Tuesday, November 30, 2010

1st entry for December VoM

The 1st video of the month December entry is by Evanns and tagged by Sont. Once again great video editing skills by Evanns with nice music and nice commentary. The video shows mostly some of the fun, candid and blooper moments during ACES gymnastics trainings. It also reminds everyone of the fears they overcame along the way and how far they have gone.




P.S: This came in 2 weeks ago, so sorry for the late update.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

BPoM 2nd entry for December

Another post by Ken this time on his blog. The post talk about the type of strength cheerleading requires and the benefits of strength. Based on Ken's experience, he also recommended some of the exercises which he does and what are they useful for.

Ken ends off by adding, "There are so many more exercises you can do, so many variations. FIND OUT something that works for you." What he posted are his recommendations, exercises that worked very well for him, but end of the day everyone still has to find something that suits themselves.

Check out the post by Ken: 2nd BPoM December entry or here


P.S: I need to gym

BPoM 1st entry for December

The 1st entry of BPOM December is by Ken for his post on Wildcards Blog. It is a short and sweet post helping Ochi to campaign for captain of Wildcards for 2011/2012 seasion. Ochi's promise for his tenure as captain is to produce full squads pop overs and to establish good relationship with other teams to promote cheerleading.

It often takes a selfless man to do the job of a good leader, and I strongly believe that Ochi has what it takes. The man who help raise the team's overall standards of partner stunting with his constant push and support of DIY. Ochi once told me that he would sacrifice his own partner stunt training time during DIY to help the others, to raise the standard of everyone up together. Such selfless behaviour deserves the respect by all his teammates. Also to volunteer oneself is not easy; now that Ochi had volunteered for the captaincy, everyone please give him your support.

Check out the post by Ken: 1st BPoM December entry or here


P.S: A great leader leads by serving first

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Are you doing ok?

I was reading Yahoo news recently and keep seeing articles on the increasing wealth of Singapore, the surge in High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), arrival of the super rich etc. Looks like Singapore is doing pretty well I would say.

But how much of the pie are you actually having? Some statistics from this article from Yahoo I read today, Arrival of the super-rich in Singapore; Currently, 11.8% of Singaporean households have at least US$1 million in investible assets each (excluding property).

This means that more than 1 in 10 people you meet on the street comes from a millionaire household. Just start counting people as you walk down the street, and for every 10th person you counted, you have a millionaire or ASK. If you just keep counting as you walk, you will find out that you end up with alot of rich people in SG.

The question again is where do you stand? Personally I know I am not part of the 11.8%; I am not a millionaire, nor my family has a combined net worth of more than a $1,000,000 investible assets (remember this does not includes the house you residing in). It seems that I am not getting a big portion of the pie that Singapore is having, not benefitting much from the global capital influx into Asia and Singapore.

The article got me interested to find out more. So as usual I just went to google; there is nothing you cannot find these days with the internet.

I came across this interesting site (I bookmarked it already so should all of you): Salary.sg, Your Salary in Singapore. In this site you will find many more related article about wealth. It also has many tools that can help your calculations and for statistics.

Ok we know from above that in Singapore 1 in 10 people are millionaire or ASK, but how much is the mean, or average? Well the answer can be found in one of the article from Salary.sg, Is Your Net Worth Above US$255,488?, taken from a report by Credit Suisse.

The average net worth of an individual in Singapore is US$255,488 = SGD$335,000. Now say no need to be the top 11.8%, but are you even doing as well as the average? Do you have a net worth of $335,000 to be the average in Singapore? I know I don't and this is very sad to find out.

Ok we keep talking about net worth, but what exactly is net worth. For those who don't know or has not calculated your net worth before and does not know how to do it, there is this article from the site: Calculate Net Worth and Benchmark It that teaches you how to and aids you with a calculation tool.

Taken from this article too is this: According to the book "The Millionaire Next Door" if your net worth equals (or exceeds) your age times your annual income divided by 10, then you are a “wealth accumulator”. I suppose that means it’s good. This is your target net worth.

