How to maximize your Outlets Store outtings?

Well, Johor Premium Outlets is open and shopaholics are all excited. Needless to say, people who are aware of Premium Outlets Stores know that there are plenty of bargains around. Unfortunately, bargains are not in every store and you really need to do some homework before you start your journey. There are normally more than fifty odd stores around and not all of them have past season’s offerings. And if you really want to get the best bargains, then you will need to comb each store carefully, and certainly you need a whole day’s time to pick at the best. Otherwise, it would not make any difference if you were to just go to your nearest mall to buy your stuffs.

Johor Premium Outlet has about eighty stores and most are not dishing out the cheap stuffs. But if you are a real shopaholics, you will not want to miss the good bargains and strolling all eighty stores can break your back, if not your purse! Still, bargain hunting is an art and you have to be in the know about prices of the same items in the other stores in town. Maybe taking along a notebook or an ipad filled with item prices might be worth a try. Talking about the avid bargain hunters, you really need to do a lot of homework; otherwise, you end up buying the items at a higher price than your friends. Then again, off seasons might not be so because there is really no telling that the price is cheaper.

One more thing that you should prepare for and that is a package of food and drinks to bring along. The main reason is that you might find the choice of food at the Outlets very limited and not to your taste. Like a picnic, you should tuck along foods that are suitable to your taste buds and chewing burgers and fast foods might spoil your trip. Always, treat an Outlet endeavor as a pleasant outing, and food is that important part of it. A nice thing about an Outlet stint is that you can bring along your food and munch it at the many benches that throng the complex. You might want to bring along a friend that shares your taste so that you can get a second opinion when you choose your bargains. Thus, food, drinks and your compilation of good prices from other shops are essential.

As part of your preparation for your Outlets trip, you should do well to take a look at Johor Premium Outlets Online for a tip or two!

China is wondering what to do with her trillion dollar reserves

It was just a slight downgrade but China is seeking a better solution to where to put her reserve. Well, S & P did the unthinkable by downgrading the confidence in the US long term treasuries by a single notch but that was enough to make China reassessing as to where to park her foreign reserves which had mushroomed to over three trillion dollars worth. As the Us dollar slides, China's reserve also follow suit and there is no telling how much more it would go downhill. When you have trillions of dollars, it really counts. You would have to wonder how a private body downgrade can do so much damage and for China's case, they have never have this thing before. It is a new game and China is desperately trying to buy insurance. But alas, there is just no near term solution because the fact is that the US treasuries is the world's reserve currency and everyone looks on to it as the reserve of last resort. Neither do the Us government knows how to deal with it. Equally frustrated that a private company can do so much damage, and making a miscalculation at that too, US politicians would want to put right what they have failed to control before.

China is caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, she had made her money on US imports. And on the other hand, she would want to wean herself from the western buyers to concentrate on her domestic markets. But how is she going to get the US equation out of her calculation. Certainly, no other country can buy that much goods from China. There is no viable replacements. Making it more difficult is the debt crisis in Europe. Three quarters of Asia's buyers come from the west and the west is frothing at the mouth. Europe is even talking about bailouts and China has distance itself from being the lender of last resort which she had initially indicated that she would do everything to put out the fire in Europe. The fact is that there is a real case of a cascading effect from European countries, each choosing to get bailout rather then the path of drastic austerity drives. But what good is it that China parks her reserve in the US? Would it not be better to to use her reserve to rescue Europe and to stop the rot and in the final analysis help herself? Yes, China is indeed deep in thoughts. She has never felled into such a situation before. To think of it, she is still considered a developing country as far as the books of the World Monetary Fund is concerned and by right should receive help from the developed countries! But anyway, she is finding her stride as she positions herself as the alternative reserve currency. In that respect, she will have much thing to do, many of which is in discord with a Communistic regime.

One of the often stated way for China is to expand her trade with her Asian neighbors. Since she had succeeded in having a free trade agreement with Asean, the right way is for her is to put more money into resource rich Asean and to integrate her manufacturing prowess with Asean countries. Another good sign is that Asean is a stable economic block now and has the capacity to buy more of those goods that were meant for the west. For perhaps a short time, Asean would be the best place to invest and China would do well to keep talking trade and not war with her Asean neighbors. One of the best place to look to invest is without doubt China Asean Permanent Trade Exhibition Center.

Grandpa says marketing is for the birds......

Yah, how true it is , especially in today's environment. A better advice is that you should ditch any of those marketing campaigns that you might be doing now. The fact is marketing.....or more appropriately conventional marketing looks more like a Doodle bird. It should be done away, this instant. Just think, these old guys tell you to splurge on a one page advertisement that cost you a bomb when nobody except some retired folks read them. Have you seen your teenage son picking up the newspaper to read? That figures because they can get the latest news on their tweets. Maybe they don't bother with the news or what but certainly they are excited about rumors then. If they need to double check, which they seldom do unless it involves their girlfriend's mum, they would have sink into the internet. That would be a better choice, don't you think! And what about the TV? Ah....not much hope either. They don't watch the TV unless there is a reality show going on. So what else can conventional marketing do then? Sad to say, not much. That being the case, why spend money on advertising in the old medium where nobody go. Of course the old medium still has its adherents like the baby boomers or the office manager looking for a new job. But its days are numbered.

