Category Archives: Me

Geekery, Life, Me

when death comes knocking.

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“First you have to give up, first you have to *know*… not fear… *know*… that someday you’re gonna die.” – Tyler Durden

Murder… suicide… aids… cancer… heart attack. I’m reminded of the ways people I know have left this place.  I’m reminded of death and I think, wow, that sounds like something out of a movie and yet, this is what has happened with great people that have touched me in one way or another at one point in my life.  Another great one over the weekend has left.

What are your regrets if you were to die today? What would you wish you’d done?

I don’t have many. Mine would be that I never had a child to call my own. That would probably be at the very top. Other things are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things:

  • A dog, man’s best friend. Lol I know weird, but a dog will love you unconditionally, no matter what.
  • Seeing the world. I’ve seen quite a lot, but still microcosmic to the vastness of the world. If I could do it full time, I would. One day…
  • Working with children. I’d love to be able to work with children. Young children, whose innocence and curiosity is just so pure. Right before social conditioning gets a hold of them. If I can inspire some kids for the better, that would be awesome. Its something I’d love to do in my later years.

But really, that’s about it. I’ve loved, I’ve lost. I’ve been beaten up, and it wasn’t the end of the world. I’ve tried my best and failed miserably, and I’m still here. But I know, that my time will come, and your time will come, so instead of fearing it, why not embrace the inevitable? Such a liberating feeling it is to know that today quite possibly could be your last, so why not do the things you love to do? If I were to go today, I’d be content. But I’d love to stick around, because there’s just so much to feel, so much to experience, so much to contribute and be a part of.

Speaking of contributing, check out the awesome idea of Tim Ferriss.  What a great and easy way help a worthy cause.  Social Media for the betterment of all.  I like it.  All you have to do is follow him on twitter, and money gets donated!! I like.

By the way, I hope you guys are checking out my Tumblr stuff, I usually post funny pictures and goofy stories I find around the net.  I know its silly stuff but hey if it makes me smile, maybe it’ll make you smile too 🙂

Oh and check out this awesome poem.

Geekery, Me

Changing it up around here.

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I think I’m going to start mixing things up around here. Lately I’ve been writing about how to be awesome (actually, pretty much all I’ve been writing about since I revamped the blog) and I really enjoy doing it. I could probably continue writing about being awesome for the rest of my life. I highly doubt I would ever run out of things to write about. Writing about being awesome is really more for my benefit than anybody else. I have to constantly remind myself, and so I write it here. But the site is super duper awesome and really allows me to be a lot more flexible than that. There’s so much more I would like to share with everybody. My deep and sensitive side, my masculine and caveman side, my happy side, my goofy side, my sad side, my hugely over the top nerd side, and so forth. And I hope you all will contribute to the site as well. Its a lot easier to do so now, if you have Facebook or Gmail or OpenID or Seesmic you can do a lot around here. I know a lot of you enjoy reading my site and that’s great but it would be even more awesome if you dropped a note saying hello or shared some cool stuff that you happen to run into.

Right now all the rage for me is social media. It is blowing up across the world and I am happy to be a part of the ride. Social media involve sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and all that fun stuff that has a huge social aspect to it. I was rather cautious at first, as I’m generally a pretty private person, but it has proven to be really fun and now I don’t care. The internet is a valuable part of my life and this blog, as well as my contributions around the web, will be a part of my legacy. My manager is really big into social media and he said to me that the ones that are overly protective of their privacy are the ones that have something to hide, and I thought that was a fair enough statement.

I’m sure over time you’ll start to see more stuff from Twitter, Tumblr, and the like around here. I’ve already had my friendfeed life stream over on the right column if you haven’t noticed, as well as a list of sites I am a part of. I’m not active on everything, in fact I’m generally only active on Delicious, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Google Reader and to a smaller scale Last.fm and YouTube. I have just joined Tumblr yesterday and I really like its simplicity. I’m sure I’ll be adding to it whenever I get the opportunity. I’m still debating where I want to put my photos. I used to put them all on the site but found that it took up too much space. Flickr and Picasa are both good choices, but I don’t know the best way to go about doing it yet. I was thinking of taking up photography sometime in my future and I’d like to post that stuff to Flickr, and maybe put up all my travel adventures on Picasa. Miscellaneous stuff would likely get dumped to Photobucket, and the rest I find around the net likely would get a tweet or tumble.