So for my age plus my annual income I should be having a net worth of ~$150,000 by now, which I am quite sad to declare that I am still far off the mark. This means I am not a good "wealth accumulator", I spend too much. So do your own sums and see how well you are doing and if you are not doing too well, start doing something about it. Wow, a 3rd indicator that tells me that I better be kicking my own butt and work harder. I am not 1 in 10, my net worth is below average and now I am not accumulating my wealth properly enough. As I continue my research, it is getting more and more pessimistic for me. =(

How about let's stop talking about net worth and go 1 level lower, how much is your monthly and annual income? Taken from Ministry of Manpower, Earnings and Wages (pls go check out this information in the form of a table), the average monthly earnings of a Singaporean is $3,872 in 2009, $4,310 for 1st Quarter of 2010 and very likely to be above $4,000 for whole of 2010.

For some, income by the month might not be so good for comparision as they may have variable monthly income (such as those in sales earning by commisions) or have variable bonus. At www.salary.sg again, you can find this very cool tool in one of their article, Compare Your Annual Income 2010, where you just have to key in your annual income and you can compare it as a percentage to all taxpayers in Singapore. Damn cool. Are you doing better than average?

So how well am I doing now, comparing monthly and annual income? All I can say is that I am now too despondent to say.

I am not in the 11.8%, not an ASK, my net worth is way below the average, I do not accumulate as much as I should have done, my monthly and yearly is not doing well either. Everything seems dull for me now, but I am not trying to be sad or anything like that. On the other hand, I will take these statistics as a motivation, to work towards a better future.

Well to lighten things up a little (in case like me, you are feeling like shit after reading the above stuff), Singapore is still a great place to be in. Other statistics also show that in terms of wealth we have 1 million people in the top 10% of the whole world. This means that about 1 in 5 of us is richer than 5.5 billion people! Haha.

I know that this is a "cheerleading blog", and nothing I just posted is related to cheerleading you may think. But I chose to publish all these here because I want everyone to be more aware of their financial situation, especially cheerleaders that I cared most about. If I can help even just 1 passionate cheerleader to start being more aware, and this cheerleader turns out to become a multi millionaire, I am sure cheerleading will have lots to benefit from too.

I stress again that all these financial education is not in anyway less important for cheerleading than being able to do a double full layout. For those still studying, and don't think that it applies to you, think again. In fact it is the best to start earlier and when you are young. For those already working, the statistics serves as a benchmark for yourself. To put in figuratively, for cheerleading to grow in Singapore, we need as much cheerleader millionaires as we need cheerleaders who can do a toss to hands.


P.S: A teacher should not only teach the students how to study and pass exams, likwise a cheerleading coach should not only focus on teaching students cheerleading skills or how to do a toss cupie. It is equally important to take care of the students development in other areas, such as financial education in this case.

Friday, November 12, 2010

出神入化与走火入魔只是一线之差

我有一把剑,若运用的对,可以出神入化。
但若运用的不对,可是会走火入魔!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Law of Least Effort

Today I was very tired and decide to take a little break at work to go surfing (online).

We are all very familiar with the Law of Attraction by now, but how many of you heard of the Law of Least Effort? I was surfing and I came across this new Law to me. It is 1 of the "7 Spiritual Laws of Success" by the great spiritual guru Deepak Chopra. Do check out the other 6 Laws too. They are all equally meaningful and helpful.

After reading through the Law of Least Effort, I feel that it is even more powerful than the Law of Attraction. It's 3 main essence is given by Acceptance, Responsibility and Defenselessness. Shall share this article which I read with you all.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Law of Least Effort

The fourth spiritual law of success is the Law of Least Effort. This law is based on the fact that nature's intelligence functions with effortless ease and abandoned carefreeness. This is the principle of least action, of no resistance. This is, therefore, the principle of harmony and love. When we learn this lesson from nature, we easily fulfill our desires.

If you observe nature at work, you will see that least effort is expended. Grass doesn't try to grow, it just grows. Fish don't try to swim, they just swim. Flowers don't try to bloom, they bloom. Birds don't try to fly, they
fly. This is their intrinsic nature. The earth doesn't try to spin on its own axis; it is the nature of the earth to spin with dizzying speed and to hurtle through space. It is the nature of babies to be in bliss. It is the nature of the sun to shine. It is the nature of the stars to glitter and sparkle. And it is human nature to make our dreams manifest into physical form, easily and effortlessly.

