Salam.. heeeeeiiii (pameran gigi) ...
Dah lame tak menaip kat blog neh..Bukan pe memang tak ada masa,lupang lapang..sekarang sempit (teringat lagu RAihan-Ingat 5 perkara sebelum 5 perkara)..
Dari entry "Sepasang selipar jepun" aku terpanggil tuk menaip lagi..
Kekadang time aku otw nak g keje ada gak ternampak apek ni,ada la beberapa kali..(tak kira lak)....
Bila tengok apek ni aku agak muskil,dia still pegang selipar jepun dia yg dah berlubang dan tak boleh dipakai..still dijaga,dipegang dan tak dibuang..
Dan dengan sepantas kilat otak aku berfikir..kenapa tak buang sedangkan dia tak boleh pakai lagi selipar itu..
Dan aku sedih gak tengok apek ni,dia still pakai baju yg sama dan seluar yg same..dari hari yg berkaitan entry ni till ari yg aku nampak dia..
Koyak? lusuh? memang la..dah lame gak.. aku agak respek dengan apek ni..kerana pendirian dia tak nak terima pemberian orang..Apa pun sebabnya..itu pendirian dia..kita kena hormat pendirian dia..
Pernah juga aku ikut apek ni ke rumah yg dia tinggal.. ternyata sebuah rumah tinggal yg reput dan senget2..tunggu time nak runtuh.. aku tak tahu kenapa aku ni mcm sibuk sangat nak tau tentang apek ni.. there something about him keep spinning in my mind.. adessss member aku ni dah berapa kali call,padahal semalam baru lepak.. kkk....got to go.. see ya...
provided by
24/7 Wall St. has created a new list of brands that will disappear, which
includes Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD -
News), Sony Pictures (NYSE: SNE - News), American Apparel (NYSE: APP - News), Nokia (NYSE: NOK - News), Saab, A&W All-American
Foods Restaurants, Soap Opera Digest, Sony Ericsson, MySpace (NYSE: NWS.A - News), and Kellogg's Corn Pops.
(NYSE: K - News).
Each year, 24/7 Wall St. regularly compiles a list of brands that are going
to disappear in the near-term. Last year's list proved to be prescient in many
instances, predicting the demise of T-Mobile among others. In late May, AT&T
(NYSE: T - News) and Deutche Telekom announced
that AT&T would buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. The deal would add 34
million customers to the company and create the country's largest wireless
operator.
Other 2010 nominees — including Blockbuster — bit the dust, while companies
such as Dollar Thrifty are on the road to oblivion. Last September, after
finally giving in to competition from Netflix and buckling under nearly $1
billion in debt, Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In
April of this year, Dish Network acquired the company for $320 million. Car
rental chain Dollar Thrifty is still entertaining buyout offers from Avis and
Hertz. On June 6, the embattled company recommended that its shareholders not
accept Hertz's recent offer, valued at $2.24 billion, or $72 a share. Meanwhile,
on June 13th, Avis Budget announced that "it had made progress in its discussion
with the Federal Trade Commission regarding its potential acquisition" of the
company. Although Dollar Thrifty can remain choosy, a sale is a matter of when,
not if.
We also missed the mark on a few companies. Notably, Kia, Moody's, BP, and
Zale appear to be doing better than we expected.
Brands that have stood the test of time for decades are falling by the
wayside at an alarming rate. For instance, Pontiac, a major car brand since
1926, is gone, shut down by a struggling GM. Blockbuster is in the process of
dismantling, after it once controlled the VHS and DVD markets. House &
Garden folded after 106 years. It succumbed to the advertising downturn, a lot
of competition, and the cost of paper and postage. Its demise echoed the 1972
shutdown of what is probably the most famous magazines in history — Life. That
was a long time ago but serves to demonstrate that no brand is too big to fail
if it is overwhelmed by competition, new inventions, costs, or poor
management.
