Turning Lemonade into Helicopter

Just today, my friend had told me a nice story about building relation with someone, and then I google it up. The story was actually coming from Tina Seelig's book "What I wish I knew when I was 20". It is a very aspiring story about building relationship with people that MAY serve you well in the future. If there is one thing I would stress in this story, it should be the purity of the intention to help people, not the rewards in the end. Even in corporate life, we are all familiar with the term "networking". In networking, it is not what your network can do for you, it is more WHAT you can DO for THEM. Reward MAY or MAY not COME. You just have to be sincere in all your words and actions. Here is the story about turning lemonade into helicopter:

Being observant, open-minded, friendly, and optimistic invites luck your way. Take this simple story: several years ago I was at a small local grocery store frequented mostly by those who live nearby. A man and his young daughter approached me in the frozen-food aisle and politely asked how to prepare frozen, canned lemonade. The man had an accent I couldn’t identify, and I was pretty sure he must be new to the area. I told him how to prepare the lemonade and asked where he was from. He said Santiago, Chile. I asked his name and what brought him to our town. I had no ulterior motive. I was just curious. He told me his name was Eduardo and that he and his family were in the area for a year so he could learn about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. He was in line to run his family’s business and was in search of tools to make it more innovative. I told him about the entrepreneurship program at Stanford’s School of Engineering and said I’d be happy to do what I could to be of help. Over the next few months I introduced Eduardo to various people in the entrepreneurship community, and he expressed his thanks for my assistance. 

Fast-forward two years. I was heading for a conference in Santiago and sent Eduardo a message asking if he wanted to get together for coffee. At the last minute, he wasn’t able to make it, but invited me to go to a specific location in downtown Santiago with a few of my colleagues. We showed up at the office building and were led to the roof, where we were picked up by Eduardo’s family’s private helicopter for a simply spectacular ride above the city, up to the surrounding mountains, and over his family’s ski resort. It was incredible! And to think that it resulted from helping him figure out how to make lemonade. Of course, I didn’t help Eduardo because I wanted a helicopter ride. But by putting myself out there, being open to helping someone, and following up years later, I became quite “lucky.” Earlier I discuss the art of turning lemons (problems) into lemonade (opportunities). But luck goes beyond this—it’s about turning lemonade (good things) into helicopters (amazing things!)

Life of a Donkey

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. 

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, th...e donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later,


the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

 MORAL : Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

 Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

 1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

 2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happens.

 3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.

 4. Give more.

 5. Expect less from people but more from God.

Diary of a jobless part 2

Well, this is the second week of unemployment. I have managed to stay occupied all this time, thanks to all of the paper works I have to taken care for leaving The Netherlands and approaching Singapore. Life is going good. In my previous blog, I mentioned that I was planning jog everyday, and I managed to keep that promise. I run almost daily for around 4 Kms. The downside is tto do that I still make few stops along the route because I dont have a really good stamina yet. So the next objective is to run non-stop for 4 Kms. I think another week of running, and I will be able to run 4 Kms non-stop ;)

A lot of grand planning is coming on the way. Starting with a plan to cycle to Antwerpen this Wednesday with a friend of mine, Izal. Kinda crazy, but might be worth while to try. I hope I dont faint on the way :D Looking at the route, a retour trip will take around 10 hours to complete. Must be sure to take some rubber plying stuff, in case we got a leak on the way. I decided to take my shitty bicycle for a memorable journey :D. Wait till you see the pic of the bike...


Grotere kaart weergeven

And tomorrowww, finally my new 3D camera from Sony will arrive. Yes, it has the ability to take 3D picture, and its a compact digital camera. This is a new release for cybershot model, DSC WX5. I was considering to buy NEX 5, but its too bulky, and would not fit in my pocket. Plus, I hate to bring a camera bag around. After all, digital pocket camera is really handy as I have experienced countless time of almost-got-pilfered by pick-pocket. Golden rule is, mind your wallet, but not your bulky expensive camera ;) A bit of teaser about my new camera



And guess what, along with the camera, I order a photography book. Might be handy to understand things about photography, especially about lighting, shooting angle, technical aspect of a camera, and some samples shot by John Freeman, a photographer and journalist.


