Q. I was arguing with my friend about what requires someone to be considered a 90's kid and have come up with the following:
You must know how to rollerblade
You were born before 1991
Youve seen all the Disney movies like goofy movie lion king hercules, etc
Must have owned a tamagochti
Owned a pair of light-shoes
Watched all those shows, saved by the bell, home improvement, etc
What else can you think of?
A. As well as the above, I would also add:
You Played outside all day.
You collected Mr Men and Little Miss books
You rode your bike everywhere
You watched great saturday night tv like Gladiators and had the action figures (and the foam hand), and not so good saturday night tv like Blind date with Cilla Black (still better than todays tv)
You remember Stars in their eyes
You remember Mr Blobby on Noel Edmonds House Party
You remember Spot the dog
You liked Pokemon and Digimon and you traded Pokemon Cards. You remember when there were only 150 pokemon.
You watched Rosie and Jim
You had a light up Yoyo
You remember catdog, cow and chicken and angry beavers.
You remember rupert the bear
You remember Doug
You loved the Original Power rangers with Zordon and Alpha and had the action figures and megazords. You remember when they had their own isle at toys 'r us.
For Boys, You remember VR Troopers, Action Man, Masked Rider, Big Bad Beetelborgs, Biker Mice from Mars and Street Sharks. You also rember the football figures with the big heads.
For Girls, you remember Barbie, Cindy, Polly Pockets, Furby, Headbands and My little Pony.
You remember movies such as Hunchback of Notredame, Casper, Jumanji, Home alone, 101 Dalmations, babe, Toy story and Bugs life.
You remember collecting the toys out of cereal packets
You remember recess
You remember budgie the hellicoptor and sooty and co
You remember your teacher showing you Cats Eyes when you were at Primary school. You remember Mike and Angelo
You remember when you were upset Tiffany died in Eastenders
You had a gameboy and played mario on it for hours
You owned a PS1, Sega and Nintendo and Played Mario, Mortal Combat and Sonic the hedgehog on them
You collected Mcdonald's toys, and remember when boys and girls toys were seperate. You remember when you would enter the colouring competitions
You remember WWF in the attitude era with the Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin
You remember spice girls and B*Witched and had their songs on cassette. You know all the words to wanabee.
You remember britney spears
You rember fun house and wanted to be a contender on it
You remember ZZZap!
You collected pogs you got out of crisp packets
You checked every packet of crisps to see if there was money inside
You remember seeing princess Diana's death on the news
You remember 999
You remember playing Operation, twister and buckaroo (and losing all the pieces)
You remember Chip and Dale
You remember Dale's Supermarket sweep and the inflatible bananas
You remember Inflatable chairs and bags
You remember Are you afraid of the dark? and Goosebumps
You remember gooey aliens
You remember microwheels
You remember wearing Adidas baggy trousers with the lines down them
You remember Alladin and little mermaid
You remember playdays
You remember having lots of gel pens and pepsi/lucozade pencilcases
You remember duck tales
You remember old bear stories
You remember Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.
You remember Tiny Toon Adventures and the Tazmaniac show
You remember watching the smurfs, and when mcdonals had different toys for each month of the year
You remember watching dennis the menace
You remember having a toy watch
You remember fanny packs
You remember the yellow lucky bags with the green turtle on
You remember dinosaurs (tv show)
You remember Woof!
You remember Finders Keepers
You remember Art Attack and getting freaked out by the talking head.
You remember Tots TV
You remember Blockbusters, Family Fortunes, Catchphrase and Wheel of Fortune
You remember big black taxis
You remember telletubbies being popular
You remember collecting crazy bones
You remember 'praise you' by fatboy slim and blue from eiffel 65 being popular
You remember having a typewriter
You remember having a huge 'brick' phone with no camera and about 2 games. You remember everyone having a blue/green nokia phone.
You remember all the crazy things they used to do on Don't try this at home.
You remember when the tv only had 5 channels
You remember rory the tiger and the tiger club
You remember candy rings
You remember videos, cassettes and you had a walkman.
You know the dance moves to the macarena
You remember Kenan and Kel and the fresh prince of bel air
You had a frindge (90's haircut)
You remember NSYNC and BSB and boybands being popular
You collected beanie babies
You remember some of the adverts, like felix the cat, BN'BN and chicken tonight making you laugh.
You remember getting penny sweets everyday after school, and when they actually only cost a penny
You remember sweet bracelets
You remember watching saturday morning TV such as SM:TV with cat deeley and wonkey donkey
You remember postman pat
You remember banana's in pyjamas and rugrats
You can remember being at school and writing the date as 199X.
You were respectful to your parents.
You remember a time when everything was much cheaper
You have to be born no later than 1992.
Business Quesion :D?