This year's list of The Ten Brands That Will Disappear takes a methodical
approach in deciding which brand would walk the plank. The major criteria were
as follows: (1) a rapid fall-off in sales and steep losses; (2) disclosures by
the parent of the brand that it might go out of business; (3) rapidly rising
costs that are extremely unlikely to be recouped through higher prices; (4)
companies which are sold; (5) companies that go into bankruptcy; (6) firms that
have lost the great majority of their customers; or (7) operations with rapidly
withering market share. Each of the ten brands on the list suffer from one or
more of these problems. Each of the ten will be gone, based on our definitions,
within 18 months. 1. Sony Pictures
Sony has a studio production arm which has nothing to do with its core
businesses of consumer electronics and gaming. Sony bought what was Columbia
Tri-Star Picture in 1989 for $3.4 billion. This entertainment operation has done
poorly recently. Sony's fiscal year ends in March, and for the period, revenue
for the group dropped 15% to $7.2 billion and operating income fell by 10% to
$466 million. Sony is in trouble. It lost $3.1 billion in its latest fiscal year
on revenue of $86.5 billion. Sony's gaming system group is under siege by
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT - News) and Nintendo. Its consumer
electronics group faces an overwhelming challenge from Apple. The company's
future prospects have been further damaged by the Japan earthquake and the hack
of its large PlayStation Network. CEO Howard Stringer is under pressure to do
something to increase the value of Sony's shares. The only valuable asset with
which he can easily part is Columbia which would attract interest from a number
of large media operations. Sony Entertainment will disappear with the sale of
its assets. 2. A&W
A&W Restaurants is owned by fast food holding company giant Yum! Brands
(NYSE: YUM - News) which has had the firm for
sale since January. There have been no buyers. The chain was founded in 1919.
The size of the company grew rapidly, and immediately after WWII 450 franchises
were opened. The firm pioneered the "drive in" fast food format. A&W began
to sell canned versions of its sodas in 1971 — the part of the business that
will survive as a container beverage business which is now owned by Dr.
Pepper/Snapple. The A&W Restaurant business is too small to be viable now.
It had 322 outlets in the U.S and 317 outside the U.S at the end of last year.
All were operated by franchisees. By contrast, Yum!'s flagship KFC had 5,055
stores in the U.S. and 11,798 overseas. Two massive global fast food chains are
even larger. Subway has 35,000 locations worldwide, and McDonald's has nearly as
many. A&W does not have the ability to market itself against these chains
and at least a dozen other fast food operators like Burger King. And, A&W
does not have the size to efficiently handle food purchases, logistics, and
transportation costs compared to competitors many times as large. 3. Saab
The first Saab car was launched in 1949 by Swedish industrial firm Svenska
Aeroplan. The firm produced a series of sedans and coups, the flagship of which
was the 900 series, released in 1978. About one million of these would
eventually be sold. Saab's engineering reputation and the rise in its
international sales attracted GM to buy half the company in 1989 and the balance
in 2000. Saab's problem, which grew under the management of the world's No.1
automobile manufacturer, was that it was never more than a niche brand in an
industry dominated by very large players such as Ford and Chevrolet. It did not
build very inexpensive cars like VW did, or expensive sports cars as Porsche
did. Saab's models were, in price and features, up against models from the
world's largest car companies that sold hundreds of thousands of units each
year. Saab also did not have a wide number of models to suit different budgets
and driver tastes. GM decided to jettison the brand in late 2008, and the small
company quickly became insolvent. Saab finally found a buyer in high-end car
maker Spyker which took control of the company last year. Spyker quickly ran low
on money because only 32,000 Saabs were sold in 2010. Spyker turned to Chinese
industrial investors for money. Pang Da Automobile agreed to take an equity
stake in the company. But, the agreement is not binding, and with a potential of
global sales which are still below 50,000 a year based on manufacturing and
marketing operations, and demand, Saab is no longer a financially viable
brand.
