Hide – also known as „carucate”; it is not referring to Mr. Hide but it has some dark roots – 7th century. It was the amount of land that one man could cultivate in order to sustain one family.

Iron – although sounds “musical” it’s not; this old unit measured the thickness of leather used for making shoes. An Iron is about half centimeter.

Jug – a Scottish unit of measuring liquids; it equals to 1.7 liters; the name comes from “the jug of Sterling” – it was a Scottish vessel used for official measurements.

Karat – used to measure the purity of the gold; the purest gold is supposed to be 24 units. Therefore if we were to take the 14 karat gold for example, we would be talking about 14/24 units purity (58.3% pure).

Kati – also spelled “catty”, it is a Malaysian unit of measuring weight; one kati is rounded to 0.6kg.

Ligula – it comes from Latin and it literally means “to lick”; it measured 11.07 millimeters.

Mandel – it was a unit used to represent 15; yes, it’s German.

O’clock – it comes from the longer version “of the clock”; it dates back to 1400.

Oka – many of you already know from history lessons about Cuza’s “oca”; it was a Turkish unit of measurement, it represented 1.28 kilograms; it was declared prohibited in 1959, along with its Greek sister.

Pot – traditional unit used in Australia; of course, down under, not every pot is the same. For instance, if you would ask for a pot of beer in Queensland, you would get 285 ml; but if you would kindly ask for a pot of beer in Western Australia, you would get 575 ml. Now, think about the beautiful places Australia has to offer you!

Ri – now this should be interesting. This is a Japanese unit of measuring length; it equals 2160 ken (of course it does) or even 12960 shaku! It even equals to 36 chō. It rounds about 3927 meters. Makes sense now, right?

Rick – not a Ricky Martin fan; rick was sentenced to prohibition in US. It refers to a pile of fireworks but its capacity is hard to determine, since the firework vendors “adjusted” the pile as they considered it fit.

Sabin – no, not your colleague. Sabin measures the sound absorption of one square foot of a surface that absorbs sound….. Like a window J

Seven – I know this is continuously returning here but a seven measures a glass (200 ml) in New South Wales (Australia again); it the same as the butcher (presented last time in wacky units part 1).

Shannon – you gotta here this one: you have a coin with two faces; you know that one face will make you win and the other will make you lose the game (50-50 chances); every time the coin flips you can predict the result. The fact that you will not know the result until the coin flips, will make you uncertain of the outcome. However, if the coin has two identical faces, no prediction is needed since the outcome is well-know. This last one requires intense studying. Therefore a Shannon represents the possible outcomes.

This is all for today but next time we will return with other cool measuring units.

Wacky Units (part 1)

Have you ever heard of such phrases as “The newborn got its first score; it was a perfect ten” (APGAR) or “I stood next to him at an arm’s length” (very close), “He lost his 21 grams” (lost his life)? How many of you ever wondered where these terms come from and what do we really mean by using them. Today’s topic is old measurement units and their acceptance in our lives after the metric system took over. First of all let’s get one thing straight: not everyone is using our way of measuring things (grams, kilometers). These terms are specific to a system called metric (the name is very suggestive). It was first put in place in France and it uses decimals to measure things. It came as an alternative, which was quickly adopted by most countries; to the Imperial Units (this system is British and should not come as a surprise to anyone).

There are many other systems to measure things but let’s take a look at some old units, and let’s have a laugh at some wacky names they used in the old times.

Amber – no this does not refer to the girl working at the cubicle next to you; this was an unit of volume and it measured about 140 liters. Amber is huge J

Amphora – yes, it was some sort of a vase. It was discovered to measure (based on the findings of the historians) around 38 liters – if you are Greek – and only 25 if Roman; seems someone is skinflint…

Balthazar – this is my favorite; this unit measures 12 liters and it was used for wine!

Butcher – I know you think you know this one but in fact this is a unit for measuring beer; it was used Down Under…. And guess what, it’s a glass.

