With so many things coming (i.e. Champions League Finals - Arsenal vs Barcelona, World Cup, etc), I think the upcoming 6th May 2006 General Election will be on everyone's mind (don't ask me who I will vote, because mine is a walkover).

Anyway, I found this fabulous site on Singapore General Election 2006 - (http://www.asiaone.com.sg/specials/ge2006/map.html which is a flash-based site by Singapore Press Holdings, that shows that electoral boundaries and the different candidates. Go check on Ang Mo Kio - there is a lady by the name of Glenda Han, who used to be the founder of Ig's Heaven, the chain stores of cute and quirky products. And now, this 30 years old pretty-looking candidate will be competing against PM Lee Hsien Loong. While I think that our PM would definately win, it would be interesting enough to see how young Singaporeans oppositions would play this political chessboard.

After this election, it would be World Cup 2006 Germany. Yeah!

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Officer

PuppyLove.com.sg
17 Apr 06 | 1.50 AM

Do you have a puppy and want to give your best to its growth? This blog is about one of our clients - PuppyLove (PuppyLove.com.sg), who had done amazing things to help hundreds of dogs become your best friend for life.

We're amazed and honoured to have such a wonderful animal lover turned trainer to be part of our Virtual Office family. Here is what the lovely Ms. Angie Tan, Head Instructor has written on her cheerful website.

"Puppylove believes Singaporeans are starting to view their dogs as more than just pets. For many, dogs are important members of the household and owners are no longer willing to put them through traditional compulsion style methods in which dogs are forced to submit, and in some cases where their spirit is broken. More dog lovers are seeking effective and humane alternatives of communicating with their furry family members in a manner that enhances their relationship - bringing it to a higher level.

So here we are, offering what we believe to be an enlightened way to train dogs in Singapore - a way focused on shaping a dog's behaviour through non-violent motivational means. Our techniques do not require jerks, compulsion, harsh correction or physical punishment.

Puppylove believes that those who teach should never cease to learn. Consequently, we travel the world to bring the latest scientific thinking in the field of dog training to Singapore through continuing education with world-renowned practitioners of positive reinforcement.

It is time we start treating Man's best friend with the compassion and the respect they rightly deserve."

Our Clients. Our Friends.

Excellent Year Ahead
02 Apr 06 | 5.50 AM

Virtual Office Singapore has once again, delivering outstanding results to its stakeholders. Our quality yet affordable services and brand leadership has help to increase our sales by more than 10% for Q1 2006, including having some major foreign MNCs as our clients.

We would like to thanks all of our supporters during this time. Even though there are other alternatives in the market, I guess something that we do must be right to attract customers into selecting us as their preferred business partner since 2003.

For this month only, we give you an extra 10% discount off our 24 months package. That's right - From just 10%, we are giving away a great-saving deal of 20% to startups that sign up for 2 years worth of services.

Don't wait. Sign up now!

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Officer

Guy Kawasaki
31 Mar 06 | 1.00 AM

Guy Kawasaki (born 1954) was one of the original Apple Computer employees responsible for marketing of the Macintosh in 1984. He is noted for bringing the concept of evangelism to the high-tech business. Kawasaki was a former Apple Fellow, and after leaving the company, became CEO of a pseudo-spinoff of Apple called ACIUS. Kawasaki has a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University and an MBA from University of California, Los Angeles. He is Japanese American and a native of Honolulu, Hawaii. He is currently CEO of Garage Technology Ventures (garage.com), a venture capital firm which specializes in high-technology startup firms located in Silicon Valley, California. He has a popular blog about entrepreneurship. Check it out here - CLICK HERE.

The Simpsons
22 Mar 06 | 1.00 AM

For all you Simpsons fans out there, check this out - see video.

Thoughts...
14 Mar 06 | 3.00 AM

I have been asked by many people how I run my company and how I treat my staffs.