4. American Apparel
The once-hip retailer reached the brink of bankruptcy earlier this year, and
there is no indication that it has gained anything more than a little time with
its latest financing. It currently trades as a penny stock. The company had
three stores and $82 million in revenue in 2003. Those numbers reached 260
stores and $545 million in 2008. For the first quarter of this year, the
retailer had net sales for the quarter of $116.1 million, a 4.7% decline over
sales of $121.8 million in the same period a year ago. Comparable store sales
declined 8% on a constant currency basis. American Apparel posted a net loss for
the period of $21 million. Comparable store sales have flattened, which means
the firm likely will continue to post losses. American Apparel is also almost
certainly under gross margin pressure because of the rise in cotton prices. The
retailer raised $14.9 million in April by selling shares at a discount of 43% to
a group of private investors led by Canadian financier Michael Serruya and
Delavaco Capital. According to Reuters, the 15.8 million shares sold represented
20.3 percent of the company's outstanding stock on March 31. That sum is not
nearly enough to keep American Apparel from going the way of Borders. It is a
small, under-funded player in a market with very large competitors with healthy
balance sheets. It does not help matters that the company's founder and CEO, Dov
Charney, has been a defendant in several lawsuits filed by former employees
alleging sexual harassment. 5. Sears
The parent of Sears and Kmart — Sears Holdings — is in a lot of trouble.
Total revenue dropped $341 million to $9.7 billion for the quarter which closed
April 30, 2011. The company had a net loss of $170 million. Sears Holdings was
created by a merger of the parents of the two chains on March 24, 2005. The
operation has been a disaster ever since. The company has tried to run 4,000
stores which operate across the US and Canada. Neither Sears nor Kmart have done
well recently, but Sears' domestic locations same store numbers were off 5.2% in
the first quarter and Kmart's were down 1.6%. Last year domestic comparable
store sales declined 1.6% in the total, with an increase at Kmart of .7% and a
decline at Sears Domestic of 3.6%. New CEO Lou D'Ambrosio recently said of the
last quarter that, "we also fell short on executing with excellence. We cannot
control the weather or economy or government spending. But we can control how we
execute and leverage the potent set of assets we have." D'Ambrosio needs to pull
a rabbit out of his hat soon. Sharex are down 55% during the last five years.
D'Ambrosio's only reasonable solution to the firm's financial problems is to
stop supporting two brands which compete with one another and larger rivals such
as Walmart (NYSE: WMT - News) and Target (NYSE: TGT - News). The cost to market two
brands and maintain stores which overlap one another geographically must be in
the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Employee and supply chain costs
are also gigantic. The path D'Ambrosio is likely to take is to consolidate two
brand into one — keeping the better performing Kmart and shuttering Sears. 6. Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson was formed by the two large consumer electronics companies to
market the handset offerings each had handled separately. The venture started in
2001, before the rise of the smartphone. Early in its history, it was one of the
biggest handset manufacturers along with Nokia (NYSE: NOK - News), Samsung, LG, and Motorola.
Sales of Sony Ericsson phones were originally helped by the popularity of other
Sony portable devices like the Walkman. Sony Ericsson's product development
lagged behind those of companies like Apple (NYSE: AAPL - News) and Research In Motion
(NASDAQ: RIMM - News) which dominated the high
end smartphone industry early. Sony Ericsson also relied on the Symbian
operating system which was championed by market leader Nokia, but which it has
abandoned in favor of Microsoft's Windows mobile operating system because of
license costs and difficulty with programmers. In a period when smartphone sales
worldwide are rising in the double digits and sales of the iPhone double year
over year, Sony Ericsson's unit sales dropped from 97 million in 2008 to 43
million last year. New competitors like HTC now outsell Sony Ericsson by
widening numbers. Sony Ericsson management expects several more quarters of
falling sales and the company has laid off thousands of people. There have been
rumors, backed by logic, that Sony will take over the operation, rebrand the
handsets with its name, and market them in tandem with its PS3 consoles and VAIO
PCs. 7. Kellogg's Corn Pops
The cereal business is not what is used to be, at least for products that are
not considered "healthy." Among those is Kellogg's Corn Pops ready-to-eat
cereal. Sales of the brand dropped 18% over the year that ended in April, down
to $74 million. That puts it well behind brands like Cheerios and Frosted
Flakes, each which have sales of over $200 million a year. Private label sales
have also hurt sales of branded cereals. Revenues in this category were $637
million over the same April-end period. There is also profit margin pressure on
