Woke up 6am in the morning to get some things done before heading off to Singapore today.

Last night was great with 5 people came for our testing. Yes, testing our prototype, that is what all startups should do as soon as possible. The key here is to start small, but ships fast. By doing this, startups will then learn what needs to be tweak from what failed and what not.

After every tweak, it’s essential to continue to ship. Just “keep shipping”, that is what Mark Zuckerberg put on his desk to keep him focus. So keep that in mind when a billionaire tells you that!

Failing Fast. That is the key now in every entrepreneurship startups. Failing has never been a good indicator for the current century. With the Internet available now, startups can perform numerous tests to validate their hypothesis and learn from it.

If you are not failing, you are not learning. Hence, I rather fail fast in the start before investing a pot load of money into any business without knowing how the business will take off.

Take your traditional hats off and go out to do all the testing you can. Set that for your goal this year!

Now that I’m back in Malaysia, it’s about time I write about the journey of mine in New York. From the time when accommodation searching was tough to waking up early at 1am to catch my car to the airport, it was indeed a part of my life which will always not fade away in my memory.

In a city with just over 8 million high energy go-getters, the pace of everything happening is not similar at all from where I was born and raised. It was definitely tough to adjust but the intensity somehow motivates me to wake up early in the day to join the ambitious crowd. From the day I arrive, it was already in need of that energy to look for housing, especially with a tight budget, it makes it even harder. Luck is really much needed here as well!

The experience of working in a traditional global marketing, advertising company is indeed an interesting experience. Great workers in the building, and great visionaries as well. The culture of the workplace is definitely different, with conference calls being a daily norm making listening skills to be essential. As usual, I always love to observe how different level of the management levels try to work together as well as motivating each other. Through this lens, it definitely open up my eyes more to see departmental wide, managerial and organisational motivation differ from each other. Indeed, sometimes young blood (us, Gen Y) are definitely needed to be involved to leapfrog against the competitors for long growth sake.

Learning the cultures of the US, Europe and other countries from Asia was also a big enlightenment. I really appreciate how transparent and open my friends are in explaining their lifestyle as well as the working environment of their countries. That helped me in understanding how societies behave differently according to the history, weather, development state, location and size of the country. All of these can be related to the way how the process of dealing businesses in those countries can be different. Certainly, learning about each other really helped us bond even more and the friendship created along the way are just priceless.

Friends, from so many parts of the world, with so many different backgrounds. Thinking back on the wonderful journey created through trips to Boston, DC, Philly, Snowboarding, Hiking at Bear Mountain really makes me want to shed my tear on how much those beautiful moments pass by so fast. The parties and farewell dinners are the sweet and sad pieces of the complete puzzle. The jokes created on some of the people around will, I believe, be remembered, with BIG and Birdar being 2 of them. Missing you guys so much!!

Being exposed to the tech scene in New York is a really eye opening one. Learning how tech startups curate and develop their ideas into business makes me realised that if you have a goal/dream and you are willing to work hard to achieve it, your mind will be creative with your actions following through. Pivoting is the main takeaway from this experience. Stubbornness will never do you any good. If listening would create millions for me, I would not want to be hard headed and stubborn at all. Remember that!

Lastly, the whole process of being aboard and being independent has transformed me, in what way, I can’t tell you exactly. I have to agree with my friend, Sze Wei, that we feel we changed, but do not know in what exact manner. Perhaps for me, is maybe the realisation on the importance of family and humility. Someone important to me once told me that we should always cherish someone if not we will regret once we lose it. I’m thankful for realising it that early in life, and I really want to fix things and making them better. To me this is worth more than going into space! Also, seeing how people live their lifes in America really makes me feel that I’m lucky to a certain extent, and am determined to take precautionary steps for me not to fall into the same hole. More importantly, I do not want my friends to go through the same pain and I want to help whoever I can. Thinking ahead in life is definitely an important one. We just have to put our mind to it 🙂

Independence, friendship, culture education, values, humility, maturity, thinking ahead, motivation importance and personal growth are some of the takeaways for the past 6 months and the process of learning all these were indeed priceless. I’m so thankful!

Oh New York, New York. It will always be part of me.

*No one was hurt during this blog post. Just a minor missing New York syndrome…..

We had a great time to try out the Nexus 4G’s Google Wallet feature at McDonalds. Thanks to Stewart Pearson, we were able to have this hands on experience with it.

Yesterday, I did something for the first time. Something that I guess not many would have done. Though sound stupid, but I guess never try, never know. All I pray is that hopefully the young are inspired and stay positive.

I sent out 6 old Pokemon postcards to the kids at WorldWide Orphans Foundation, with the goal of inspiring them to become someone great one day. I have always reluctant to throw away the Pokemon post cards since I got it years ago. I always wondered why I can’t let it go. I know it sounds funny, Pokemon so outdated already!

But I guess now I can let it go, and with a strong purpose. Though I don’t have cash to donate it, I hope the words are more powerful than what cash can buy. As what Napoleon Hill said “More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth”.

I twitted earlier about me finally realising the true meaning of this quote.

It does not matter if you move fast or slow. Just dont’ stop.

It was a great one and realising it in the subway got me another Eureka moment. For close to a year now, I have been going through a crossroads of deciding on reality and dream. As we all know doing what we are passionate about doesn’t feed the bill at the start, but getting a job will. So it’s always that dilemma right there.