Up in the scene then is internet marketing. Well, more words to cope with but something that everybody should learn about. Mind you, it is not just learning, but putting it into practice. If you are doing a business or you are in politics, then you should pick up the finer things about internet marketing. If you have a website, which should be the norm, you should learn about website optimization as well. You better do if you don't want to fall behind. In the internet age, everyone is moving at lightning speed. So are websites. If people cannot find your website, then you are a goner. Everything has gone to the net, or if you can't find your thing on the internet, then it is a surprise. Yes, talking about doing business. You don't do conventional marketing now. It is internet marketing, or web marketing. It is not a new game as it has been around for fifteen years already. But because it moves at lightning speeds, it changes so fast that the older folks can't keep up with the terms. They can't ask their kids too because their kids answers them using sms language, which is nonsense to the older ones. Like the French revolution, internet marketing will change things like never before. Once you are in it, you never turn back because you would have realized that there is a whole bunch of people behind you trying to catch up learning internet techniques. They have websites that don't bring in any visitors and they are furious. All right, you are about to learn about internet marketing right. Might as well. Get into the picture at Website Optimization now.

Ten years from now, Americans will have to depend on foreigners to run their technology

Americans as a whole have no love for the sciences. Students are more fascinated to take up law and commerce rather than science and engineering subjects. To them, politics and finance is the real beef and science, which at one time was the main interest has dropped in value. In a 2010 test conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment  (PISA) assessed a total of 34 countries and concluded 15-year-old American children performed well below international averages in math.
In the test, Americans ranked in 25 arithmetic, whereas Chinese students of the same age claimed first place.


Appalled by this reality, the US National Academies authored a manifesto known as the "The Gathering Storm," which demands science and mathematics be promoted in schools. This is to avoid a US technology collapse and to also prevent the US from relegated to the has run category. As a comparison, the Chinese government is mostly made up of technocrats whilst the American Congress only have 22 out of 535 legislators with any science background. It becomes apparent why in China there is more action than talk and in America, the reverse.

Although America is where the brightest students seek to study, and boast the best academia, not many Americans can get enrolled. In contrast, there is a huge number of foreign students who made up the total enrollment. Americans are fascinated by law and banking whilst foreign students, many of them Chinese, find themselves in the science and engineering sectors. Of course many Americans would wish to do science but they somehow find themselves unable to meet the high standards, especially in mathematics. On the other hand, Chinese and Indian students excelled in both math and sciences.

Another problem for Americans is that they are more concerned with getting their first degrees which give them entry into the jobs market. Foreign students on the other hand is more interested in getting as much experience they can get before going home. Many do continue getting post degree studies and some have successfully managed to obtain their PhD's and continue to do advance research in prestigious institutions. You could just take a look at some of the newer technologies coming out and find a foreign name as one of the team members.

As if no American would want to believe that they are sliding down on a dangerous curve, out came data to show that indeed America is no more what it was a decade ago. According to Forbes, 70% of PhD engineers in universities are foreign-born. That is as high as you can get to be in the comfort zone, or worse, the illusion that Americans are always a step above others. But in reality, Americans are still trying to wean themselves of spending and are at all times embroiled in battling with their foreign entities about re-evaluating others exchange rate. Getting movie stars for your congressman might need a tough rethinking though!

The cleaning up will probably take forever

Calling Gulf Coast cleaning up after the BP oil spill a mission done is just touching the tip of the ice berg. There is more to that than the eye can see. Deep beneath the ocean, sea creatures are finding pollution too much to tackle. What amount of oil ingested by these creatures will never be known? You can imagine just how devastating the oil spill brought about if you will see tiny oil blobs floating in the sea. It is everywhere the eye can see, and even on the shores and the sand. The oil, in millions of tons has not disappeared; neither has it evaporated like the way BP officials have assured. It is still there. Someone, somewhere is taking in the oil, and most probably, will not be able to get it out of their systems. The result is slow death. But who is concerned about it?

In a knee jerk reaction, the US government declared a moratorium on deep sea oil drilling after the disaster. But like all things political, it is no use crying after the milk had spilt. Is there really a need to stop oil drilling? What about the thousands of people the oil companies had employed prior to the oil spill? Are they supposed to find new jobs? Maybe they can find jobs elsewhere where there is no stop work but that will mean they have to get out of the country. People living in the Louisiana coast are the worst hit because they have very much depended on the oil industry all along. Now, there is no activity and the big spending has come to a halt. They have to clean up and look for other jobs but there seems to be none available, until this moratorium stops.