Corn Pops because of the sharp increase in corn prices. Kellogg's describes the
product as being "crispy, glazed, crunchy, sweet." Corn Pops also contain mono-
and diglycerides, used to bind saturated fat, and BHT for freshness, which is
also used in embalming fluid. None of these are likely to be
what mothers want to serve their children in an age in which a healthy breakfast
is more likely to be egg whites and a bowl of fresh fruit. 8. MySpace
MySpace, once the world's largest social network, died a long time ago. It
will get buried soon. News Corp (NYSE: NWS - News) bought MySpace and its
parent in 2005 for $580 million, which was considered inexpensive at the time
based on the web property's size. MySpace held the top spot among social
networks based on visitors from mid-2006 until mid-2008, according to several
online research services. It was overtaken by Facebook at that point. Facebook
has 700 million members worldwide now and recently passed Yahoo! (NYSE: YHOO - News) as the largest website for
display advertising based on revenue. News Corp was able to get an exclusive
advertising deal worth $900 million shortly after it bought the property, but
that was its sales high-water mark. Its audience is currently estimated to be
less that 20 million visitors in the US. Why did MySpace fall so far behind
Facebook? No one knows for certain. It may be that Facebook had more attractive
features for people who wanted to share their identities online. It may have
been that it appealed to a younger audience which tends to spend more time
online. News Corp announced in February that it would sell MySpace. There were
no serious bids. Rumors surfaced recently that a buyer may take the website for
$100 million. The brand is worth little if anything. A buyer is likely to kill
the name and fold the subscriber base into another brand. News Corp has hinted
it will close MySpace if it does not find a buyer. 9. Soap Opera Digest
The magazine's future has been ruined by two trends. The first is the number
of cancellations of soap operas. Long-lived shows which include "All My
Children" and "One Life to Live" have been canceled and replaced by talk shows,
which are less expensive to air. The other insurmountable challenge is the wide
availability of details on soap operas online. Some of the shows even have their
own fan sites. News about the industry, in other words, is now distributed and
no longer in one place. Soap Opera Digest's first quarter advertising pages fell
21% in the first quarter and revenue was down 18% to $4 million. In 2000, the
magazine's circulation was in excess of 1.1 million readers. By 2005 it fell
below 500,000 where it has remained for the last 5 years. Source Interlink
Media, the magazine's parent, which also owns automotive, truck, and motorcycle
publications, has little reason to support a product based on a dying
industry. 10. Nokia
Nokia is dead. Shareholders are just waiting for an undertaker. The world's
largest handset company has one asset. Nokia sold 25% of the global total of 428
million units sold in the first quarter. Its problem is that in the industry the
company is viewed as a falling knife. Its market share in the same quarter of
2010 was nearly 31%. The arguments that Nokia will not stay independent are
numerous. It has a very modest presence in the rapidly growing smartphone
industry which is dominated by Apple, Research In Motion's Blackberry, HTC, and
Samsung. Nokia runs the outdated Symbian operating system and is in the process
of changing to Microsoft's Windows mobile OS, which has a tiny share of the
market.
Nokia would be an attractive takeover target to a large extent because the
cost to "buy" 25% of the global handset market would only be $22 billion based
on Nokia's current market cap. Obviously, a buyer would need to pay a premium,
but even $30 billion is within reach of several companies. Potential buyers
would start with HTC, the fourth largest smartphone maker in the world. Its
sales have doubled in both the last quarter and the last year. HTC will sell as
many as 80 million handsets in 2011. The Taiwan-based company's challenge would
be whether it could finance such a large deal. The other three likely bidders do
not have that problem. Microsoft, which is Nokia's primary software partner,
could easily buy the company and is often mentioned as a suitor. The world's
largest software company recently moved further into the telecom industry though
its purchase of VoIP giant Skype, which has 170 million active customers. Two
other large firms have many reasons to buy Nokia. Samsung, part of one of the
largest conglomerates in Korea, has publicly set a goal to be the No.1 handset
company in the world by 2014. The parent company is the largest in South Korea
with revenue in 2010 of $134 billion. A buyout of Nokia would launch Samsung
into the position as the world's handset leader. LG Electronics, the 7th largest
company in South Korea, with sales of $48 billion, is by most measures the third
largest smartphone company. It has the scale and balance sheet to takeover
Nokia. The only question about the Finland-based company is whether a buyer
would maintain the Microsoft relationship or change to the popular Android OS to
power Nokia phones.
