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Archive | May, 2011

Rent-a-kitchen – Beating unemployment.

I found this Wednesday, December 15, 2010, New York Times Article (page 1) by Fernanda Santos to be inspiring.

Ms. Santos writes about Marisa Angebranndt, once employed by a hedge fund, who rents space in a commercial kitchen to make "whoopie pies" for sale. She adapted her grandmother’s recipie, but made it more modern with butter cream filling.

Similarly, Shefalee Patel now rents space in that same commercial kitchen to make Indian sweets.

Miguel Urrego, uses the kitchen, renting space to make a diverse menu of catered food items.

The kitchen is known as the Entrepreneur’s Space, is on 37th street near Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens, New York.

Aspiring chefs and cooks can rent space by the hour in a commercial kitchen which meets all applicable health and building codes. It is quite large, at 5,000 square feet. Rent is high during the day, at close to $231 for an 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift, but drops to $154 for the 1 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. shift.

The people using the kitchen sell what they make for a living in a number of different networks. THe Entrepreneur’s Space has no retail outlet – so you cook your food in it and then go out and sell it, or you secure orders and then you cook the food in the Entrepreneur’s Space.

The Entrepreneur’s Space is recognized as a place to combine an interest in food, and an income.

The Entrepreneur’s Space almost closed down last year in late August, but had it closed, it would have displaced some 100 small busineses reports Ms. Santos.

The kitchen was originally started with the Consortium for Worker Education, a union-backed nonprofit group. It was recently extended a lifeline with an infusion of funds from the Queens Economic Development Corporation, plus a number of other city and small group participants.

I was once introduced to a lady who made wedding cakes in a little-used kitchen space that had fallen into disuse when a social club quit using the kitchen space. The cakes were beautiful and she developed quite a little sustainable business in the old kitchen space, paying a small amount of rent.

Many people who are not presently employed have plenty of skills to contribute. I found this article encouraging and interesting, so I mention it for your inspiration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/nyregion/15kitchen.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=A%20kitchen-for-rent%20is%20a%20lifeline%20for%20the%20laid-off&st=cse

Chinese Curriculum: Plenty of math and science – with English taught from the first grade.

Thanks to DAvid Barboza of the NY Times for his December 30, 2010, article, page A4 "Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests".

Zhou Han, age 14, studies the erhu (pronounced R-hoo), a classical chinese instrument something like a large violin. She has a math tutor. She entered writing and speech making competitions. She started studying English language in the first grade.

Her school operates from about 8:20 a.m. to 4 p.m., and attends extra credit courses after school or on Saturdays.

She attends Jing’An middle school, affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College in Shanghai, China. This is arguably the best middle school in China.

It a test of math, reading comprehension and science ability, 5,100 Shanghai 15 year olds outperformed students from 65 other countries. American students came in between 15th and 31st out of the 65 countries in these catagories.

"Discipline is rarely a problem", said Ding Yi, vice principal at the Jing’An middle school.

There is a complaint that the Chinese public schools emphasize wrote learning and preparing for tests, according to Jiang Xueqian, deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, writes the NY Times’ David Barboza. Mr. Jiang would like to see more emphasis on critical thinking, curiosity and independent thinking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/world/asia/30shanghai.html?scp=1&sq=Shanghai%20Schools’%20approach%20pushes%20students%20to%20top%20of%20tests&st=cse

Am I going to be outsourced to Mumbai? Thomson Reuters sells BarBri and buys Pangea3

I think I am safe for now, but we will see!

Here are the players: Thomson Reuters is a large legal publisher. They own the dominant "Westlaw" computerized legal research program. They print lots of materials used by lawyers such as guides and manuals and annotated code books.

BarBri charges money to help new law graduates pass the bar exam to get a legal practice license. I took a BarBri course for about $500 or so (maybe it was $750, can’t remember precisely) back in June and July 1993. It worked. I passed all portions of the bar exam on the first try!

Pangea3 is a company that has lots of lawyers in Mumbai. Some companies like American Express, GE, Sony, Yahoo! and Netflix have used Pangea3’s Mumbai based legal staff for some routine document review and tasks with repetitive elements.

The Economist December 18, 2010 article "Offshoring your lawyer" page 132, reports that some large companies are approaching their lawyer’s directly and demanding that the American based law firm work with Pangea3’s Mumbai based staff.

Legal outsourcing to India is still small. Of the estimated $180 billion spent on lawyers each year by Americans, only about $1 billion goes to outsources, but it is growing at the rate of 20-30% per year according to The Economist.

It is reported that big law firms’ hourly rates have jumped by 65% per hour between 1998 and 2009.