Mad Love for the King Size

B.A. Week held a lot of activities, and part of this was a small seminar (?) to help you discover if you’re a true entrepreneur or not. And mostly to encourage you to pursue to that “calling” if you are one.

The speaker started off by showing us one of the most successful entrepreneurs, which I knew by face. Their names seem to escape me though. I saw them in TV before and sort of had a small background about their experiences before this seminar started, but as usual, I kept my mouth shut when the speaker started asking questions.

First off was Tony Tan Caktiong (is that even right??), who was the current chairman of Jollibee. Who knew such a small misspelling could be so popular. It started off with ice cream and soon grew to be one of the most popular fast food chains in the Philippines and even in other countries.

The next was Socorro Ramos, who founded National Bookstore. “National”… hmmm… naturally what came to my mind when I was small was that it was a bigshot bookstore known all over the world because… well… the word “National” really does the trick. Only when I saw her history on TV and how she made this possible did I realize that she sort of “started from scrap” before National Bookstore easily became the most well-known go-to place for--books. And a lot of stuff.

The last was Henry Sy, founder and chairman of SM Prime Holdings. The first question I remember asking about it when the acronym was first mentioned was what the word meant. When they replied “Shoemart” I just shrugged and accepted the answer without any further questions, not knowing that SM in the past was just simply that: Sy started out SM by selling shoes. Crikey, what a whopper.

After which, they gave us tests at the end of the presentation to see if we had “the blood of an entrepreneur”; I already knew the answer, but I swung along with the gig anyway (and just in case it’s not obvious, it’s a very short sentence made up of the letters “N” and ending with the letter “O”). When the answer came out, I wasn’t exactly surprised. Rather, I welcomed it. I knew I’d make a lousy entrepreneur anyway. If I even tried to knock on a door and ask people to buy some brownies, the most I could do is open my mouth, shut it again, and then run for cover. Others, however, seemed to have the calling; all they needed was the hallelujah chorus and the scene would be perfect.

MacBook Air: Where's my Diskdrive?

MacBook Air is considered the world’s thinnest laptop. Look for the ad in YouTube, and you’ll be more convinced. Now you can go around challenging other people to shove their laptops in an envelope; when they can't, you can easily slip your $3000 MacBook Air and tuck it inside. Your jealous friends will worship you forever.

Sure it’s thin; there’s no denying that one factor. It’s got a Multi-Touch trackpad; while you still have to hold the ctrl or whatever button you have to press so that you can zoom in on something while you roll the mouse wheel, here you can just put two fingers on the touchpad and wiki-wiki your way around like a DJ, zooming in and zooming out to your heart's desire. Impressing.

However: Apple, I think you forgot something. Please send my diskdrive through snail mail. Thanks.

Pride of the king’s army, MacBook Air is so impressively thin that it can no longer contain a diskdrive; you still need an external drive to actually play a CD on it. But hey, it still fits in a Manila envelope, right? Neat-o!

Don't get me wrong: if looks could kill, then MacBook Air could finish off the population in one fell swoop. But as it is, in terms of practicality, nobody would want to buy something so expensive and so fragile. Shove it in a bulky bag full of pencil sharpeners, cellphone chargers and a ton of books, and it might not have more resistance than a watered-down sugar biscuit.

MacBook Air: Why the heck not?