Hari ni public holiday tapi tah apa gler bos aku..aku dan smua org kena keje..xdpt 3x lak tu..kejam nyer bos..
Tadi dah nak lewat petang around 6 lebih ada 3 org customer ni walk in.. Dia penah beli barang dari aku,tapi by online dari alamat kat bill diaoirg datang ke kedai.
Nak beli barang lagi,dan baru aku tau meraka bertiga ni warga negara India yang berkerja di Cyberjaya dengan company animation antarabangsa.
Sambil layan dia tengok barang kita orang borak-borak then dia ckp "one thing ur country cant fight us.. so aku pun cakap la.. "it's cricket? (main tembak je) "no.. corruption" jawab mamat india tu..(terdetik dalam hati aku..macam aku tgk dlm citer tamil ke?) hehe..
Then rakan sekerja aku tanya tentang keadaan jalan raya kat sana,dia menjawab teruk."in few month after u buying a car the suspension system will spoil" kate mamat india ni sambil tersengeh.
Pas tu dia memberitahu aku bahawa harga petrol kat sana mahal lebih kurang RM7(mahal wooo) untuk satu liter RON92 (yang kita di Malaysia panggil 'minyak merah') statement tu berdasarkan kata-kata mamat tu,lau dia kencing aku so kowang yang baca terbabit lah kebasahan nyer.
So point nyer yang aku dapat katakan walau kita duk complaint mcm2 tapi aku sangat bersyukur kerana lahir di Malaysia.Negara kita makmur(kekadang tu biasa ar), kerja pun ada,peluang pelajaran dan macam2 lagi.Paling penting orang tu jangan malas dan mahu berusaha.
Cikgu aku masa darjah empat pernah cakap "hendak seribu daya,tak hendak seribu dalih" (thanks cikgu i luv u) dan ni lagi satu pesan cikgu aku..tp aku tak ingat masa darjah berapa.. "usaha itu tangga kerjayaan" tp aku selalu guan lif je,penat ar naik tangga..
Salam.. (ps:kepada Puan Zaiton(cikgu aku darjah 6) cikgu are the best...)
Hari-hari yang aku lalui bagai penantian yang amat panjang..mengira waktu yang tak tahu bila habisnya.
Sering kali hati ini bertanya..mengapakah aku? kenapa aku? Perlukah aku diduga bergini..Tanggal 20 september 2006 segalanya telah berubah dan mengubah hidup aku...Dalam tempoh yang aku lalui penuh perit sakit dan berbagai dugaan diwaktu itu terdengar suara yang mengatakan bahawa "Allah tidak zalim,Dia tidak menguji kita melebihi kemampuan kita,sesungguhnya Allah tahu yang terbaik untuk hamba Nya.Dalam tempoh beberapa hari getir di icu,disaat keluarga berduka aku tetap cuba untuk bertahan..Alhamdullillah masih diberi kesempatan hingga saat aku menulis entry ini.Hari-hari yang aku lalui selepas itu tidak semudah yang aku harapkan.Disaat ini jua pelbagai dugaan datang meyapa aku yang masih dalam keadaan kelam...sekali lagi hati bertanya KENAPA??? dan sepantas itu dibenak ku mengigati kata-kata dia yang telah pergi dari hidupku..."Allah tidak akan menguji kita diluar kemampuan kita" dan benak ini berfikir..mampukah aku mengalasnya? Ya Allah berikanlah aku kekuatan,aku insan lemah,Iman ku tipis..Disaat encik doktor berkata kepada ibu bahawa aku akan lumpuh,ibu hanya dapat mengesat air mata yag menitis dan berdoa agar aku akan sembuh.Takdir dan segala yang berlaku itu kehendak-Nya.Disaat itu aku mulai sedar bahaya nyawa kita yang sangat berharga ini hanya sekadar segelembung buih pabila ditiup angin ia akan hilang... Ya Allah besar sungguh kekuasa Mu..
[lokasi-icu-hos.tengku ampuan rahimah]