If you have no idea what I just wrote, stay tuned… I bet I’ll get into more details eventually.

Life, Me

Persistence paves the way.

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My hands are shredded.  Blisters on most of my fingers from a hard day of climbing.  The agonizing pain of climbing, for the first time in my life, a 5.11 wall.  I did this twice, on two separate walls.  Finally, after all that hard work, I broke the barrier to the next level.  I remember being lowered down after climbing that second wall, that amazing feeling… “I did it.  About time.”  The onlookers congratulated me as I was untying myself.  “Wow, you were determined.” said one fine young lady.  Determined?  Probably.  Persistent?  Most definitely.  Washing the chalk off of my hands with soap, felt like acid burning through my skin.  But man was it worth it.

After a year being stuck in the same level, I thought I had plateaued.  I thought I had reached the limits of my abilities, but mentally I wasn’t convinced.  And so I plugged away at it, and plugged away, and plugged away.  Somebody at the climbing gym jokingly said to me, “Its the devil inside of you, that makes you keep on trying.” and I would say that there’s definitely something inside, telling you to keep on trucking.  If there wasn’t, we’d still be living in caves hunting for food with our hands.

You know the story of Thomas Edison?  He failed at making the light bulb like 1000 times.  But he kept on trying and trying and trying and he eventually got it right.  Can you imagine if he quit, what our world would be like today?  Then there’s this guy named Ghandi, you may have heard of him.  Him and his followers were able to single handedly convince one of the most powerful army’s to ever grace this Earth to withdraw from his country and grant their independence, without the use of violence.  How did he do it?  Basically, he kept on nagging them and nagging them and nagging them until they eventually got so annoyed they left lol.  Now that is persistence.

Go out, take what is yours, and if you can’t get it, try again.  Keep on trying.  Spend the hours and years working to your full potential, and put your heart and soul into it.  Let yourself fail, but don’t let yourself stop trying.  Yes, you’ll be on the plateaus more than you’ll be on the peaks, but don’t let that slow you down.  You are a locomotive, and you can’t be stopped.  You are a menacing lion hunting for its prey.  You are awesome, and you are persistent.

As for me, what comes after climbing a 5.11?  Plug away, plug away, plug away, and aim for 5.12.  Like I keep saying, it never ends, and its the journey that counts.  There is no why.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Life, Me

Man on Wire… lessons on balance

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Happy Chinese New Year. They did a short interview with me today at The City Bee about the Chinese New Years and some of the customs involved. They changed the interview quite a bit, and took out a lot more which is really unfortunate. It almost feels like half of that interview wasn’t me, and it was edited down for reasons unknown to me. I didn’t even write a single word in that section about the Ox (like I would know Obama is an ox), so I am going to have to bring that up to the editors as that is not something I would want in the future, to have words put into my mouth or have my words misconstrued. Other than that though, they have been writing some awesome stuff over there, so I hope you guys are checking it out as there are updates everyday (except Saturday, who wants to be shackled to a computer on Saturday, right?).