Devil’s Dozen – means a quantity equal to 13 units. Its name is related to the fact that 13 is a bad luck number

Fanthom – whether you are at the Opera or not, the fanthom measures aprox. 1,8 meters. The word derives from English and it means “fæthm” – stretched arms

This is all for now. Hope you discovered new things today. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Have you ever wondered why is gold so expensive? How come its value is immense? And why do we keep it stacked in bars?Let’s take a look at some of these aspects.  First of all gold is rare; therefore it was used by kings and pharaohs in order to show their value as supreme humans.

 

The mining for gold is very dangerous; it is a metal that will not dissolve in just anything. Most of the cases are done by using cyanide. That is why the process of extracting this metal is so toxic.

How do billionaires keep their valuable gold? Well they store it in banks and they keep it stacked in bars. Gold bars are called ingots. There are many ingot manufacturers out there. The fact that this metal is so rare and expensive lead to the creation of a certain measurement unit for it. It is called troy-ounce; while the original ounce is called the avoirdupois pound.

The troy once is heavier than a normal ounce. It measures 31.1034768 g. One troy ounce is equivalent to 1.09714 avoirdupois ounces. Now you know why you should be very careful when you buy an ingot. The manufacturer must tell you how much it weights in troy ounces. (The word troy leads back to Roman Empire and Troy) The standard quantity of gold per ingot is 400-troy-ounce (12.4 kg or 438.9 ounces). These are the most common bars and they are represented also in movies.

Gold is also traded over the exchanges. Also it can be used as a currency. Its symbol is XAU. What do the gold carats in jewelry represent? The carats (24k, 22k, 18k, 14k or 10k) measure the quantity of over metals in the alloys. For example: 24k means the gold is pure density. Starting from 22k the alloy contains other metals such as silver, palladium or copper. The most common alloys are formed with copper. That is why most of the low carats gold is reddish. But there can also be alloys made with nickel or palladium and therefore having a light green color. Gold can be used in food and has the E number 175!

Now you know some facts about gold!

If you remeber, my dear friends, last time I brought some insights on how to list an entity on the financial market. Many of you wondered why did I do that. Well, today I will continue the plan and  give you some business ideas; I know you have some spare money in a Cayman Islands bank and I was concerned that there was nothing to do with all that money! Here are my 5 sugestions on how to invest wisely.

If there is something I have a lot of – those are ideas; all you have to do is be as open-minded as possible and embrace these crazy suggestions. No one will garanty they will work for you. But why try just one? Have some and wish for the best  If it worked for Americans, it will work for us too!

So here is the list of suggestions:

• The crazy idea of taxing parents for Santa Claus’ letters. Yes, kids love sending wish lists to Santa, hell, even I would write him a letter;  but what if, one day, Santa replies? And parents are paying for it? Wouldn’t it be nice to have parents pay you 10 RON per personalised response from Santa?

• What if you decided one day that Chinese food industry from Romania has got to take a step forward into the future? What if you got tired of fortune cookies making sick jokes on your sensitive karma? What if there were a giant „luck factory” where you could produce „lucky wish bones”? You know, the real ones are made from chicken stern; you and a friend grab by the ends, make a wish, and then brake it. But yours would be made of light breakable plastic! 10 RON a piece is a fair price I would say.

• Try selling 10 RON rocks as pets! I am not joking; if people actually pay to play online games such as WOW, why wouldn’t this idea work? Try finding the new Brancusi to add some spice to the forms of the rocks, or even do it yourself, cause we all know how tallented you are, and then give it a shot, sell those rocks to rich, stupid, bored people as pets; don’t forget the manual on how to use the rock…

• Recently I had a nice talk with some friends and we were remebering the highschool period. And if there was something we all did, that was to buy medical „leaves of absence” from our friends that had doctor parents. As a general idea, this might also work for old but immature persons. So why not start a new business in providing fake doctors notes for those that are tired of work? The price is the same – 10 RON per paper. And it doesn’t even have to work, many will buy it just for fun!

• We all know about the crazy idea of buying a piece of land on the Moon! But what if you went further and sold places in Heaven? Every believer wants one, just to make sure! And let’s be fair – the Church does it everyday; why wouldn’t it work for you? You only charge 10 RON, once, for a square meter!

