Archive for » September, 2008 «

Kiva – Micro Lending To Those Who Need It Most

September

Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through loans for the sake of alleviating global poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help fund small businesses run by low-income entrepreneurs around the world.

Loans made on Kiva.org provide 0% interest to lenders. Kiva itself charges no interest from the borrower. Borrowers are charged some interest by the respective microfinance institution handling the individual loan. Kiva.org keeps track of how much interest is charged and will not work with those charging unfair or exorbitant interest rates. Kiva borrowers have a historical repayment rate of 100%. Kiva is working with regulators to allow microfinance institutions to offer variable interest rates to lenders.
-www.kivapedia.org

If you haven’t heard of Kiva before, here’s a great interview with Premal Shah, president of Kiva, on Aljazeera.

My brother introduced me to Kiva when he celebrated the fact that he received his first loan back. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to signing up and ready to give out some loans, it seems that the world of Kiva currently has more lenders than available loans!

Kiva, Loans that change lives
I’m going to have to keep checking back to see when new loans come in in the mean time. If you want to make a difference to someone else’s life, come join our team and start micro-lending to those who need it most =) Click to Join Kiva

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-Edit 19th September 2008-

Yay! I chanced upon an Entrepreneur in need of loans when I refreshed Kiva today =) I’ld like to sponsor another when my next pay check comes through or when the $AUD improves… Hopefully the latter, 79c to the $USD is a pretty ugly number. 88c would be good…after all, 8 is for ‘fa’ (发财) right?

Category: Reviews Tags: contribution, kiva Leave a Comment

Happy Mid Autumn Festival~

September

Selina Lai

Happy Mid Autumn Festival~

Category: Observations Leave a Comment

Ravensburger Puzzle 5000pcs

September

Selina Lai

jigsaw-pieces
When my parents went on their Europe Trip last month, mum brought back a 5000 pieces Ravensburger Puzzle. I don’t have anything against jigsaw puzzles but I have this issue with losing interest in things that are too repetitive. Sure the puzzle is beautiful to look at, but who would have thought it would cause so much mental stress…?

1 month 1 week later…

You can’t really tell, but our table was actually too short for the puzzle! We had to do the sky on another table and that just made things a little more difficult to deal with. But in the end, it felt great putting in the last few pieces, to be able to step back and breath a sigh of relief knowing that ALL 5000 pieces were in place.

The last problem is then the question of what will happen to the puzzle. Mum already decided to replace the old jigsaw in our family room so we had to get it framed. It turns out that the 70 euro Ravensburger Puzzle will cost A$250 to be framed! ah…. I’m just hoping mum doesn’t buy another one too soon (she’s been talking about a 13,000 puzzle!!)

[Edit]
Finally got the puzzle framed =D

Category: Observations Tags: puzzle 3 Comments

Large Hadron Collider = End of the World?

September

Selina Lai

All I’ve been hearing lately is about how the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will cause the end of the world. And of course, this is a cause for multiple parties and spontaneous random acts of … randomness.

I’m sure everyone’s watched the famous CERN rap dedicated to the LHC, but in case you haven’t…

Although I have close to very little interest in this physics experiment (I did drop physics in yr12 after all), the rap actually kinda makes sense to layman’s like me. I think the experiment is a good example of how the thing that makes us humans so great can also be our downfall… We just have this insatiable need to know. Just see how far scientists will go in the name of science: billions of dollars in funding, death threats and possibly triggering Armageddon aka Doomsday.

Times like this I’m thankful I believe in reincarnation and karma: End of the world? No problem, those suckers will return as a speck of cosmic dust forced to exist eternally regretful of their actions. On the flip side, if they actually pull this off and re-writes science as we know it today…. I’m just glad I won’t have to go back to school to study it all over again!

About the Large Hadron Collider

The LHC is an international research project based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists, engineers and support staff from 111 nations are combining state-of-the-art science and engineering in one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted.

The LHC is the latest and most powerful in a series of particle accelerators that, over the last 70 years, have allowed us to penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of matter and further and further back in time. The next steps in the journey will bring new knowledge about the beginning of our Universe and how it works, as the LHC recreates, on a microscale, conditions that existed billionths of a second after the birth of our Universe.

-[ Read more here ]-

So I guess the big question now is … What would you do if it was the end of the world??

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P.S. I’m not snobbing people, I just haven’t received my SIM! I called TPG again today and I actually got a customer service representative that helped! I’m not saying that ALL the other representatives didn’t help (just most of them) but they all seemed really brainwashed in that anything and everything had to go through a process before I could actually get my hands on the SIM.

This is the world we live in today, full of systems and procedures. We’ve all forgotten to use our brain and common sense >_<

Category: Events Tags: video Leave a Comment

Happy Father’s Day!

September

Selina Lai

Dad – Ask him when Mom says no.

- Unknown

Category: Events Leave a Comment

Beijing Para Olympics 2008

September

Selina Lai

I almost forgot that tonight was the Opening Ceremony for the Para Olympics! Luckily we have China Satellite so I’m able to catch it in it’s full glory. I didn’t really pay much attention initially, but I couldn’t help but be drawn towards to incredible performances China put on yet again. One of the more memorable performances has to be all the little kids dressed up as frogs! I thought they were some kind of cartoon or robot at first =P

And of course the other performances were just as impressive, how could they not be when the artists are disabled in some form or another and yet perform just as well? The one with all the birds depicted by arms reminded me of the beautiful peacock dance we watched in Kunming, I can’t remember the name but apparently she’s very famous and it was her last show…

It seems that the dance was more likely than not, performed by 杨丽萍

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[Edit 17th September 2008]
My dad came home and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Tonight is the closing ceremony for the Para Olympics, make sure I don’t miss it.”

If he never said anything, I wouldn’t have even realised it was finishing! And since I missed out part of the opening ceremony, I decided to watch the closing ceremony. The speeches were, as usual, quite boring and repetitive.

I quite enjoyed the performances… but I felt like some of them seemed a little on the random side. I only really understood the ‘Posting of Envelope’ theme, something to do with ‘One World, One Dream’? What caught my eye was the performers running in mid-air in a Mexican wave…

Like I said, some of it seemed quite random. But I’m sure that it would have made a lot more sense if I could understand what the commentator was saying… Somehow though, I still think that China would make it random like they were trying to impress the world with their performers (which they already did at the Beijing Olympics).