I went home very last minute this weekend. I was planning on going rock climbing but my partner got sick so I didn’t have any reason to stick around. I’m glad because it was really good going home to Mom and Dad and spending New Years with them. It helped break up the monotony of dredging through the GMAT studying. I’ve been keeping a good balance and taking lots of breaks from it, which I find has helped me stay focused. I’ve learned that going fifth gear for 4 hours straight is not the best way to go about it, and that mixing things up has been a great way to keep things fresh. I’ve been working out twice a day doing a lot of pushups and chin ups and situps lately. Once in the morning to get the juices flowing, and sometime at night just whenever I feel like it, to give the brain a break while I exercise the body. I’ve also been going through all of my pictures and starring them in Picasa and geotagging them in Google Earth. Its a nice refreshment from everything else I am doing. I’ve also been scribbling feverishly in my notebooks and in Evernote for anything that pops in my head, so I don’t have to think about it while I concentrate on the things in front of me. Also, I’ve organized all of my movies using Windows Media Center and its really awesome plugins, and now I have them excellently cataloged. I also went through all of my contacts and updated their phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays and the like through Outlook. I’ve been listening to a lot of Classical music (almost exclusively) and I find it very soothing. I’ve retagged all of my music and have it cataloged as well. I’ve been haxoring my computer and its running the way I want it now, too. Just nerd things, here and there, that I have been neglecting for years, but have helped keep things organized in my system and have helped me maintain a balance. If I’m not doing any of that, then I’m either working (work work, online work, house work, etc.) or reading or writing. I also try to watch movies whenever I can, and lately have watched a number of documentaries. I watched one called Man on Wire. It was really cool. Its about this tight rope walker who had a vision to walk across the twin towers in the 70s. True story, too. It was like a real life Ocean’s 11. Really cool, movie. At the end of the movie they are asking him why he did it and he replies something to the effect of, “There is no why.” which I thought was brilliant.

One of my best buddies is down from NYC this week, so I’m looking forward to hanging out with him. As busy as I am, and I’m sure as busy as you all are, it is really important to maintain a healthy balance in life. Sure, there are stretches of time when you have to be full on crazy mode (like if you are in a super intensive program, such as Engineering) but its much much healthier to maintain balance. Its not slacking if you are enjoying what you are doing. And don’t feel guilty if somebody tells you you should be doing something else with your time (its YOUR time). That always drives me crazy when somebody tells me I should be doing this or that, as if they know what’s right for me. You can have goals, but you must not forget that you should be enjoying the journey, not the end result. Maintain a balanced lifestyle to do just that.

“It’s impossible, that’s sure. So let’s start working.” – Philippe Petit, tightrope walker

Life, Me

Why you need to take action.

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Nike said it best with their “just do it” slogan. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will happen if you sit around waiting for it to happen. If you have a fork in the road and some tough decisions, make one. Go with your gut, and consequences be damned. Don’t sit there and try and analyze every possible outcome of every possible decision because you will fall into analysis paralysis. If you come from the right place, the decision will work itself out in the end. If it was a bad decision, learn from it.

The key is action. Nothing matters if you don’t do anything. Your goals and resolutions mean squat if you don’t do anything about them. My friend told me his resolution was to lose more weight this year, and then he followed up by asking me if I wanted to go to the Mandarin for some buffet goodness. No, I’m not kidding you. How do you think his resolution is going to hold up? Its hilarious but sad at the same time. I don’t mind talkers as long as they can back it up. But talkers who don’t do any action I filter through my ignore function.

Go to the gym + eat healthy + sleep right = healthier mind, body, soul
People know this, but they lack the motivation to do so. No action.
Smoking = bad
People know this, but they lack the motivation to do so. No action.

We are people of action. We do things so things get done. Got it? If whatever you decide to do explodes in your face, so be it. I once heard somebody say that everything always works itself out in the end, and if hasn’t worked itself out yet, then its not the end. I like that. Do it. DO IT!

The nerd in me has been busy lately. I have been haxoring all sorts of things on my computer to make it a super elite machine of glory. I can access it anywhere in the world, even when its turned off. Cool, right? When would I ever use it? I don’t know, I’m sure it will come in handy some day 😉 But I did it and it was fun. Its still not working quite fully yet, and it might not but I’ll keep trying until I’m out of options. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I started. ACTION.