When I started hiring my first full-time staff (Diana), I only knew that the company was small and has a small customer base. Being such, I told myself to be a good boss and act like a father, for a father will always love and trust his children and thus his children will respect him.

Since then, I always treat my staffs like they were my children, no matter if they were just months or a few years younger than me. While other businessmen would probably exploit this relationship, I told myself that my success depends on how much my staffs could succeed in their life.

Frankly, I couldn't imagine that 2 years ago, I was all alone in the office, preparing the letters and parcels and answering all the emails. Today, when I stepped into the office, I can't wait to be with all my staffs, enjoying their presences, cracking jokes, working together and knowingly that all of them are growing together, helping each other.

For the past few weeks, I have been busy and had been staying at home to finish developing some core technologies to improve our service. Late nights of development have forced me to skip work. Can't wait to get back to office and have lunch with them.

Anyway, what drives me to write this post is because I was reading upon Oscar Schindler (websites: 1 | 2 | 3), who was an industralist that saved his Jewish workers from the terrible Holocaust. No matter how many times I have read about his life, saving thousands of people from death, my eyes are filled with tears.

His story always touches my heart and answer any questions about company's profit being first in priority. And like Schindler, we share the same passion of treating our staffs with conscience.

Hence this post is dedicated to Jennifer(ex-staff), Diana, Nina, Anna(ex), Shirlene, Tien Hui, Florence, David, Kok Leong(ex) and last but not least, my wife who also contributed wholeheartedly to the company...

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Officer

Good News: Wider Range Of Subscription Period!
10 Mar 06 | 6.00 AM

Virtual Office Singapore (a Pacific Centennial Group business) has listen to the feedback of its customers and is launching wider range of subscription period. From today onwards, Virtual Office Singapore will be offering customers the choice from 6 months to 36 months services.

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Officer

Annoucement: New Services!
9 Mar 06 | 3.00 AM

Virtual Office Singapore (a Pacific Centennial Group business) has launched its second office, located at 14 Robinson Road #13-00 Far East Finance Building. The special part about our second office is that its a penthouse unit with its own service balcony. I believe that we are the only virtual office providers that has its own penthouse unit (just like the big serviced office providers).

To ensure that your clients are impressed when they visit your virtual office, the Group has invested ten of thousands into its renovation. One step into this penthouse office, you will be welcomed by light music, ambience lighting and modern reception. Should you need to hold a dicussion or an interview, the office will also have a meeting room that is good for 6 persons.

If you need any help, our Virtual Office team (Diana, Shirlene, Florence and David) will be happy to assist you.

We are in the process of preparing the online brochures for this office and if you're keen, either drop by to our office or email us to be updated with the brochure in the future.

PS: If you spend more than $300, you will be entitled to participate in our grand lucky draw, where the winner will travels to Phuket Thailand with his/her loved one.

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Officer

Nike Football Ad
18 Feb 06 | 3.10 AM

Like football? I do. Check this video clip from Nike at Google Video. Click Here! Very cool futsal moves from World Best Futsal Player 2004 - Falcao from Brazilian Team.

Kopi Nap
18 Feb 06 | 2.40 AM

Just wanna share something which I happened to read at http://goalsuccess.typepad.com/goaltips/2006/02/how_to_take_a_c.html

"Sleep researchers at the Loughborough University in Britain did several tests on fatigued drivers to compare the effects of different methods for a driver can use to stay awake. They put the volunteers in driving simulators while they were sleepy and let them drive. Some of the tests included rolling down windows for cold exposure, blasting the radio and slapping oneself in the face to try to stay awake. But what researchers found worked the best was a Caffeine Nap.

The Caffeine Nap is simple. You drink a cup of coffee and immediately take a 15 minute nap. Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee."

Major Upgrade : Sorry For Inconvenience Caused
04 Feb 06

In order to serve you better, Virtual Office Singapore will be undergoing some major technology upgrading from Saturday, 4th Feb to Wednesday, 8th Feb.