We will see what is coming again next week, seems like there are awfully lots of things to do, and awfully lots of goodbye to say. The goodbye part is not that pleasant, but it is more unpleasant not to say goodbye at all ;)

Diary of a jobless part 1

Its been 3 days since I quit my job. I must say that this already been 3 beautiful days from this past few months. It has been hectic months this past few months as me and my team are rushing to deliver a software for our client. It has been good, and too bad I have to left my team in the middle of the process. I would like to continue to support them until next year, but I have already another appointment with destiny :D To cut story short, I will attend a MBA program at Singapore in November. Before that, I am taking 2 months vacation to relieve all the stress.

So the story goes... I have made a vow before to myself that I will do some sports when I quit my job. Today, I have run around 8 KMs because i got lost on the way!! I have my daily route everyday, but special for today I took a detour just for a change. It turns out to be a bad decision.... Anyway, I run more so its actually good :) I am trying to jog everyday now, just to recuperate from months of unhealthy life, full of red bull, coffee, and sitting in front of computer.

Here I am now, writing this blog with aching leg because of the stupid mistake this afternoon. And after that, I have to bike to other side of town to attend a choire training. Talking about working out my leg today... But the good part is that I manage to get some people to go to a city in The Netherlands called Giethoorn. I always wanted to go to this place since a long time, but never got the chance. This city is actually known as the 'Venetia' of the Netherlands. Simply put, the city is surrounded with waters and canals. Perhaps some picture will help to imagine.





















We are planning to go there perhaps coming two weeks. I will definitely update the blog if I have visited Giethoorn ;) Now its time to enjoy few cans of beer and continue living as a jobless.


"Life as a jobless is good until you finish all your money"

Five factors that affects organization success

The first key factor, that will ensure the success of an organization, is the ability to manage its collective expertise. Those who can tap and nurture these expertise will further increase their value. As a person, you have the needs to develop, and as an organization, it will get a lot of advantage if it can accommodate this desire to grow.

The next thing to have as an organization is the source of income. Income will be used to sustain the daily operation of an organization, and make enough profit to grow bigger ( and satisfying your stock holders, if you have any ). The clients or customers play important role here. To get the maximum advantage out of them, an organization needs to build a good relationship with them. This relationship must be based on mutual respect and fair play.

Good service or quality needs to be in place in order to retain customers. This is an important aspect because it defines an organization’s sustainability. Customers who are disappointed with its level of service/quality will tell their families or friends. This will be some sort of chain effect that might ( and possibly will ) cripple your income. A good case study around this subject was Dell, who was considered having poor customer service. What’s interesting to see here is the ability of the customers to found each other in the internet ( there were actually a lot that feels the same ) and later on spreading their complains through various blogs and forums.

When you have a sustainable organization, it means that you will be in the market for long period of time. Surely you will need to invent new product/service, or in other term, to innovate. Through innovation, you will embrace new development in your expertise field, and it might even lead you to a totally new market. The impact for an organization not to innovate is not immediate. Rather, it will cost the organization in the long-term run.

Along the way, the organization has picked vast amount of experiences in its expertise field. By using all of these experiences, the organization can assume the role of thought leadership. The term was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, which means that your organization is capable to spearhead new initiatives. Such initiatives can broaden the reach of your field, while in the same time creating new chances for others to spur new businesses. Not to be confused with innovation, with thought leadership you will need to cooperate with others. It can be considered as a joint-venture between parties to gain mutual advantages.

And as a closing, organization will not cease to function when it becomes a thought leader. The new initiatives that are proven to be successful will be absorbed as part of daily business process. As new businesses grow, new competitors also come into play, which means that the organization will needs to stay innovative. All of the steps are repeated again in a cycle that keeps the economy revolves.