Same with this blog. I started way back in the day when people didn’t even know what a blog was. It was just some buzzword that nerds threw around back in the day and now look at what the internet is turning into. Social sites are huge. Google is huge. Blogs are huge. And now, what can you do? You can connect them. And that’s what I did today, out of curiosity to see how it would work. Did I know what I was doing? Heck no. Did I analyze every little contigency? Nope. I just started, and now it works. At least, I think it does. You can login with your GMAIL accounts now and do stuff on my site like put up wall posts. How cool is that? Can somebody test it for me, please? Also, you can login with your FACEBOOK accounts now and post comments and the like. Tell me that isn’t friggin awesomeness deluxe. Can somebody try with that for me, please? You may ask why this is even important? Well, think about the traffic you can drive to your website when you have GOOGLE and FACEBOOK helping you out. Sites looking to make money and be more social and more cool and easier for users should certainly take advantage of this. Me? I don’t care to make money off of this blog. I’m just trying it out, and learning something new 🙂 Action, take it. Its your friend.

Life, Me

Fall Hard in order to Fly…

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I hope you all had a great 2008. 2009 looks like it will be a difficult year, according to economists, but with tough times comes GLORIOUS opportunities. To steal a direct quote from Tim Ferriss’ blog:

To bring in a wonderful 2009, I’d like to quote from an email I received today from a mentor of more than a decade:

While many are wringing their hands, I recall the 1970s when we were suffering from an oil shock causing long lines at gas stations, rationing, and 55 MPH speed limits on Federal highways, a recession, very little venture capital ($50 million per year into VC firms), and, what President Jimmy Carter (wearing a sweater while addressing the Nation on TV because he had turned down the heat in the White House) called a “malaise”. It was during those times that two kids without any real college education, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, started companies that did pretty well. Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times. In fact, the opportunities are often greater when the conventional wisdom is that everything is going into the toilet.

Well…we’re nearing the end of another great year, and, despite what we read about the outlook for 2009, we can look forward to a New Year filled with opportunities as well as stimulating challenges.

That’s right, keep an open mind and aim high, and look out for the opportunities to present themselves. But you have to know that you will, at one time or another, fall. You will fail and it will suck and there will be self doubt, but you have to keep going. You have to muster up the courage to try again. Last month I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in about a year. She mentioned to me that she doesn’t know what it feels like to fail, because she has always succeeded at everything she has done. Oh, poor soul, I thought. Wait, just wait, it will come. The older you get going through life without failing, the more it will hurt when it happens and the less you’ll know on how to deal with it. And it will happen. Take your licks now, because that is how you grow. Or you can shrivel away, and avoid life, and become a peon. Its up to you.

Last year I started something in late spring I called Project Social. What an epic failure. I started out as a nightclub promoter and lasted all of three nights. Yes, three! It wasn’t because I wasn’t good at it, it just felt like work. Going up to pretty girls making sure they are having a good time and getting free drinks all night sounds like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t jiving with me. I felt pressure to succeed and the whole point of Project Social was to have more fun. So I stopped. There’s nothing wrong with calling it quits when something isn’t serving you and your life ambition. Plus the promoter I was working for was not somebody I would conduct business with again, but we’ll leave it at that.

The City Bee is live now, and to be honest I have no idea how its going to do. It could be a fiery ball of doom for all I know, but I had to try. Obstacles came up, lots of them, but I barrelled through them with the help of my talented partners. Some things didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I made workarounds and compromised with my partners. The website itself is not something I am entirely interested in at this point in my life, but I bet it has the potential to bring tremendous value to many people out there. But who knows, maybe it was all a big mistake. And I am ok with that. The journey to create it has been incredible. I built a website from the ground up. It was a conversation with a dear friend over dinner and drinks and turned into something real in a matter of 3 months. How cool is that? There are still things I’m learning about what I need to do. I had to take a few steps back in order to make a few steps forward. My partners don’t really have any idea the type of work I had to put into it to make it the way it is, and I’m ok with that. I’m not doing it for glory, I’m doing it to learn. And learn I have. From that knowledge, I’ve got something special coming down the pipe. Super excited but for now I have to remain hush on it. Time is my biggest enemy here. Juggling priorities is my most difficult issue at the moment. Right now I have a big fat issue I have been neglecting for far too long; the GMAT. Its now or never so I am going full deluxe overdrive mode for the next little while. Who knows, maybe it will be a miserable failure. That’s cool, bring it on.