Robert Kiyosaki and T.Harv Eker did mention that we can get work in the day and do our own thing part time at night, which I have to agree. But then again, what if you just feel miserable in the day thinking about your passion in the night? Have you had that uncontrollable feeling?

That’s where I finally learnt that, the reason for having that dilemma was actually looking for security. A security to feed ourselves, but on an easy terms. What if you decide right there and then that no matter what you do, your passion is going to foot the bill, leaving no options but to push yourselves to really push that fire and passion in you. It’s like a person pointing a gun to your head, and that is when adrenaline will rush through your head that you ended up doing things you wouldn’t believe you would do.

I mean if you think about it, many music artist are in that same boat. They just practice and practice and practice and be passionate about it,  with living in the street, friends’ couch, van or whatever just to achieve their dream. Of course if you are just hoping to have good luck and don’t do anything to push yourselves, then I wouldn’t recommend you to go down this road.

So I encourage you to follow your passion and heart and live your wildest dreams. Plan ahead on focusing and growing your passion as if your life depends on it, which it actually does to a certain extent.

Till then, dream big…..

It has been an interesting week indeed. Another colleague finished his contract and went back to Singapore. UltiAsia was launched. Workload caught up. Good trip to Botanical garden today. Three quarters into my 7th book of the year. Busy, busy indeed.

Busy is neither good nor bad, depending on how the busy is carried out. Key is whether it is a RGA – Revenue Generating Activity.

Now, RGA can take in the form of many types – making money, adding knowledge (for long-term growth) and networking. So it’s really essential for us to always decide what are the RGA in our daily life. Playing computer games is not necessary a RGA, again depending on how you perceive it. If you have dreams to make it big on the international arena, then go for it, but make sure you really go for it.

Playing Magic the Gathering professionally is a RGA. Winners of a pro tour can rack up almost $25,000. Now that’s something. 🙂

So what’s your RGA folks? List them down everyday and focus on the end road.

Finally, the procrastination disease has met its match. The months of delay for the Ultimate Frisbee website – UltiAsia is finally up.

Perseverance is really important when doing projects like this, and it’s going to get even harder when things are just starting to roll.

Life is short + Burning Passion = Action without procrastination

A shoutout to everyone who has been putting what they want to do on the side, just start doing it. One small step at a time. Everything starts with a step – remember that! 

“The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.” – Barrack Obama

“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Indeed, the world has lost a very inspirational figure, with the magnitude of sadness at an unimaginable level. It’s definitely a trending topic on Twitter and Facebook as well. In fact, I believe the death of Steve Jobs is the start of era for many new visionaries.

Many have posted up videos of his inspirational speech at Stanford College and everyone loves it. Even though many have not seen the video which has been posted for more than 3 years ago, I believe this time, many will be inspired by how a visionary thinks and react. And with that, the younger generation will strive even harder to make their dreams come through cause it is proven now that life is short and we should do what we are passionate about and live by it as if our next day will be our last.

I know it certainly make me realise even more now on what I want to do in the future. The urge should not be held back anymore and it is all about action and going forward with nothing to lose, cause the only thing to lose in life is by not doing what you want.

I hereby end the post with some great stuff of Steve Jobs that you all can watch and read on.

 Steve’s Classic Commencement Address at Stanford University.

Jonathan Mak, a Hong Kong Polytechnic student, paying tribute to Steve with his design.

People left messages and flowers at the Apple store in New York City. 

Here is a good collection of Steve Job’s quotes listed on Mashable. The quote below goes down as my favourite among all. There’s nothing to lose if you put your heart and soul guys.

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose” – Steve Jobs

Yup, that’s right readers, you can now upgrade your iDevices to iOS 5. Firstly, I want to thank my friend, Navin for telling me about this and guiding me on how to do it. I won’t be able to wipe a tear if it weren’t for him. Alas, the long awaited OS is finally here.

Before I advance with the details, I would like you to proceed at own risk. I will try to make things as clear as possible here but it’s not guarantee a 100%. If you are afraid, please wait till October 12.

First, you will need to get iTunes 10.5 beta. Although some websites recommend the Beta 9 version, but currently Beta 9 for PCs (Mac lovers don’t boo me) are not hard to be found, so sticking with Beta 7 would work quite well for now. Download the iTunes 10.5 Beta 7 here and then Install it.  *After you open the download direct link, please choose the hotfile platform, as that seems to be working. You will be prompt to restart after installing, so make sure you save all of your work and then restart.

Next, time to download the iOS5 🙂 Make sure you download for the make of your phone and not blindly just download any link. The full list of links can be found here. This will take a while, depending where you are, ranging from 40 minutes to 4 hours. You will see a .dmg file on your desktop once it’s done.

Now, go download PowerISO for free (pay if you are generous) and install it. Then watch this great video by LVTradegy showing you how to extract the iOS file from the .dmg file.

After extracting it, please connect your phone to iTunes and sync your newly downloaded apps to your itunes, transfer purchases and backup all the data. Then go back to the Summary Tab. For PC users, please press shift+restore; and for MAC users, please press option+restore and choose the iOS file on your desktop. LVTradegy does guide you on this part as well.

After that just sit back, relax and enjoy. Make sure you restore all of your data back to your phone. You can check out the list of features of iOS 5 here. If you really have to know the full list of the new 200+ features that comes with it, read this great article.

The notification feature is really cool and the interface of keyboard sliding down in iMessage really shows why Apple is the quality. For me, reminders app is the bomb as any thoughts or tasks can be access in a user friendly way now.

Enjoy guys.