We will be relocating our web server from Starhub Datacenter to Singapore 1-NET Datacenter, which sits directly on the Singapore ONE backbone, a high-speed ATM network. (This means less waiting time for customers!)

However, this migration will cause the website to be instable for about 48-72 hours as the DNS records will need to updated onto main root DNS servers around the world.

Should you experience any problems with our website, I sincerely apologize for the hiccup.

Appreciates,
Peter Tan
CEO, Virtual Office Singapore

恭喜发财
28 Jan 06

Wishing everyone good wealth and good health in the Year of the Dog!

恭喜发财,
Peter Tan
CEO, Virtual Office Singapore

What A Start For 2006.
19 Jan 06

Life is full of surprises. Especially having two good friends, whom we always chat on businesses, started to betray the friendship and have started to do something similiar like us and copied the ideas being shared.

In business, as much as we must earn a fair profit for our services, I personally believe that integrity is far more important. That is why to date, we don't diverge nor sell customers details to third-parties even though people are offer very good money for our massive database. Nor we engage in any businesses that are in conflict of interests with our customers businesses. To me, it's just not right.

Call me old-fashioned but I believe in the good old "Swiss Bank Trust".

Being a father myself, I'm a role model to my kid and I have to do things that make my kid respects and be proud of me. At the end of the day, all I hope to see is that she grows up to be a fine young lady, who knows right from wrong.

It may sound weird, but seriously I'm not in for the quick buck. I still take the MRT (ok lah.. maybe a taxi now and then), enjoy simple cinema and dinner at food court, and lives in your typical 4-rooms HDB flat. I don't have credit cards, country club memberships, condos, cars, etc. All I wanted is...

...to challenge what is said "cannot be done" and bring better things into this sunset industry and help entrepreneurs along the way.

We have been in the business for more than 2 years and have take tremendous passion in nurturing great relationships with thousands of our clients. We take pride in improving our operation and continue to provide great customers service and technological innovations, at value-for-money prices. Most times, we just go the extra mile, because it's the right thing to do.

In return, our clients love us and had us showered with gifts of their heartfelt appreciations - wines, chocolates, cups of coffee, christmas cards (new year cards), little gadgets, handphone accessories, etc.

To these two friends, I wish them the best in business and hopefully they could join us in making this virtual office industry better for the aspiring entrepreneurs, all around the world.

With Faith In Goodness,
Peter Tan
CEO, Virtual Office Singapore

7 Happy Days!
06 Jan 06

http://www.7happydays.com

7HappyDays.com: One home for all of your groups

This is one place where you can share many different types of content with all your group members. No longer do you, or your friends and family, need to learn how to use separate sites. 7HappyDays.com lets you do all of the following with ALL your groups under one account:

- post digital photos
- publish your own group activities
- arrange events and parties with free email and SMS
- share movie or restaurant reviews + promotions
- see what makes your group members happy!

Be notified of any updates via email and SMS instantly!

With one convenient place to share and discuss your photos, reviews, events and more, and an automatic way to see what's making your friends and future friends happy! You'll wonder how you ever lived without it!

"This is Singapore's very own Yahoo! Group + Meetup + Friendster! It's still in Beta, so remember to feedback. Try it!" Cheers, Peter Tan, CEO of Virtual Office Singapore.

Happy New Year And... Here's Something Fun To Play With
06 Jan 06

http://www.disarea.com/work/office_space/

It's a fantastic game to show how boring office life could be. Hmm... Wait. Shouldn't say that. What if my staffs get to read this? *smile*

Peter Tan
CEO, Virtual Office Singapore

Learn How Sushi Works
16 Dec 05

http://video.google.com/videoplay

Opening Hours During Christmas Period
15 Dec 05

Virtual Office Singapore will be closed for operation from Saturday, 24th December 2005 to Tuesday, 27th December 2005, and resume operations on Wednesday, 28th December 2005.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Christmas Wish.
30 Nov 05

For more than a month, I have not written any updates. I'm sorry about it and I hope that this overdue corporate blog will be worth a read.

