CV+ are always indebted to our corporate sponsors for coming forward to help us in funding World Speech Day events – but individuals too can chip in.
More importantly, sponsorships mean young people (including very young children), especially those in our schools, both primary and secondary, and yes, including kindies can participate in the said events because a significant portion of their registrations fees will be covered by these sponsors.
Just so you know, this year, 22.2% of our total registrations are young people (i.e. those 17-years-old and below). In 2019, it was 21.5%. Certainly, we want to see more tweens and teens and even very young children take part and deliver their speeches next year.
Our seventh corporate sponsor is Cool Mum Super Dad Consultancy – thank you, Ahmad Fakhri and Jamilah Samian:
This time around, we must also salute an individual, Benny Chia for his personal contribution – thank you!
If you know us, we are serious about wanting to keep our promise – and that is, to make World Speech Day bigger and better!
It has been exactly one month since Aston Villa thumped Liverpool 7-2. I readily confess that I can’t get this dreadful defeat out of my head. I just can't banish it, much as I tried.
It was an unbelievable scoreline in Premier League history and we have only ourselves to blame. Liverpool's high line and individual mistakes turn it into an error-strewn match that became an embarrassing rout.
Sure, we have suffered losses before – but none within living memory can beat this for sheer shock value! This distressing drubbing is like a deep cut through my flesh. And even now, it is still bleeding.
The only time I could momentarily forget this disturbing debacle is when I lose myself by watching this 1:59 minute video of a Splitting Image skit:
I found it laugh-out-loud hilarious! More importantly, Jürgen Klopp has a lesson for us and it is best encapsulated by this Quote:
And Italy provided a palliative balm for my hurt too when we earned another Champions League victory – but this time it was accompanied by entertaining attacking football and very good performances as Liverpool trounced Atalanta 5-0 yesterday in the Group Stage 3 match.
Diogo Jota scored a hat-trick and with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane also on the score sheet, the Reds ran riot.
The first goal arrived after Jota outmanoeuvred an Atalanta defender and despite being man-handled in the box, he conjured up a composed finish in the sixteenth minute, while the second came thanks to the precision of Joe Gomez with his long-ball latched onto and duly drilled into the near corner seventeen minutes later.
Mo Salah’s turn came in the forty-seventh minute after Curtis Jones launched a pass up the middle of the field from his own penalty area before the No. 11 then turned provider after finding Sadio Mane through traffic two minutes on.
And Mane, in turn, would provide the ball for Jota to score for the third time in the fifty-fourth minute.
A 5-star performance! The Reds have cemented the Group D top spot in stunning fashion.
A vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm – and which is still in the third and final stage of clinical trials in UAE, Peru, Morocco and Argentina – has been given the thumbs-up in the United Arab Emirates.
According to its media citing local authorities, it has been deemed to be safe and effective.
So much so that on October 16, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, foreign minister of the UAE, received the vaccine, followed by Mohammed Abdullah al-Gergawi, the UAE minister for cabinet affairs. Not forgetting to mention that front-line healthcare workers in the UAE also got the shot.
And yesterday, Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Al Maktoum (right) announced on Twitter that he too has received the coronavirus vaccine shot.
They didn’t want to wait for the trials to be completed and the findings finalized – suggesting complete confidence in the China vaccine.
FYI, the UAE has so far recorded 135,141 Covid-19 infections and 497 deaths, according to yesterday's data collected by the Johns Hopkins University.
Yesterday too, I posted a Public Service Announcement about wearing a mask.
But what if you forgot your mask? It can happen, right?
Malaysia’s Covid-19 situation is still not looking too good. The total confirmed cases as at today stands at 33,339. And 251 deaths.
Strong recovery numbers have again pushed the number of active cases down to below 10,000 – 9,968 to be precise.
The hotspots are still Sabah with the most number of new cases today (503) and the Greater KL Area comes in second (157).
We have to accept that breaking the Covid-19 chain requires discipline and a strict observance of the SOPs – but that's about all we can do, methinks. We must acknowledge that a stricter regimen of rules and procedures will only break the fragile economy. And we cannot afford that.
As I have said, time and again, coronavirus is here to stay – so we must live with it!
Simon O’Rourke is an environmental artist from Wales specializing in wood sculpture.
The story goes that the tallest tree in a Welsh woodland known as the Giants of Vyrnwy had been storm-damaged and was due to be felled. Natural Resource Wales, who were in charge of the site, wanted to commission an artist to carve the tree – and O’Rourke vied for the job and got it.
It took him six days of intense work using chainsaws and grinders. And he fashioned a giant hand, symbolizing the giants, and the tree’s last attempt to reach for the sky! Stunningly staggering!
Apparently, if you’d like to get a personal sculpture like this one, you’d have to pay around $12,000!
The waxwork museum Madame Tussauds in Berlin, Germany loaded its effigy of TV star-turned US president into a dumpster on Friday, a move apparently intended to reflect its expectations of tomorrow’s presidential election.