“It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilige. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa

Friends and Family, Life, Me

Holiday Stress.

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Well I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and took advantage of the Boxing Day sales.  I know I most certainly did.  I got a really snazzy computer that I can’t wait to play with.  I also got a ton of money, but I gave it to my mom.  She told me that I should keep it, and I said I would but I would be donating it so she decided to keep it instead.  She’s going to use the money to buy clothes and toys for some of the kids of my Mom’s employees.  Aaawwww, how nice.  *tear*

Christmas can be very stressful.  I have a confession to make, I wasn’t looking forward to something.  Every year, our entire family meets up at a family owned restaurant and we have a turkey lunch and there are some gift exchanges.  I went last year, but hadn’t gone in the previous 5 years prior and wasn’t planning on going this year.  I don’t like going because I really really reallyyyyy don’t vibe with a lot of the family members there.  But my mom always insists that I go, and so this year I obliged again dreading it on the inside.  I’m sure some of you may know the feeling I’m talking about. 

When I talk about compassion, I personally really struggle with it with this side of the family.  I guess you could call it one of my big sticking points.  For many years I tried and tried for them to like me, but for one reason or other just couldn’t make any ground.  I just haven’t cut through their arrogance and pompous attitudes and their hostility.  Ever since I was a kid, it has been like that.  This year was no different.  As soon as I walked into the place, my uncle says to his daughter (who is currently dating a guy in my industry), “Hey, here’s Martin!  The engineer, he’s in IT!”.  And she quickly snapped back, “SO?! Am I supposed to be his friend now?!” and gave me this icy cold stare. OUCH!!  The worst part is I didn’t even SAY anything.  I got hacked for just showing up.  I just smiled and said Merry Christmas and just let it roll off my back and excused myself from the room.  But I know in previous years if she busted that out on me I probably would have threw some stuffing at her (not really, but it would have really ate me up inside).  I REALLY dug deep and was pulling up buckets full of compassion from my ocean.  “It had nothing to do with me, she just resents her dad for belittling her in front of people all the time, probably.” is what I kept telling myself (I told my mom later about this story and she confirmed it).

Other things happened at this gathering that I could talk about, but I’m sure you can relate to not getting along with at least one member of your family and then having to spend time with them during Christmas.  Its not easy, even when you consciously try.  Even when you can be the more mature one, holding onto that energy afterwards can really tear you up inside.  Sometimes family gatherings can get really stressful.  Combine that with the pressure of buying gifts and it really is a recipe for disaster.  I tend not to sweat too much about it, this year I received a gift I didn’t give a gift back to in return but I hope they bought the gift for me out of the goodness of their heart, and wasn’t EXPECTING anything back.  I very rarely reciprocate a gift (just ask any of my close friends), and I feel no guilt not reciprocating either.  I shouldn’t have to, and neither should you.  I buy gifts when I want to buy them, not because I have to.  Just like I don’t feel any guilt for not showing up to any family gatherings.  Its not natural, to force family to get together even when some members don’t want to (that would be me in this case). 

All of this holiday season should come from LOVE, and yet it very rarely does.  It has become a CHORE, it has become ARTIFICIAL, it has become CONSUMERIST.  Actually, its been like that since I was born, just like many of you reading this blog.  We were BORN into this brainwashed season.  Just one of the many.  I hope some of you are starting to see how much of this really does influence your thoughts, behaviours and emotions.  Christmas can be incredibly rewarding, or it can be absolutely dreadful, both for the very same reasons.  Which would you rather choose?  I loved this Christmas, it was pure awesomeness deluxe.