In about 25 days time, Christmas is coming and I hope to share a little something with everyone. A gift of thoughts.

When I started Virtual Office Singapore, it was no more than an idea to offer virtual office services over the Internet. There are certain players that do that but nothing on the scale of actually allowing someone to pay for it online.

The initial business model replicate of those from the web-hosting industry. Transparent pricing. Packaged deals. Secured online registration. Nothing fanciful nor complicated.

As times go by, we have a team of 5 dedicated staffs that focused on delivering the best virtual office service in Singapore. Unless other providers, we did nothing else - namecard printing, consulting, etc, because "to excel is to focus". Logically, you don't see Tiger Woods trying to play for Manchester United, do you?

As an entrepreneur, you have to stay focused. Like a sniper, you only got one shot and damn well you must do it well.

And while an entrepreneur cares about an idea and executing that idea, a true businessman cares about a proper structure that supports a working idea. In the next few months, we are carefully restructuring our company and invest into firming our foundation to enable us to serve our customers even better. Better financial discipline. Better operation effectiveness. Better marketing tactics. Better customer service quality. ISO 9000. Six Sigma. Singapore Quality Class.

And by being better, we are able to serve more customers' demands, expand our sales revenue and provide better career opportunities, which in turn provide the capacity to serve even more customers' demands.

So from this Christmas in 2005, to the next in 2006, Virtual Office Singapore is striving (wishing) to become the most reliable partner for entrepreneurs to depend their business upon. *cross our fingers*

To all our 1,000 or so clients and yourself... Wishing you Merry Christmas!!!

Cheers,
Peter Tan

Listening...
17 Nov 05

How are all of you?

It's almost the end of the year, and Pacific Centennial Group will be undergoing some major restructuring (filled with little fixes) to serve you better. Yes, it's our annual spring cleaning after we have did a survey with all of our clients.

Majority of our clients are satisfied by our service (hey we can't be all perfect right? we tried our best but everyone has some clients who are too hard to handle.) and we will be gradually implementing some of our clients' feedbacks.

One of the feedbacks is that we have too short of an opening hours. Hence as some of you may have realized, we have opened an hour earlier (9.30 am) during Monday to Friday and likely to open during Saturday after we have settled with the logistic and manpower arrangement.

Also, another feedback is that our previous format of SMS alerts for the mails. Clients had to call in to ask for the description of the mails, which is extremely inconvenience for them. To counter this, we have adjusted our CRM system so that mails-sender's name will be included in the SMS alert.

Other than the feedbacks, we are in the progress of working with Global Corporate Advisory (GCA), Prudential and OCBC Bank, on delivering startup-solutions to our clients.

GCA, previously known as LCC Global, is our official partner for corporate secretarial solutions such as registration of business or companies, accounting, audit & taxation services. To know more, check out www.lccglobal.com. Many clients have informed us that there are so many "sharks" out there that advertises cheap services but filled with shipload of hidden costs. GCA has been working with us for more than a year, and all of our clients love them because they are affordable and professional.

Although we are not an agent or partner of Prudential and OCBC Bank, we have been using them to help us in our daily business activities and have some special arrangement with them to offer their fantastic products to our clients. For example, when you opened a corporate account with OCBC Bank with $5,000 or less, you would need to pay a service charge. When you sign up with us, this charge will be waived off for the first month (some forms need to filled though. forms can be grab from us.). Also, our clients would be able to discuss with our dedicated corporate banker at OCBC Bank.

It's amazing how a company grows. But really... it's all about listening to our clients, yeah?

Cheers,
Peter Tan

Thoughts from CEO
14 Oct 05

To me, an entrepreneur is more than just a businessman. Entrepreneur don't just change things but more so, change the value system of the economy.

