This evening, I went to Marina Bay to watch the Singapore National Day helicopter and firework show with my brother(one of my best friends from my hometown) and his mum and auntie who are from China for a short visit.
[ Something Extra: There are some other interesting stores in Marina Bay like a store named "Fossil Collections". which sounds like really old and mysterious stuff. However, the products are not really that old. Most of them are statue decorations made from limestone which is around 150 years' old. The limestone comes from Italy and the statues are made in Singapore. It is really interesting to know that this is actually a Singapore brand and the band name really dramatically increases the company's value.
After viewing the fireworks, we visited some stores in the Marina Bay Sands shopping center. One Turkish-like sales guy approached us for a hand-cream product test. Since it was free, I just tried the product,nothing special. I asked whether he was a Turkish, he said no, he was from Israel. I was astonished. I admire the Start-up nation a lot and that's the second Jewish people I've ever talked with. The first one was in MIT when I visited the school during my summer vocation three years ago. His view about reading a PHD really opened up my minds. He said "PHD is the last chance for doing something that you are really interested in at a low pay".That's very true. This time is a sales man from Israel. But why he is selling the hand-cream product here in Singapore? That is not so challenging or rewarding for Jewish people.
The sales guy(later know his name is Joseph) enthusiastically showed me a "magic" by robbing a special sandpaper on my thumbnail for three times, nothing special in the first time, nothing special in the second time but something magical happened in the third time. My thumbnail became extremely shinny, that's interesting! I asked with excitement whether that product was invented in Israel, Joseph said yes, the inventor was a Jewish professor, and this brand was a Japanese brand. It opened up my mind,yes, new products can be made in this way--we invent technology, then sell the technology to a big brand and the big brand does the marketing and everything else.
However, this product itself was not so attractive to male users, so I didn't really pay so much interests for buying it. After passing by that stand for several times, I introduced my friend's auntie and girl friend to try on the free thumbnail shinning sandpaper. The second time was a Jewish girl who helped out shining the thumbnails. She was clever but not so approaching to customers who would not be buying. She gave a very good price for us but as we were not rich and not necessarily need that product, so we didn't buy it. Later when we were about to go back home, we discussed among ourselves, my friend's girl friend and auntie seemed to be really interested in that product. My admiration of Jews got increased as well. So we decided to buy some. Joseph smartly calculated the best budget for the promotion price and we bought two of the products. My friend's girl friend bought one for the interesting function of the product, I bought one for the admiration of the Jews' creativity and intelligence.
I later knew from Joseph that the inventor was his father's friend, so he helped promoting this product to a lot of countries. Now he is assigned to Singapore and he comes to teach people how to sell this product. Yes, he's a very good sales person. Israel is full of researchers, venture capitalists, sales talents and these people make interesting things. This hand-cream product is one good example of technology becomes real products.Israel becomes more mysterious and attractive to me now. I would like to apply for the NOC Israel program even with the trade-off of half-a-year's off from school. I had doubts before like once Xiangyun told me that these start-up companies were mostly Android or IOS development and might not be that interesting. I also self-doubted by making some assumptions like whether I will still choose to go to Israel if I get an offer from Silicon Valley. I think these are just assumptions, I will definitely learn a lot from the people that I get to work with. If these people happen to be Jews, I may probably learn more.
[ Something Extra: There are some other interesting stores in Marina Bay like a store named "Fossil Collections". which sounds like really old and mysterious stuff. However, the products are not really that old. Most of them are statue decorations made from limestone which is around 150 years' old. The limestone comes from Italy and the statues are made in Singapore. It is really interesting to know that this is actually a Singapore brand and the band name really dramatically increases the company's value.
Another interesting store is named 琉璃工房which is a Chinese glass decoration company. The store shared the entrepreneurs' story on the store wall saying that the two entrepreneurs went to Paris to learn the best glass technology and make the glasses into products. However, it was a big failure and the entrepreneurs had a very bad time. Many years later ,they went to Japan and realized that the glass technology was already very advanced in Han Dynasty in China(which is about 2,000 years ago). They later made the company succeed again. (The story seems not complete)
Two brands of electrical massage chairs also took my interests. They are actually both Singapore local brand: OSIM and OTO. The two companies are competing against each other in the same business but OSIM seems to have a better marketing strategy than OTO. OSIM attracts the top celebrities from different countries to enter the market in particular countries and that works very well for the sells in the countries. ]
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