“[It] is rather of a symbolic character ahead of the elections in the United States”, said the museum’s marketing manager Orkide Yalcindag.
Is he saying that Trump is thrash? Even if he is – so, what?
I’d say it is just a choreographed stunt of campy farce because regardless of the outcome, Trump is likely to be wheeled back to stand among the other American presidents on display.
This is nothing more than a stunt, a prank, a leg-pull. And I didn’t know the Germans are capable of pulling a trick like this! They do have a sense of humor after all!
Yesterday, I highlighted England’s second national lockdown, given the deteriorating coronavirus situation there in the UK. And it makes me wonder about Scotland.
A quick check of Scottish newswires had reported on November 01 that there had been 1,148 new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours with six deaths reported. Of the new cases, 443 were in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area, with 258 in NHS Lanarkshire and 140 new cases recorded in NHS Lothian.
John Swinney (left), their Deputy First Minister would not rule out a national lockdown such as that being imposed in England.
Still, he did say that Scotland is currently in a stronger position and it is hoped the measures taken north of the Border would be enough to avoid such a move.
He also added that within Scotland, “we have significant differentials in the level of the virus which enables us to operate with varying degrees of restrictions within the country". He made the comments during an interview on BBC's Politics Scotland.
Swinney is optimistic, saying there were "some early signs that the virus may be flattening out within Scotland".
If that is true, it's a good sign.
Celtic are 90 minutes from a quadruple treble after easing past Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup semi-final for their 35th consecutive domestic cup win on Sunday.
They won by two goals. In the eighteenth minute, Ryan Christie’s favorite left foot curled a trademark drive into the far corner of the net and five minutes later, Mohamed Elyounoussi fired from close range to ensure that Neil Lennon's side will be in the December 20 final against Hearts.
Celtic will be back for Europa League action when they host Sparta Prague on Thursday.
I have been catching up on my reading on my favorite subject – Marketing.
I know this already but it’s good to remind myself that consumer expectations are getting higher than ever before – and that means everyone is upping their game.
The future of marketing is said to be all about delivering relevant, appropriate and assistive experiences. The playbook, however, is still being written.
After all, consumers have multiple touchpoints on their path to purchase and marketers need to figure out what resonates – and what doesn’t.
One thing that stands out and that we need to recognize its massive importance is the fact that mobile has conditioned consumers to turn to their devices in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, and I-want-to-buy micro-moments.
Not only that – but marketers need to shift their focus from pushing messages at people to engaging them in an ongoing conversation and relationship.
This mandates us to personalize marketing to meet people’s needs.
For years, psychologists have taught us that people love to hear their name and see it in print. But today’s technology allows digital marketing teams to dig deep into the data to identify the things that keep customers up at night – and identify what messages will solve those problems and give them a good night’s sleep.
In the 2002 movie "Minority Report", the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is bombarded by a series of personalized ads calling him by name as he walks through the city. This was obviously complete science fiction at the time, but not quite two decades later, reality has almost caught up with the marketing future of Stephen Spielberg’s imagination.
By now, we should know that traditional advertising is fast losing its effectiveness. Instead, we should go for personalized marketing messages that forge a real connection between the brand and the target market.
Yes, go beyond the “Hi [Customer Name]” emails, “Don’t you want to make more money?” popups, or “Hey, come back here!” cheesy messages in the browser titles to find what makes your customers tick. Give them content that will win their hearts.
Take note that an Epsilon survey informs us that 80% of consumers said that they’d be more likely to do business with a brand that provides a personalized experience.
A good pointer to take note of for those doing Marketing!
The Covid-19 numbers keep rising even faster. It’s kinda scary because it went past 46 million cases yesterday. And not to mention, almost closing in to 1.2 million deaths.
And the UK is the ninth country to make it to one million cases.
The fact that the country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) announced a second national lockdown for England – just like Malaysia, it's not too restrictive – to prevent, as he says, a "medical and moral disaster" for the NHS, is emblematic of the worsening situation in much of Europe.
There are now 50 nations which have accumulated 100,000 coronavirus cases or more under their belts – with Austria and Japan the latest to join the burgeoning band of countries.
I did the sums – and their combined tally of cases and fatalities amount to 93.6% and 95.6% respectively of the global total.
There was a Premier League game yesterday too – and I’m happy that Liverpool triumphed over in-form West Ham 2-1. Sure, the Reds conceded first, in the tenth minute…but yet again, produced another stirring comeback win.
A foul on Mohamed Salah had allowed the Egypt forward to equalize in the forty-second minute from the penalty spot with Liverpool's first attempt on target.
And then, Diogo Jota netted in the 85th minute after a smart pass by fellow substitute Xherdan Shaqiri.
Liverpool are back on top of the table for the first time since they ended last season as champions – but again, they were far from their fluent best.
This was league game #63 without defeat at Anfield, making Jürgen Norbert Klopp’s greats the equivalent of Bob Paisley’s legends (achieved between February 1978 and December 1981).
Next is the Champions League Group D away match against Italy’s Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio, commonly referred to as Atalanta, on Tuesday.