Most traditional virtual office players are operated by businessmen. Their aim is to take down their competitors with lower their price. Yet in the long run, these companies are no more than a company on life support machines. In Business Management 101, price-war is the most stupid way to win because many people have to lose in order for yourself to win.

Virtual Office Singapore is operated by entrepreneurs. We see things different. Not only we want to challenge the status quo, we want to improve the conditions of the industry, leading it through our constant innovations and better controls. Before we entered into the market, there was practically no emphasis on quality services. While other players are out to pad their wallet through aggressive sales tactics, hidden costs or providing second-graded solutions; Virtual Office Singapore is opened to acquire any other operators, motivate and upgrade their staff, share our best practices and improve the general industry.

As someone who hates cheating methods, I educate the market that good, customer-oriented service is possible. We are the first to allow people to buy virtual office services online. We are the first to include "no-hidden fees". We charge a fair price to earn a decent profit because to provide good service, we need to invest in great staffs, quality equipment, cutting-edge technologies, and anything that improve the entrepreneur experience, etc.

Now, we are reaped the rewards by having a strong foundation, motivated staffs in a fun-loving environment, large & loyal customers base, profitable operations and great international branding. We have just celebrated our 2nd birthday (we started from 13 Oct 2003) and while throughout these time, we have won Spirit of Enterprise 2005 Award and become 6th most popular virtual office operator in the world, what surprised us more is that more people came to know about us and some even wanted to join our company.

In the long run, I know that Virtual Office Singapore will continue to provide quality services to the entrepreneurs community. We are looking not to be just an alternative but the de facto standard in this industry.

Cheers,
Peter Tan

sgentrepreneurs.blogspot.com
30 Sep 05

I has been a while I wrote about entrepreneurship. Here's a great blog from Gwen, a Singapore in Silicon Valley, California. I can't remember how I came to know about this blog, but when I was in there... WOW. Finally a blog that isn't about your usual entrepreneurship stuff.

Trust me... Click the links below to access to that website and you will enjoy it!

Website: http://sgentrepreneurs.blogspot.com/

For Those Who Loves Science
21 Sep 05

Are you those who loves how things work? How much do you know General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? What's the relationship betweeen Gravity, Electro-Magnetism, Weak Nuclear Force and Strong Nuclear Force? What is the smallest of them all - Atom? Quarks? Strings? Did you what are the 11 dimensions or more, parallel universes, branes, membranes, anti-particles (sparticles), gravitons, supersymmetry and a world that made out of open & closed strings? And where is Fermilab or CERN? And who is Michael Green, John Schwarz and Edward Witten?

And... Do you believe there is a Theory of Everything?

In this PBS NOVA website, The Elegant Universe presented by Brian Greene, has 3 hours worth of video clips that will explains all of above and many more. Famous researchers from Cambridge, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, IAR and more, present their insights to the holy grail.

Click the links below to access to that website.

Main: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
Video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

Check it out and believe me... you will be amazed the elegance of the universe.

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Office
Pacific Centennial Group

SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE AWARD WINNER
01 Sep 05

Pacific Centennial Group (parent of Virtual Office Singapore) has become one of the forty award winners for Spirit of Enterprise (SOE).

SOE is an approved Institution of a Public Character (IPC) that advocates and advances entrepreneurial spirit in Singapore by honouring local self-reliant entrepreneurs operating small and medium-sized businesses. SOE serves to inspire Singaporeans, especially the young, to become entrepreneurs by facilitating interaction, communication and knowledge dissemination between students, the entrepreneurs and the general public.

On behalf of all of my staffs, I would like to thank all of our supportive clients who took the time & effort to vote for us. This is a tremendous achievement and we dedicated this award to all of our clients who themselves are also entrepreneurial aspirations.

As the honouree (a.k.a. award winner), we will continue to work hard & provide better virtual office services to help emerging entrepreneurs. In the end, it's all about...

To know more about SOE, check out http://www.soe.org.sg.

Cheers,
Peter Tan
Chief Executive Office
Pacific Centennial Group