This is a photo of the books that are no longer with me and found their new home at Fluentspace – a great co-working space that has just started in Malaysia. No questions asked, no favours expected.

And these are books that I still feel very dear to my heart and it’s almost like giving my child away. I still remember the sections and passages that has completely altered my thought process and worldview: the knowledge imparted generously by these authors becoming part of who I am now and still acts like a guiding light for me.

Why I’ve decided to give them away? Well, the logical answer is that it’s one very long-overdued task on my to-do list – ever since I embraced the minimalist philosophy and my ideal is to own fewer …

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It was a really a pleasant surprise to me when President Obama had released a video for It Gets Better: a video project to gather encouraging messages to LGBT youths whom are often harassed, bullied and ostracized for being homosexual.

My thought after watching the video? We need more LGBT role models out there. Maybe it’s just me that the scars may have carried over until adulthood and LGBT have to bear with the fears and psychological burden: living way below what they are truly capable of. We really need strong personalities and influencers which teens could really look up to: the world really needs more Ellen DeGeneres and Adam Lambert.

As I am thinking in the space I’m in now, I really wondered how many successful entrepreneurs and startup founders who had …

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Before starting the project:

Got a great project idea, feel really pumped up about it and getting ready to make that first dash.

Read Seth Godin’s Linchpin and liked the ideas that linchpins ship. Decided to follow Seth Godin’s advice of setting a deadline and ship no matter what.

“Let’s make something out next week then! Just this small tiny feature will do.”

Feel good about being so decisive and get to work.

One week later…

Staring at bits and pieces of stuff that has been hacked together. Everything seems to only barely being able to support itself while it wobbles around like jello. Worse, it does practically nothing while all it does is just taking space.

There I was: dejected and frustrated, staring blankly at the piece of junk that’s …

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Complaining, one of our greatest vices.

Not only it’s easy to do, it’s also extremely enjoyable. Even better, you can weave any sort of excuse to your satisfaction.

The only problem with is such habits is that you may develop learned helplessness: by abstaining from personal responsibility, you may develop a worldview all problems occurs to you and you have no control over your life. Also if you happen to believe in the law of attraction, what do you think you’ll attract more of in your life?

Yes, there’ll be a lot of things that proves to be impossible or extremely resistant towards change: like what had happened to you and its consequences, or hard-headed person you constantly brings you nothing but grief. But that doesn’t equate to you unable …

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I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

It’s just human being opinionated, but it takes guts to take a stand. More so if you carried opinions that is perceived radical enough to attract haters.

This card art is inspired by Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture: in one part of the speech of retelling his story on setting up a pioneering and highly successful course at Carnegie Melon University, he puts on a vest with arrows sticking out at the back and shared the following lesson:

If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it.

What issues really matters to you that you don …

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Enough whining about how our education system is not preparing kids into the real world, the following short video from The Seattle Times shows a glimpse of the future of education:

[Source: Fifth Graders Make Paper Houses from The Seattle Times]

In this video, Joe Bailey-Fogarty, a fifth-grade teacher at Frantz H. Coe Elementary school, talks about a week-long project to build houses out of newspaper and masking tape. This video really strikes me with absolute brilliance when he explains how the project works: students need to take out loans to buy building materials, draw architectural plans, work together to build the house and keep the accounting paperwork in order.

It get even more interesting when at the end of the project, students are able to sell the house for more “money” (points) for having …

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