Recently I have been initiating several personal projects on my own that there’s just a lot of hustle and bustle as I zoom from one work to the other. It has been a while I was this jacked up in getting something done, so actually I enjoyed what I’m experiencing at the moment even there are extremely frustrating times.

Anyway, two things that I have been working on for the past month and am still working on them:

1. MutualTracker.com is a Malaysian Unit Trust/Mutual Fund tracking website, which at the moment only let you check historical prices and play with interactive price charts of Public Mutual funds. Eventually I’ll be keeping track of more unit trust funds in Malaysia and come up with tools and calculators that would let you …

Direct marketers, who doesn’t like to hate them? In many ways they are “spamming” your time in attempts in trying to sell you something random that you may have not known that you had a need for but decided not wanting them anyway. Like business opportunities in direct marketing or insurance¹. And the worse part of this technology is that there’s no spam filters attached to phones.

Usually the ones that I personally find really obnoxious are the ones whom just plainly refuse to state their intentions upfront and are hellbent to go through the whole script of dubious questions to bait into agreeing with him – and then goes on with a barrage of reasons why I would want whatever that he sells. What’s worse? The ones that either doesn’t …

Having the reading habit, a bookmark is the indispensable must-have. And recently I find that my business card make good bookmarks.

It used to be whatever scrap paper that I conveniently picked up whenever I started the book and it’d typically be receipts of whichever restaurant that I happen to be at that time. But honestly speaking, receipts were never attractive in the first place, other than the fact that the strip of paper have lots of note taking space that up until now I’d never bothered to use.

It started off as a habit of convenience as I picked up my business card and slip in between the pages. And it later dawn on me that it is just perfect for that purpose. Business cards are stiff enough that it’s quite …

Being human, we are bound to feel disappointed sometimes. Some that we could sleep over it, and some so devastating that it’s hard not to feel completely torn. And to some (myself included), we just couldn’t help but being swamped by such desperation.

Facing such an obstacle in front of us, it may be easy to feel despair and helpless. That’s just how we were wired, I guess – sometimes when we have our eyes so set on what we wanted, our focus became so narrow that we couldn’t see the surroundings and realities that was slightly beyond the narrow perimeter of our sights.

Probably that’s how life give us reminders – once faced with a dead-end, it forces us to set our sights on the present reality, take a few steps …

(Pardon the language; sometimes I have to resort to crude exaggeration to get the point across)

I have a confession to make: I’m starting to notice my addiction for social sites. Mainly Facebook and Twitter. There’s just something about these two sites really. I’d personally would say that they are like sirens which seduces Internet surfers who pass by their territory, drawing them into a blackhole that sucks out the time and energy out of them.

I’m not condemning these two sites by all means, in fact I appreciated the fact they do open up a window of opportunity to get access into the minds, knowledge and social interactions of people I find interesting and admirable.

Just needed to remind myself as common sense goes: take everything in moderation.

In light of the H1N1 outbreak that has been going on for months, it sort of reminded me of an old cartoon that I’d drawn for my own amusement years back (probably also for some kind of a reminder myself).

It’s always good news if you had great parents and friends who are supportive. The bad news is that there’s times you wished that they don’t worry about you too much. It’s all about being able to know what to listen to and what not to, and have the courage to take up the responsibility of accepting whatever consequences that falls upon you for each life decision you made.

Personally I’m really a big fan of Marcus Buckingham’s “Now, Discover Your Strengths”, which advocates the importance of focusing on our strengths and harness that in-born powerhouse to achieve greatness. One great thing about the book is that it gave exclusive access to their Strengths Finder online test which leaves you with an accurate profile of five strength themes that you possessed, based on their intesive academic research and a large dataset of individuals who have taken the same test and later studied.

Two week ago, Sam Radford and his readers discussed about my strengths profile, engaging in a discussion as I attempt to explore new territories in explaining how I feel about these strengths and how have I (or have not) utilize them in my own life. In the discussion, I mainly …

Come to think of it, it’s kind of funny that we often tell ourselves to make sure that we live life and yet forgetting about that very advice? We often tell people that we don’t want to live like zombies but yet reflecting back most of us are on the brink of becoming one (well, at least on the weekdays being unconsciously caged in a cubicle facing a radiation source for 8 hours).

What we usually tell people is that “we are earning a living” – sort of indirectly implying that it’s about our own survival. But the irony is that we are working at a living grave towards the grave.

If that’s a scary analogy, well… I couldn’t think of a better way of putting it.

And it doesn’t …

What happens when you need to find your own filing cabinet among a sea of hundreds of them?

Worse, they are all arranged closely together: meaning you have to pull them out one by one if you are unlucky to have yours in the deep end of the sea of cabinets.

Even worse, you notice that all labels are stuck in the front and the only way you are going to find yours is to move them out one at a time.

Worst of them all… these things are heavy.

That’s the most amusing experience I got when I moved into the new office (or rather my second coming :p) today.