Think about it and if you decide to give it a shot and become sucessfull… remember who taught you! I only charge 10 RON per idea!

My work for the newsletter:

There is no working-person in Romania that has not yet come across the system of TAXES in our country. Many of us know that the income tax is the highest tax applied on our salary (16%).

But what not many of us know is that we can do something about where the money will go after they clear our account; according to art. 57 and 84 from Law no. 571/2003 (fiscal code) we can redirect 2% of the income tax to one of the Romanian not-for-profit organizations. They can be involved in: health assistance, child support, science projects, church related domains, green-power and so on.

All you have to do is:

• Select the desired domain what deserves your money – you can direct the money to a teachers’ association for example
• Then select the desired organization – if you are interested in a particular region (in which you grew up, which are linked from some reason) choose an organization that operates there. If this is not a priority, you can choose otherwise
• Find contact details of the organization (that should not be very hard since most of us do research for a living). You need the following information:

– Name of the organization (this is the easy part)

– Tax Identification Code (Tax Code) – the one we call “Taxpayer ID”

– Bank account in IBAN format – it is that long account number where they keep their money

• Establish your source of income – salary – and then fill in the appropriate form. If your source for income is the salary then you should use form 230 (download from here – http://doilasuta.ro/continut/documente/declaratia230.pdf) and if your income is of rental sources, copyrights and so on you should use form 200 (download from here – http://doilasuta.ro/continut/documente/declaratia200.pdf)
•   The next step is the delivery of the form (completed) to the appropriate Financial Administration section, the one responsible for your domicile address; either by snail mail or you can deliver it yourself. There is also the possibility to give the completed form directly to the person representing the selected organization and they will do the delivery for you.

For more important information, please see this website: doilasuta.ro

As a conclusion, by doing this, you bring your contribution to the well-being of the Romanian economy; you can either see it as a social mandatory task towards the improvement of homeless children lives, health-preservation organization; your choice. It is a responsibility one should assume as a citizen of this country.

Here is my latest article from the newsletter I am collaborating to:

Most of us have heard not just once about Wall Street or the Lords of World’s economy. Some of us know about Occupy Wall Street movement too!!

But what do we know about financial markets, stock exchanges, traded values, Forex, Metals Markets and so on?

If you ever wondered what a stock, a ticker or even a traded volume is, then read below.

First of all let’s state a friendly definition of a Financial Market: it is a virtual place (an intermediary) where companies list own shares or other goods at different prices and buyers (individuals or firms) come and acquire a part or that certain entire traded asset.  The role of the market is to ensure that the ratio between supply and request is fair.

Let’s take for example: Bank of America Corporation. This particular legal entity is listed on NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). Listed means it has shares traded over NYSE. NYSE is one of the largest and most important markets of all.

How does a company become listed and why would it do such a thing? First of all not all legal entities are eligible for listing. One of the most important grounds is the way it was organized: it must be incorporated as company with shares (there are several other forms of organization such as partnerships) and the second most important aspect is the size of the entity: the overall profit per year must be over a certain amount (each markets sets a different sum) in order to qualify for listing. The reason is that the listing brings investors therefore profit, more money! Another reason is the free trade, the independence of enterprise and so on.

When listed, entities receive a code (made up of numbers or letters, depending on the country in which it resides and trades). The code does not have an upper limit of characters; it varies from 3 to 7, even more. This code bears the name of Ticker; also referred to as Symbol.

When starting to trade the listed entity must obey certain rules set up by the specific market: one of the most important rules is “always list all documents to the market too”. For example: if the listed entity decides to change a Director, this might affect potential investors. Therefore this change must also be noticed on the market, so that it can be seen by all market participants.

Now, let’s step back and imagine ourselves as investors. We have all the money we need and we need to invest in something and get profit. How do we do that? Well, we buy stuff off the market! We can invest in companies and make them profitable thus making more money for us. By investing in a company, we are entitled to a quota of the company’s dividends (which means more money!). If we invest a bigger amount and we buy a bigger part of the company, we can end up owning that company! GREAT!