What is your #1 priority in life?

1. Why is wealth a bad choice for #1?
   Look at the current’s world economy. If your priority is wealth and your entire life is built around it, then it’ll be quite impossible for you to rebuild it again since you life-long goal has been increasing wealth. When you reset it back to zero, so did you life. Carlos Araya knows this best.
2. What about family? Can my life revolve around just my family?
   On the surface, this looks like a great priority. Using family as your bearing in life is easy. After all, that’s the benchmark you starts out your life with. However, what happens when you’re given a glimpse of heaven and you realized that you’ve been living in "hell” all your life? Azharuddin Ismail falls ill after he has tasted “heaven”. or realizing that the way your dad treated you was NOT acceptable by social norm? What about the Fritzl’s Case. (Kindly note that I’m not saying you shouldn’t put family as 1st. They are equally important to me. I’m just saying that there must be MORE important things beside family being first.)
3. What about Religion?
   All over the world, there are numerous cases of conversions from one religion to another and then back again. Next in line will be cults that ranges from mildly misleading to outright destructive. Just to be cynical, with so many religions in the world, can we have the one true god? Is your god better than mine? (Again, religion has been very important ranking as priority in life but it should not be the #1 priority in life. Think of the differences in decimal of 0.01. Hopefully this will appease those sensitive minded from flaming the site)
4. What about having a cosmopolitan mindset and think of the world globally? Protection of environment or World peace?
   Personally, I truly admire people like Al Gore for his life-long pursuit in trying to create awareness in the global climate change and how to spearhead a movement alongside Greenpeace and TreeHugger, Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks for founding TED in 1984, or the Zeitgeist Movement (and the movie) by Peter Joseph. However, currently I still am not ready to share their enthusiasm in changing the world yet. Why is that so? Maybe it’s because of my selfishness. I have not enjoyed the world enough to start caring for it at the level they do. Maybe after my MBA I will.

Apart from reason #4, the number #1 priority in life ought to be the pursue of independence in life. As per Maslow’s Hierarchy, we need to fulfill our most basic needs. Our individual survival is utmost important above all else. Once this has been fulfilled, we move on to the next stage as per the pyramid below.

 

As each level of fulfillment is achieved, we become more independent in life, all the other aspect and priority listed above will automatically falls into place and it’ll become eventual. Furthermore, upon any setback, we can always take a step back and re-pursue our “independence” toward self actualization.

Creativity Revenge : United Breaks Guitar

When a company damaged your $3,500 guitar, refused to pay and instead, sent you on a 9 months merry-go-around in a “Not me, check with him/her” loop, what do you do?

Well, if you’re Dave Carroll, you will get over your anger, and sit down to write songs about it. A trilogy one. Below is Song #1 and they’re pretty good.

For further details of the incident, check out his site.

How to embrace Twitter – Beginner edition

Image via CrunchBase

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets.” - Wikipedia

Why use twitter?

1. It’s REAL TIME.
2. Its 140 characters limitation forces the message to be short and precise.
3. The messages can be either private or public
4. Link your tweets to Facebook.
5. You can tweet using SMS, 3rd party software like Tweetdeck, and online.

How do you join the Twitter world?

1. Go to https://twitter.com/signup and fill up the information there. Try to use names that people can relate to easily. Preferably your name. After that, proceed to login.
2. Before moving forward, fill up the profiles at http://twitter.com/account/settings. Only SPAMMERS are anonymous. Remember to include profile image.
3. Tweeting alone on Twitter is boring. Go here and see if your friends and family members are already on Twitter.
4. Once you’ve found them, follow them.
5. You may also want to consider following news site such as:
   • http://twitter.com/BreakingNews
   • http://twitter.com/SkyGrid
   • http://twitter.com/NewStraitsTimes
   • http://twitter.com/msiakini
   • http://twitter.com/staronline
   • http://twitter.com/insider_latest
   • http://twitter.com/edgemy
   • http://twitter.com/google
   • http://twitter.com/cnnbrk

Now what? Well, it’s time to learn how to Tweet.

• Select a theme for your tweet. Do you want to tweet everything under the sun? Tweet professionally? Tweet politically? Tweet comically?
• Learn the etiquettes of Tweeting online. Be nice. If you have nothing nice to say, don’t tweet.
• If you want to reply to your friends, include @ in front of their name. For example, if you want to reply to me, you’ll type:

@darklegends That was a nice comment. Thanks

or

I travelled to Hawaii with @darklegends last week. It was a fun trip.

• Anytime you include @ in front of my username, it will shows up on my side that you’re referring to me. Note that this messages are viewable in public. Everyone can see this message.
• If you want to tweet a personal message to me, just type:

d darklegends Remember our date at 8pm tonight

• There is a function to remove your message, but it’s not encouraged. We understand you’re only human. If you have nothing nice to say, just don’t say it.

That’s it. Tweeting is simple and fun. Give it a try.

Oh, you may follow me at www.twitter.com/taysoonee

Books on behavioral economic

I’ve just finished reading the book “Predictably Irrational; The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariel.

I’m beginning to enjoy books on behavioral economic. So far I’ve gone through “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and “The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor--And Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!” by Tim Harford

Since then, I’ve been hunting for these kind of books. I find the reference & bibliography part is a bit helpful in guiding me to the next reading materials but mostly they’re quite outdated. Hence, I find this “BookSeer site” interesting in recommending me to the next book.

Got any suggestions on good books?

One Hundred Pushup

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been trying to keep fit for many years. Somehow it never materialized. There were always some distractions that will come my way. However, for the past two months, I’ve been keeping a relatively good record. One of my goal is to be able to do one hundred pushup. There is a site that helps.

At this site you can follow its training schedule accordingly. There is also a site that track your progress. It’s here. So far I’m currently at Week 3, Day 1.

I have come to believe in the keep track of my progress in life. This includes the tasks that I’ve completed, like for example, what have I done for the past 1 week? What have I done for the past 1 month? So far, RTM (Remember the milk) is my favorite site for organizing my life.

We all have our moment to shine. We just need to wait for such a moment to reveal itself.

“Hi, my name is ….. I’m nearly 48. Unemployed but still looking… never been married, never been kissed.”

Now, what goes through your mind when you come across this? What a loser huh? Have you wasted all your life doing nothing?

“I’ve always wanted to perform in front a large audience. I’m gonna make that audience rock.”

So you’re basically considered as an underdog… but a hidden gem for 40 odd years? What the heck is going on? Did the society failed to notice your talents? Or you’re just wasting our time.

Q: What’s your dream?

A: I’m trying to be a professional singer.

Q: Why hasn’t it worked out so far?

A: I’ve never been given a chance before.

Let’s enjoy Susan Boyle’s

I personally believed that all of us have some kind of “Susan Boyle” talent in all of us. We just need to patiently wait for such an opportunity.