Q. Hello I have been working on a school question for a few hours and I have about a paragraph down but I was wondering if someone could give me a little input on the question. Debate the ethics of doing business in countries with totalitarian governments
A. Recently, there is a debate over the subject of �ethics�, particularly in international business issues. The reason of this debate is because of multinationalfirms� unethical operations in overseas countries, such as China. It is unethical,because most of these firms do not conduct their business by following the ruleswhen they are conducting the same business in their home country. For instance,they pay more attention to some issues, some of which are product safety, work safety, and other working conditions, in their domestic operations. However, thesame firms abuse the regulatory and legal environment in such countries likeChina. A Chinese organization, called China Labor Watch, has a website whichcontains information with respect to the problems, concerns, and issues of laborforce in China. There is a survey in this website concerning the ideas of
whether they believe that Chinese Labor Laws can protect laborrights or not. Considering these results, it is obvious that 42% of participants haveanswered the questions as �No protection at all�, out of 2391 participants (ChinaLabor Watch, 2006). This may not represent the ideas of the majority or an indication of what people believe. However, it gives a small idea about workingconditions in China. As a matter of fact, there are some opinions on this issue.What�s more, there were and there are some examples of these kinds ofimplications, such as the example of Ohio Art Company. II. A Toy Manufacturer and Its Unethical Implementations in China The Ohio Art Company is known as the producer of one of the top sellingtoys of all time, the venerable Etch-ASketch. More than 100 million of thefamiliar red rectangular drawing toys have been sold since 1960 when it wasinvented. The late 1990s, however, became a troubled time for the toy�s maker. Confronted with sluggish toy sales, the Ohio Art Company lost money for twoyears. In December 2000, it made the strategic decision to outsource productionof the Etch-A-Sketch toys to Kin Ki Industrial, a leading Chinese toy maker, laying off 100 U.S. workers in the process. The rational for the outsourcing wassimple enough. The company had to keep the costs of Etch-A-Sketch under $10in order to compete with the big retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Toys �R� Us.Otherwise, the company would loose money. It was paying $1500 a month forunionized workers in the U.S., while it would pay $75 a month for a Chineseworker. After beginning to produce in China, the main savings came not fromlower wages, but from lower overhead costs for plant, maintenance, electricity, and payroll, and the ability to get out from the soaring costs of providing healthbenefits to U.S. manufacturing employees. Everything was going well until NewYork Times published in December 2003. The Times reporter painted a dismalpicture of working conditions at the Kin Ki factory that manufactured the Etch-A-Sketch (Hill, 2006: 26). III. Legal Issues in ChinaDuring the late 1980s and early 1990s, China was routinely cited by various international organizations such as Amnesty International and FreedomWatch for major human rights violations, including torture, beatings,imprisonment, and executions of political dissidents. Despite this, in the late1990s and early 2000s, China received record levels of foreign direct investment, mainly from firms based in democratic societies such as the United States, Japan,and Germany (Hill, 2005: 83). As mentioned in the example of Ohio ArtCompany, some of the companies in these nations misused the poor legalenvironment and working conditions in China. What changed in China and was itethical for these companies to move their manufacturing activities to China?China's first national labor law was passed by the National People'sCongress on July 5, 1994. Effective January 1, 1995, the Labor Law of thePeople's Republic of China is a blueprint that will shape labor relations to the
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Y?im ve Ekonomi 14/1 (2007) 267-274269contours of China's burgeoning market economy and unify legal treatment foremployers and employees in foreign-invested as well as domestic enterprises. Thenew law touches on every important aspect of the employment relationship andthe workplace. In relation to hiring and firing, Beijing has codified provisions onthe following; recruitment, discrimination, contracts, and termination of contractsand dismissal. An important objective of the new law is to prevent exploitation ofworkers, especially in foreign-invested enterprises. The new Labor Law thusclarifies and confirms rules governing working hours, wage levels, and otherissues relating to worker safety and training. As with prior labor laws, the newlaw delegates most of the responsibility for enforcement to local labor bureaus(Markel, 1994: 46)As seen above, Labor law set by the Chinese government in Beijing arenot severe. �Labor Law of the People�s Republic of China� allows factory managers to negotiate with local governments over working hours and minimumwage requirements. Chapter 5 of the Labor Law document deals with �wages�.Article 48, in its entirety, sets the tone for Beijing�s non-regulation of pay andwork hours in China (Fox et. al., 2005: 319):�The State shall implement a system of guaranteed minimum wages. Specificstandards on minimum wages shall be stipulated by provincial, autonomousregional and municipal peoples governments and reported to the State Councilfor registration. The employer shall pay laborers wages no lower than localstandards on minimum wages.�It is obvious that these legal arrangements are not adequate and applicableby international investors to full extent. If the major human rights had not beenviolated in China by international companies, the ethics issue would not havebecome a controversy of some civil society institutions. IV. The Other Side of the Coin: China�s StrengthsChina is now an investment paradise for investors. It is on tops inrankings, even it is number one in most rankings. The reason is the changing andimproving value of China, because of government�s incentives and regulations,and cheap work force for the investment and production, particularly in labor-intensive manufacturing. What�s more, the country overtook the United States in attracting FDI in 2002, and it may well become the world�s largest economy in 2020 (Yin et. al.,2005: 3). For instance, there is an index called Foreign Direct InvestmentConfidence Index including the ranking of countries which have potentialinvestment opportunities. FDI Confidence Index tracks the impact of the likely political, economic and regulatory changes on the foreign direct investmentintentions and preferences of the leaders of the world�s leading companies. TheIndex is computed as a weighed average of the number of high, medium, low and �no interest� responses to a question about the likelihood of direct investment in amarket over the next one to three year period. Index values are based on non-