In Vedic Science, the age-old philosophy of India, this principle is known as the principle of economy of effort, or "do less and accomplish more." Ultimately you come to the state where you do nothing and accomplish everything. This means that there is just a faint idea, and then the manifestation of the idea comes about effortlessly. What is commonly called a "miracle" is actually an expression of the Law of Least Effort.

Nature's intelligence functions effortlessly, frictionlessly, spontaneously. It is non-linear; it is intuitive, holistic, and nourishing. And when you are in harmony with nature, when you are established in the knowledge of your true Self, you can make use of the Law of Least Effort.

Least effort is expended when your actions are motivated by love, because nature is held together by the energy of love. When you seek power and control over other people, you waste energy. When you seek money or power for the sake of the ego, you spend energy chasing the illusion of happiness instead of enjoying happiness in the moment. When you seek money for personal gain only, you cut off the flow of energy to yourself, and interfere with the expression of nature's intelligence. But when your actions are motivated by love, there is no waste of energy. When your actions are motivated by love, your energy multiplies and accumulates -- and the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth.

You can think of your physical body as a device for controlling energy: it can generate, store, and expend energy. If you know how to generate, store, and expend energy in an efficient way, then you can create any amount of wealth. Attention to the ego consumes the greatest amount of energy. When your internal reference point is the ego, when you seek power and control over other people or seek approval from others, you spend energy in a wasteful way.

When that energy is freed up, it can be rechanneled and used to create anything that you want. When your internal reference point s your spirit, when you are immune to criticism and unfearful of any challenge, you can harness the power of love, and use energy creatively for the experience of affluence and evolution.

In The Art of Dreaming, Don Juan tells Carlos Castaneda, ". . . most of our energy goes into upholding our importance.... If we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe."

Acceptance

There are three components to the Law of Least Effort -- three things you can do to put this principle of "do less and accomplish more" into action. The first component is acceptance. Acceptance simply means that you make a commitment: "Today I will accept people, situations, circumstances, and events as they occur." This means I will know that this moment is as it should be, because the whole universe is as it should be. This moment -- the one you're experiencing right now -- is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.

When you struggle against this moment, you're actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is important to understand. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.

When you feel frustrated or upset by a person or a situation, remember that you are not reacting to the person or the situation, but to your feelings about the person or the situation. These are your feelings, and your feelings are not someone else's fault. When you recognize and understand this completely, you are ready to take responsibility for how you feel and to change it. And if you can accept things as they are, you are ready to take responsibility for your situation and for all the events you see as problems.

Responsibility

This leads us to the second component of the Law of Least Effort: responsibility. What does responsibility mean? Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself. Having accepted this circumstance, this event, this problem, responsibility then means the ability to have a creative response to the situation as it is now. All problems contain the seeds of opportunity, and this awareness allows you to take the moment and transform it to a better situation or thing.

Once you do this, every so-called upsetting situation will become an opportunity for the creation of something new and beautiful, and every so-called tormentor or tyrant will become your teacher. Reality is an interpretation. And if you choose to interpret reality in this way, you will have many teachers around you, and many opportunities to evolve.

Whenever confronted by a tyrant, tormentor, teacher, friend, or foe (they all mean the same thing) remind yourself, "This moment is as it should be." Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.

Defenselessness

The third component of the Law of Least Effort is defenselessness, which means that your awareness is established in defenselessness, and you have relinquished the need to convince or persuade others of your point of view. If you observe people around you, you'll see that they spend ninety-nine percent of their time defending their points of view. If you just relinquish the need to defend your point of view, you will in that relinquishment, gain access to enormous amounts of energy that have been previously wasted.

When you become defensive, blame others, and do not accept and surrender to the moment, your life meets resistance. Any time you encounter resistance, recognize that if you force the situation, the resistance will only increase. You don't want to stand rigid like a tall oak that cracks and collapses in the storm. Instead, you want to be flexible, like a reed that bends with the storm and survives.

Completely desist from defending your point of view. When you have no point to defend, you do not allow the birth of an argument. If you do this consistently -- if you stop fighting and resisting -- you will fully experience the present, which is a gift. Someone once told me, "The past is history, the future is a mystery, and this moment is a gift. That is why this moment is called 'the present'."