Meanwhile, devastated people are supposed to get help from oil giant BP. Or at least that is what BP has promised. Unfortunately, the procedure to dish out compensation is not a straight forward game. There has not been any precedent of this kind before and naturally, there is no urgency on the part of BP to dole out the money because there are no physical manifestations that these people have been struck with disaster. Still, there is plenty of ground work to be done around the area, even as no money has come forward to be dished out. The beaches on the affected coast do very often shows signs of small globulin of washed up oil. Every time when there is a storm, oil globules come crashing into the sand. It gets stuck there. The only way out is to put out excavators fixed with special shovels to dig up the dirt. Maybe someone should invent a special machine to trap out the oil from the sand since the oil globules washing up into the beach will be a permanent feature for a long time to go. You saw the videos of the oil gushing out from under the sea; it had to go somewhere though.

what about the near shore that is under water? Are the oil stuck there as well? Perhaps we should ask the excavator people to design special machines that can do a continuous work on these sand bank under the water! If what we don't see doesn't mean it is not there. It is indeed there and the whole coast is affected. Companies that specialized in amphibious excavators like Ultratrex should be engaged to design these machines. We don't have much time left. If BP were to be left to their devises, nothing will come about. We have to do something and fast!

The land of rock and roll and meltdown

It is not surprising that Japan is now faced with a nuclear meltdown. As far as we can remember, Japan has always been associated with earthquakes and nuclear issues. It is because of its rocky history that Japan has put into force very stringent building laws that require buildings to be able to withstand earthquakes. And not any ordinary quakes at that! It has to withstand a rocking of eight on the Richter scale. It is also the first country in the world to experience the atomic bomb. Japan is a beautiful country but steeped with natural disasters. Tokyo city, its capital sits on a piece of earth’s crust that is not only unstable, but also moving in various directions underground. There is a probability that it will one day sink in. There is no telling of the kind of disaster that awaits the Japs but if that were to happen, millions of its inhabitants will have to lose their lives. Today, the people of the land of the rising sun have realized that life is so unpredictable but there is nothing they can do. People in Japan know that there are very little resources to be found there. It strangely does not have coal, oil and the essential minerals. Fortunately, it does have a very hard working population. But even that is not enough. Perhaps it is because it knows its limitations; the people look elsewhere to settle down during the Second World War. There was then a need to conquer other countries that has the resources. What happens was history in the making and we all know now, and even the Japanese knows that going invading others' land to make up for the shortfall in their own land is not the answer. Maybe they overdid it and now, there is nothing much to do but to embrace what is to come with dignity and pride. The people who tout the principles of karma would want you to believe that there is indeed a cause and effect thing going on in this world of ours.


Yet, in the after math of the great earthquake at Senda and the ensuing tsunami that follows and the meltdown of a few nuclear reactors, Japan has finally got the sympathy of the rest of the world, even those whom had suffered under the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. There is today a new crisis in nuclear fallout from radiation. This is however self inflicted because they went with a wrong policy of stealing Mother Nature’s energy chest by building multiple nuclear reactors and extracting cheap power. In retrospect, if they had succeeded in colonizing its neighbors during the Second World War, then perhaps we could postulate that many Japanese would be moving out and settling down in these countries and do not have to endure all the rocking and irradiation nonsense that has engulfed Japan today. But as it happened, Japan could still be able to steer herself back to the future by ways that we would consider as unconventional. Whole townships would have to be re-sifted inland, far away from the coast to avoid tsunamis. Buildings would also have to be redesigned to take into consideration of more fuel efficient technologies. Japan has a huge untapped pool of geo-thermal energy in its backyard. They should put their engineers on a fast track basis to help tap this rare resource that other countries don’t have. Yes, there has to be a way to tame all those belching heat under its core to wean Japan from oil. Japan is after all sitting in the rink of fire and they don’t have to look elsewhere to look for energy. Maybe that could be Japan’s contribution to mankind for the next century. Forget about colonization and forget about being an economic giant. Making products for the rest of the poor should be given to other countries who have more human resources!

The intelligence of blood building

In a recent published report, scientist found that the bone marrow stem cells most responsible for generating new blood molecules follows a flexible behavior. We know that new blood cells are being generated all the time in the blood marrow. These bone marrow cells called hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in a healthy person comes in two varieties. One type remains dormant and does not change into blood cells during its lifetime. It however change into blood cells when the body experiences a trauma like when the body is subjected to irradiation or a chemical attack. Another type changes to blood cells on a continuous basis but does not by itself restores back the blood balance when subjected to irradiation. These differences were detected in experiments using mouse cells. It is unknown whether human cells follow such characteristics.

If human cells also behave as such, then there is a possibility that a way being found to select the type of bone marrow stem cells and to tune them to differentiate into blood cells when required. We could then not have to resort to bone marrow transplants to save life. We certainly hope that the day will come when all we have to do to increase the blood supply for anemic patients is just by tuning into the required blood cells and excite them into changing into normal cells from their dormant stage. Blood cells are after all born with the necessary genes and if a patient does have a defective cell, gene injection could be perform to revitalize back the disease cells.