Starting 1st of January 2011, Findus France is committing itself to the 3S in all its products (in French: sans colorant, sans conservateur, sans huile de palme), no coloring, no preservatives, no palm oil.

I am reading my 1st ebook in 2012 called “I was blind but now i see” by James Altucher and I would like to share with you an excerpt about crappy people.

There are only four types of people. If you understand in advance how to deal with each of these four types you will be infinitely happier. Ultimately, interacting with the four types in the way I describe below will make one fit firmly into the first type, however difficult it is. That’s the goal. You don’t want to go through life unhappy.

#1 Happy.
#2 People in pain.
#3 Good people.

#4 Crappy people: People who will do you harm, no matter what you do, for no reason at all. They never will get it. They will say and do things to you and they will never ever understand how evil they are.

And you will hate them. HATE THEM. And they knock on the door of your brain at three in the morning and they want to yell at you. And you yell back. And they yell back. And on and on. All day. All afternoon. The ongoing conversation with the shittiest people in the world. They will torture you, kill you, rape your wife and slit the thoughts out of your mind and not even care because they think they are doing the right thing. You know who I’m talking about. Because you have a good 20 or 30 of these in your life just like I do. They might even be former friends, relatives, neighbors, bureaucrats, whatever, whoever, whenever. They swoop down on your life and are just plain crappy and they won’t even know it.

Sometimes, in a weak moment, I think to myself: What if I run into them again? How badly I will hurt and destroy them. Maybe just casually walk up to them and smash a glass over their head so their nose is broken, glasses broken on the floor, blood all over their face. Arm broken after I hold the elbow and stomp on it.

STOP!

This is the worst category. I’ll tell you one more anecdote. Two seconds ago someone posted a horrible comment on my blog. I won’t repeat it. Racist, mean, rude to me, whatever. I deleted the post, blocked the user, blocked his IP address. And then I was going to send him an email telling him what I thought of him. I was angry. Then I stopped myself. You have to stop yourself.

Remember this: When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.

There is only ONE only way to deal with these people in a way that will make you happier instead of sadder. ONE WAY. And it always works. COMPLETELY IGNORE THE EVIL PEOPLE:

  • Completely ignore them.
  • Don’t think about them.
  • Don’t talk to them.
  • Don’t write them.
  • Most important: Don’t give them advice. They will NEVER listen to your advice. It’s arrogant and stupid to think they will. It will only lead to more cycles of pain for you. The goal for me is to stop all cycles that cause me any pain at all. Giving advice to crappy people will only result in more pain for you. That’s the only possible result. Much better to be happy than to flush knotted up brown advice down a toilet that caused you agony to push out. This is hard.
  • Most important: Never gossip about them behind their backs. Just completely disregard. We don’t care about their happiness or how evil they are. We only care about you. Its hard to do. Never ever talk about them behind their backs. Repeat this 500 times. This is hard also. Because it’s an addiction.

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, author and blogger.

Altucher is the founder of StockPickr, which was sold to TheStreet.com in 2007. He also was the founder of Reset, a developer of websites for entertainment companies (including HBO, Miramax, New Line, BMG, and Sony), which he sold in 1998.

He was a weekly columnist from 2004-2009 for The Financial Times, and wrote articles for The Street.com Seeking Alpha, and Daily Finance. He frequently appears on CNBC, and has written several books on investing. Altucher is a frequent guest contributor to The Daily Ticker feature on Yahoo! Finance & TechCrunch.

I am a big fan of Jeff Bezos since day 1, because of his entrepreneurial and fun spirit. Back in September 2011, Amazon announced it is entering the tablet business unveiling the Kindle Fire for US$199-.

Everybody was wondering what they will get for that cheap price, but Bezos was on the right track, again. Goldman Sachs released an analysis mid-December 2011, stating that it expects Amazon to sell 6 million Kindle Fires by the end of 2011.

Unfortunately the Kindle Fire and the Amazon android market were dedicated only to US customers, and Amazon clearly announced that the Kindle Fire will not have access to Google’s Android Market. Knowing that fact, I was so excited to put my hands on a Kindle Fire, considering it, in worst case scenario a simple ebook reader. So I had to wait till Christmas to open my valuable gift.

After few days, I started discovering many ways to enjoy the Kindle Fire if you live outside the US and I will be sharing them in this blog post.

1- If you cannot ship the Kindle Fire to a US address or have any friend coming overseas, you can use to buy and ship it using Aramex Shop&Ship service.

2- You can easily root your brand new Kindle Fire and lose its warranty, there are many online guide to do it, one of them is here, you can also watch this video.