If you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every living sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens and encumbrances of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness. Only then will you become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free.

In this joyful, simple freedom, you will know without any doubt in your heart that what you want is available to you whenever you want it, because your want will be from the level of happiness, not from the level of anxiety or fear. You do not need to justify; simply declare your intent to yourself, and you will experience fulfillment, delight, joy, freedom, and autonomy in every moment of your life.

Make a commitment to follow the path of no resistance. This is the path through which nature's intelligence unfolds spontaneously, without friction or effort. When you have the exquisite combination of acceptance, responsibility, and defenselessness, you will experience life flowing with effortless ease.

When you remain open to all points of view -- not rigidly attached to only one -- your dreams and desires will flow with nature's desires. Then you can release your intentions, without attachment, and just wait for the appropriate season for your desires to blossom into reality. You can be sure that when the season is right, your desires will manifest. This is the Law of Least Effort.

_____

This article is excerpted from: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra.


P.S: Shall start to practice this new Law that I learnt.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Blog Post of the Month November '10

We have 1 entry for BPoM November:

1. Blogged by Veron and tagged by Wee Keat

Although we are a little dissapointed to receive only 1 entry, nonetheless the prize shall still be awarded. It is very simple, just make and entry and stand to win a cash prize.

Congratulations to Veron and Wee Keat for winning the prize of $50.

Veron's Blog Post once again:

Veron - http://justshutupandlock.blogspot.com/2010/10/hi-spectrum-i-believe-you-all-had.html

Even though there is only 1 entry, due credit had to be given and nothing is to be taken away from the post. It is a very heart warming post by Veron about her memories and journey in cheerleading. It speaks about how cheerleading can positively changed one's life. Last but not least; remember the journey is never over till you said it is, "The journey is not over yet, and there are still more memories to collect." If you have ever been involved seriously in cheerleading, you will know what Veron is talking about, while the rest can only wonder.


P.S: Pls continue to support BPoM

Friday, November 5, 2010

Video of the Month November '10

Nov 5th, our 5th year anniversary had just past, and it is also time to announce the winner for VoM November. This is the first time we are having this special promotion of pegging the prize ammount to the duration of the video. We have a total of 9 entries for this month, an all time high. Without further ado lets recap the 9 entries:

1. Video by Spencer tagged by Chaang
2. Video by Kerry
3. Video by Kerry
4. Video by Kok Teong and tagged by Wei Cheng
5. Video by Zhaoming
6. Video by Zhaoming
7. Video by Kerry
8. Video by Kerry and tagged by Ruth
9. Video by Jiahui

Some nice videos entries we have and the VoM November goes to.......

Kerry for his video on the toss cupies at RWS, and also to Ruth for tagging it.




A simple but nicely done video that showed the 4 tries taken to get a good take for 3 toss cupies. The background chosen for the video was excellent as well; managed to capture the entire Universal Globe. Nice job on the commentaries as well to provide a much needed humour to my hectic life.

So for this month's promotion, with the video at 59secs, Kerry and Ruth you 2 won yourselves $50.

Although I was pleased with the number of entries this month, I am hoping to see more entries from a wider circle of cheerleaders and not just cheerleaders who know me. If you hear of VoM, do not hesitate to join; it is open to everyone even if I do not know you.


P.S: 2010 is reaching it's end very soon.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

9th entry for November VoM

The 9th video for November VoM is by Jiahui. This is the only month since June that we got 9 entries, tying the record for the most entries of the month. We have about 24 hours left to break that record.

The video shows KC and Jiahui doing a cupie lib tick tock. This is a stunt that 2 years back, KC the cupie king himself dared not even attempt. This goes to show again how much the standards have been rising. KC and JH continue to push and set the standards ok. Jiayou everyone.

This video stands a chance to win $50





P.S: Next up cupie lib tick tock pop over?

8th entry for November VoM

Another video by Kerry and tagged by Ruth. We now have 8 entries for November VoM. The video is taken after one of Astros performance and featured 3 toss cupies. Nice work putting the clips together into a video by Kerry; very funny to hear all the commentaries too. This 59secs video stands a chance to win $50


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

I want to do REWIND!!!