Isolated

Alone in my apartment.
The only windows I see, is the one showing a scary outside. With "Trees".
I have put some cheese on my door to find a working mouse.

My eyes are going into screensaver and I find it hard to switch to the wireless network.

Saturday, my computer crashed.
Windows not starting. Fear of data loss.
Could not connect. Could not connect.
F8.L repair. Dell. XPS MP1330. DST 2000-0146. Replace your hard drive.
Yours is dead. RIP.

As I see my old hard drive turning and turning, going down as I flush the toilets, I see those memories we shared together.
250 gigs of myself. My work. MSN contacts, Facebook passwords, ebooks...

You have had a great life hard drive.

O where thou leave me?
Maybe thy life is commodity!

You'll be replaced Hard Drive!
Fatal Failure can get you, but if it gets you, another one will come.
And another one will come. Then it is pretty much the end of my warranty.

Without you, Hard drive,
I could not contact the chinese. They worked 2 days without my supervision.
Guess what monster has been derived from my project?
What can happen in 2 days?
Has my widget turned dragon?
Into a Flying Kite of mystery?

Hard drive.
Tomorrow, you'll be replaced. Dell technician said you'd be brand as new.
No you're not the very same hard drive. But you'll keep on fullfilling your Hard Drive destiny : helping people download porn on their computer.

I will see your guts wide open.
I will laugh at you. Give you the finger.
But inside. Deep inside (Intel). I know I've lost 250 gigs of memory.

Dealing with nights and week-ends

JB is getting married in 2010.
Jose found a new girlfriend.
Robin has moved in with his girlfriend.
Hyung-Jo has had his first baby quite some time now.

It's getting harder and harder to find people I can go to McDonald's with, with last minute notice. Freedom is different when you think as a group of 2.

Well I believe in monogamy (not the board game with the hotels and stuff), but a startup sure is a jealous girlfriend.

Today, I was so busy I was coding during the red light in the traffic.
I see my savings shringking down, giving me less opportunities to interact in a social manner with long time dear friends.
Last time, I was so into writing the BP, I came 30 minutes late. And yes, that is a big deal for me.
I never used to be late.

As my e-mails stack in my mailbox, I forget to reply to old friends or to new acquaintances I really wanted to get to know.
I never understood, why someone could not answer. Now I know.

I feel that thoses months do not fly by.
It seems like a year I left Airbus, to have my own startup. Hope this will come to a happy ending.

eBook-o-limia

I counted the number of ebooks I read this week.
It's about 15-20.

You will say:
"Where did you find the time?"
"Where do you find them?"
"Do you really read them?"

Well I find the time where it is, the books where they are, and hell yes, I read them.

Think about that:
That guy spent 50 years travelling around the world and met countless number of people.
He lived situations that I never would have thought about and might have become the man I have always wanted to be.

And he summarized all that in 70 pages.
Of course, one life is not a one book.

But then again, I realize a lot of things, and experienced things I would have never seen abroad.

Good Will Hunting's movie starred Matt Damon who could talk about anything he's read in a book. Robin William's would say something like "You could talk about the Sixtine Chapelle, but you'd never know how it feels like to be there, the smell around..."

True. How true. But, there are lots of things that you need to experience...
But when it comes to learning something, guidelines are COOL!
When you can't afford or can't find a teacher, you can learn ANYTHING.
(even learn to learn, learn to unlearn, and all of those two faster)

I started reading things about speed reading, business sales, online marketing, and when I found the reference book (domain specific bibles), I found the backbone for my knowledge. The rest naturally came into place, where it belongs.

Now I've downloaded 52 gigs on criminality, survival, lockpicking, ninja stuff, hypnosis, car tuning and manuscript writing.

I think I just need to know stuff for the sake of knowing them.
Wow, just today I added 5 words in my japanese vocabulary.

Sayonara!

e-learning Japanese ? Iknow!

Image via Wikipedia My life has changed.








After years of watching Japanese animes, I never learnt to speak japanese.
That was a terrible waste of time.

I remember watching Full metal panic Fumoffu!, with the eyes stuck on the subtitles, feeling that somehow I was missing all the fun.
I always thought I should learn japanese, but it always came second in my list of prorities as compared to chinese. (I mean sheer population numbers speak for themselves).

So when i saw japanese e-learning popping out in my RSS reader, I said "Hey!, that's something for me". I never thought that with 2 days since I discovered the service, I would have practiced 3 hours of japanese, know 50 words at 20%, and begin to actually grasp a few words in the animes.

The service is Iknow!. And is delivering what it should.
A simple, addictive e-learning device.

With all that time I spent on labrute.fr playing stupid game, now I can spend it on something useful. -if you consider learning japanese is something useful.

E-learning has always been something that was promising.
Now with that service coming up, I can not wait until we have that in chinese.

And guess what?
I'd be ready to PAY for that.
Yes, you heard me.

Mapping your life helps storytelling for self promotion

Yeah, that's quite a complicated title.
But I think that's the accurate one.

While we were practicing some routines on people, trying to get to integrate groups, we tried to get people to talk more about themselves.
"What do you think about it?"
"Have you ever lived something like that?"

Did not work as planned. Some groups were really responsive and eager to talk about themselves. Canned openers such as "Know any cool places to hang around?" open the groups, but do not help transitionning.

We tried the "How do you guys know each other?" but when it came too soon, it wouldn't work that well.

That's where we thought about the power of storytelling.

A good story makes you the focus of the group. Deliver 100 times. Do it better and better, until you can observe the reactions while telling the story. Calibrate your message.

But what story?
Since people don't know you. It should be about you.
It should be a story that tells people that you're cool.

Do you have any of those stories?
Yes. Otherwise you would not be interesting enough to read my blog.

- Remember when you saw those kids being attacked by a grizzli bear and that you bare-handedly took care of it?
- Remember when you were on the beach playing Bob marley music on the guitar, near a fire, with chicks digging your style?
- You get the point

But which one would you use?
Just mind map. Use the central concept of ME. Try to recall all of those stories and get them on your mind maps. Then this is your visual plan.

For example: at one point of the conversation, you naturally come to subject of booze. (that's an easy one, and you should back it up).
That's right you already have a story for that, that will Demonstrate Higher social Value. (DHV)

Random guy/chick: Oh boy, do I love Heineken.

1)
Me: Beer? I remember when I was at the Heineken museum in Amsterdam. I learnt that the "e" of Heineken is smiling, "Have you noticed?"

or

If you look there, (showing the bottle), you have the 5 pillars of brewery. Those are...

or

I remember, when I was at that Heineken museum, that we got free drinks. OMG, I was so wasted in the end.

2)
Me: Did you know that beer had feminine hormones?
Yup after 2 pints, you can't stop talking, and you can't drive properly.

You get the idea? Good.
Use that wisely :)