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S. Ada / Ethical Issues in Doing Business in China270source country responses about various markets. All Index values are calculatedon a scale of zero to three, with three representing highly attractive and zero notattractive. Particularly, in 2004 and 2005 indices, it is observed that China is thebest choice of the investors as mentioned in the following table (FDI ConfidenceIndex, 2005). Table 1: FDI Confidence Index 2005, Top 202004Ranking2005RankingCountryIndex Value(0 to 3 Scale)11China2.19732India1.95123United States1.42044United King.1.398125Poland1.363116Russia1.341177Brazil1.33678Australia1.27659Germany1.267810Hong Kong1.2081911Hungary1.1571412Czech Rep.1.1362913Turkey1.133614France1.0971015Japan1.0822216Mexico1.0801317Spain1.0751818Singapore1.072919Italy1.0552020Thailand1.050SOURCE: FDI Confidence Index 2005, Global Business Policy CouncilThere are so many multi-national firms that have investments in China. Itis obvious that China�s success to be on tops in rankings attracts many famousand reputable multinationals around the world as seen in the following table. Table 2: Top invested multi-national firms in China, 2002RankingRank inFortune 500CompanyCountry ofOrigin121VolkswagenGermany2138MotorolaUS3147NokiaFinland4210EricssonSweden522SiemensGermany641HondaJapan732HitachiJapan8105SamsungKorea
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Y?im ve Ekonomi 14/1 (2007) 267-2742719143PhilipsNetherlands1045MatsushitaJapan11180LucentUS12189BellUS13N/AEpsonJapan1470HPUS153GMUS16141MitsubishiJapan1737SonyJapan18N/AIsuzuJapan19293SanyoJapan2077ToshibaJapanSOURCE: Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Department of Foreign InvestmentAdministrationV. Human Development Index and China A research shows that China is not in a bad place by considering theHuman Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite of three basiccomponents of human development; longevity, knowledge, and standard ofliving. It has been designed by United Nations Development Program in order toreflect the condition of an average person in a country and includes index valuesfor 174 countries (UNDP, 2006). According to this index formed by AmartyaSen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, China has a score between 0.651 and 0.800 before 1980s which means the country is in higher-medium human development class. After middle 1980s, the country seems to make a good jump by increasing its level from higher-medium to high human development classwhich is a good indication for this nation by looking at the applications (HumanDevelopment Report, 2005). Table 3: Human Development IndexHuman Development IndexRank Country19751980198519901995200020031.Norway0.8680.8880.8980.9120.9360.9560.9632.Iceland0.8630.8860.8960.9150.9190.9430.9563.Australia0.8480.8660.8790.8930.9330.
Please help, my children won't stop crying, EVER, it dosn't matter what i do, they wont stop. Any suggestions?
Q. They arn't babies, they are 2 & 4, both girls. i am really at my wits end. im pregnant, so im tired all the time & finding it difficult to look after them never mind look after myself or get the energy to clean the house. i havnt eaten properly in 3 or 4 days, also i havnt showered for the same length of time, gross i know but how can i get into the shower with a 2 year old running about & im so exausted from not eating all day that i fall asleep on the sofa just after i put them to bed. my husband works all the time, my mother works too & has just had an operation, she cant look after them., i have no sisters to help out & all my friends have kids of their own, my husbands mother & father r 2 busy with their own lives, buts thats another story, so i have no-one to watch the kids even for an hour to get a break from them.
on top of all that all my kids do is cry, they fight then cry, fall then cry, when their tv show is over they cry, when i dont let them draw on walls they cry, when i discipline them (& i do, i dont let them get away with bad behavior but i am not too hard on them) they cry. i distract them with toys then they fight over toys & cry, when their father leaves for work they cry, when my mother visits then leaves they cry, when we visit my mother & go home they cry. when i put them to bed they cry. when i take them out of the bath they cry.
& im on my own with them, what am i supposed to do?
A. Perhaps you could get more involved with the neighbors, if they have children about your children's ages. It is hard to give information without knowing your complete situation and that is not practical here.
Adults tend to make too much of children crying. Children to do not have the capacity to cope with change that we do. Often adults get upset at children when they cry, yell at them and everyone gets even more upset. Maybe it is a hold over from when our parents yelled at us when we cried as kids.
Crying is a temporary measure to cope with stress. We all did it. Virtually all of us outgrew it.
You certainly do not want them hurting each other, but 5 minutes after fighting and battling, they are best friends and sharing. About all you can really do is to tone it done a little.
Then of course, there are hormones. You cannot blame them for every time you may have become angry too soon. But you do have to realize that you are human and forgive yourself too.
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