It's about Gundam Unicorn

Lately, I stumbled upon an advertisement about the newest installment of gundam series, called mobile suit gundam unicorn. I came across it when I am browsing my favorite anime site, www.crunchyroll.com. For you who don't know, you can watch anime for free in this site. not only anime, they also provide japaneese and korean drama. I sometimes watch korean drama too ;) sounds bit cheesy, but I like cheesy stuff hehehe

so back to the discussion about gundam. I am quite huge fan about Gundam, and I have some scale models of Gundam at home. the first episode that I follow was Gundam SEED. I just barely know about the previous Gundam episodes, like Gundam Wings, Gundam Zeta, and Gundam 00. I think there are a lot more hardcore gundam fans out there who can name more gundam episodes than me, but these are enough to get someone started to like Gundam.

So the story of Gundam Unicorn takes place in the far future, where human already found a way to live in space. The human in space has their own goverment, and its separate from the earth goverment. the earth was trying to maintain its control to the space colony. In the end, earth was having dispute about the control of space colony, and the space people didn't like it. War broke out for around 10 years between earth and space. The war was also colored by technology wars, where earth and space has their own gundam. On the end of this war, peace treaty was signed between earth and space. The story of Gundam Unicorn takes place three years after the end of the long war.

I have to say that I have just seen the first episode of Gundam Unicorn, and it looks really good. The graphic and the mech design is always superb in gundam series. For the story, I bet it will also be interesting, with a lot of plot twist here and there. the plot twist is mostly about war politics, I pressume. Without any further adeau, I present the trailer of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, for the curious head out there ;)

The rise of natural user interface

The term natural user interface means that when a computer device which has user interface can be used without series of learning beforehand. Natural user interface, or in short NUI, dictates that user can perform series of actions / control to the device by using daily motions, movements, and gestures. The most descriptive identifier of NUI is the lack of physical keyboard and mouse.

Such good example of NUI on action is the iPhone interface. You can do a flicking hand gesture to scroll through your contacts, or pinching on picture to change its dimension. Such action is actually more natural than clicking / dragging scroll bar button. we can say that a standard GUI is of exploratory nature while NUI is more intuitive. The most common application of NUI can be seen in the multi-touch technology. See the diagram below on how the user interface has evolved since the DOS era to nowadays.

Currently, this NUI concept is being considered as the future for user interface implementation. It was all started with iPhone, and then Windows 7 soon follows. Microsoft makes an investment of $24 million on multi touch technology developed by an Iranian company, N-trig. Windows 7 then support multi touch interface by default. Not only that, Dell and HP also brought the multi touch technology to the PC and laptop market.

More and more device in the future is going to incorporate Natural User Interface concept. For the tech watcher, I am sure you already know that Windows Phone 7 is on the making, and Microsoft already released some promotional videos. As you can see, it uses a kind of user interface that we never seen before in mobile device. In my opinion, the user interface looks slicker than the one Apple has. But then, Apple has their upper-hands in the app market which tolls more than 140 thousand apps.

I predict that in the future, we will see more and more different markets use natural user interface for their application. Starting from children, where they will have a table like notepad to make drawing and do their homework. Note that I don't refer specifically to iPad is it sucks, according to my previous blog :) Imagine you are an architect, where you can make a CAD model directly by using hand gesture. Or an office worker, where you can show the draft of your document directly to your manager, and apply rectification in-place only by gesturing through the document. Take also an example of showroom, say a cellphone showroom. You can use such multi touch technology as your virtual showcase. You will not need any dummy anymore, and it can provide informations about the device at the same time. The applications are vast, and it goes as far as your imagination can. I am quite interested about it, and I have placed a question at N-trig about ordering their multi touch hardware. Well, I hope that the prices is not that expensive ;)