about libraries...

They don't let you answer phone calls.

We are living in a world where communication is essential; an average person gets at least 3-4 calls per day. What can't we take calls in the library?

My suggestion is that we should divide a library into areas of different noise toleration level. For those who like absolute quietness, they can choose to hang out at the quiet area. For people like me who doesnt mind distraction, we can be put at the noisy area.

The providence of free internet access and A/C is valuable, but the accomodation of cell phone users is more precious.

Blogging is the new black(or pink?) of marketing

Nowadays, everybody has a blog or online journal. You must have a blog to claim tech-savy, so here is how this blog came about. Writing a blog is not as easy as I thought it would be; I already ran out of what to say....

Before I started to write my first entry, I have to decide on what topics and approach I am going to take. Most of my friends who write online journal on xanga or friendster write about their personal life, their emotion and post their drunk clubbing picture. The bottom line is.... who would care enough to read about how your boyfriend dumped you, how your cat died and how much you hate your boss.

Sadly enough, there are some people who do...

This blog, however, is not meant to target those people.

Inorder to appeal to a wider audience. I am only going to write about my opinion of particular issues. One of the best blogs I have read is Mark Cuban's blogmaverick. Despite his sucky team and greasy long hair, he is an exceptional writer. This blog is going to model after his.

What is the real purpose of this blog? To promote myself, of course. A blog, if well written and used appropriately, can function as your personal advertisement as well as your personal media. I am 21 years old, with many goals to attain, so hopefully this blog will help me go places.

Anyhow, here this is, my first real entry; a small step to super blogstardom, a large step for human kind.

My journey to super blogstardom

Here is all this begins....