3- You can access the Amazon Market by having a US address and credit card, you can buy these services from www.usunlocked.com. You have to wait 2-4 business days to have your US virtual credit card issued (I got mine in 2 days). Once you card is ready, go to Amazon website and create a new account from scratch using the US address and add your new card as payment and 1-Click options.

4- Download tons of apps by simply pointing your Kindle Fire browser to GetJar.com, you will be asked to download the GetJar app, once on your tablet, you will have access to almost everything on the site. I have tried lots of other alternatives, but GetJar beats them all.

5- You can also have any Android Market apps on your Kindle Fire without rooting it, but you would need an Android based phone with Astro File Manager installed on it. Browse the market from your phone and install any application you like. Then go to Astro and back your apps, this action will create a folder with .apk files for the apps you selected. Copy/Paste those .apk files into your Kindle Fire then install them directly from the tablet using Easy Installer.

It worked so perfectly for me using points 3, 4 & 5, I even had my 1st 2012 ebook for free.

My 3 negative points to Jeff Bezos and the Kindle Fire team:

1) The Kindle Fire should have a front branding, so the user can know the direction, even that most of the apps and books rotate with you. I already wrote about this here.

2) The power bottom should be moved to the top, I accidentally switched it off many times when posing it on a surface or my knees while reading in bed.

3) Yesterday my Kindle Fire went dead, not turning on for like 1 hour, then after searching the web for a solution, it turned out that this is happening to lots of other people, I am sure Amazon is working on an update to solve this problem. I had to hold the power switch for more than 30 seconds to bring back the Kindle Fire to life.

Jeff Bezos You Rock!

Yesterday I started reading my 1st book in 2012. I am lending it for free from Amazon Prime for Kindle Fire (I will be writing about my Kindle Fire experience tomorrow).

I Was Blind But Now I See by James Altucher. This is Altucher’s 2nd book i read after How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive!

I am at 20% of the book, where James is sharing most of his blog posts in a different way. So far the book won’t make you nor a rich person if you are seeking for money, neither a 100% balanced person if you are seeking total happiness (as his blog title is “ideas for a world out of balance”), instead it will let you ask yourself questions, you might find answers to some and forget about the rest.

We’ve been brainwashed. We need to acknowledge this. We need to recognize who has been doing the brainwashing and work towards reversing its effects. Then, building from the core, we can learn who we really are, get success, wealth, and finally happiness. This book lays out the techniques to escape the zombie recruitment machine, expanding our personal frontiers, and finding the tools to build up the wealth of happiness inside.

Since I started reading James Altucher blog (which I found thru the Stocktwits network), there is no doubt and definitely the guy is clever, having his low moments, as well his successful ones, but for me and for now, he is still in the gray zone, i am not able to classify him in white or black list because of his controversial and argumentative ideas and writings.

Monoprix, the French retailer (www.monoprix.fr) is back to Lebanon after leaving the market for 3 years, following the deal of selling their previous point-of-sales (5 super and 1 hyper) to the Kuwaiti group, The Sultan Center.

The 1st come-back store is located in Jnah, between The Sultan Center and Spinneys, few meters from the old biggest Monoprix outlet and is much smaller in surface size from the previous one.

Once you enter the store, you definitely feel the “French retail touch”, which totally disappeared when TSC took over the previous stores. After strolling the aisles, you will certainly notice the strong presence of the Monoprix private label, almost in all categories with quite good visibility.

I am not sure about this private label presence policy, if it is a strategic move for the future or tactical, to put suppliers under pressure during the opening of the few coming stores in 2012?

Valet parking service is available at the location.

Next year will definitely bring lots of surprises on the Lebanese retail scene, specially if Carrefour will be ready with its 1st store scheduled for 2013, located at Beirut City Center, the $40 million USD super structure shopping mall on the outskirts of Beirut owned and operated by Majid Al Futtaim Holding.

Lebanese supermarkets are rarely on television, unless it is Easter or Christmas season or they are running a heavy corporate promotion to push clients to their stores.

Fahed Supermarket in Furn-El-Chebak, Lebanon (not linked to Fahed Supermarket in Jounieh, even they are cousins), decided to go on TV.

Their TV commercials are the worst that I have ever seen for any retailer, at least in Lebanon.

Who would use such animation in 2011 and what the hell is “Red & Pink Panther” doing there?

If you are in Lebanon and you shop for 20,000LL at Coop or Giant Stores, you might be a lucky winner of one of the 200 gold coins.

Unfortunately after searching long on the internet, I could not find any website for Coop Lebanon, except the website of Giant Stores with no much information about their Lebanese operation.

Giant Stores Lebanon and Coop Lebanon are under the management of Al Muhaidib Group.

in Saudia Arabia, Giant Stores POS were merged with Azizia Panda and in Qatar, they were bought by Al Meera.