Category — It's Haceem and Friends

I have seen a lot of funny pictures that people use as their Facebook profile photo, but this one in particular really cracked me up.  He is actually a good friend of mine and I always tease him on Facebook.  When he put up this picture as his profile photo, it really made my day….LOL!  It was just too funny.

My roommate is dating a Chinese girl, so obviously when it comes to Chinese New Year, it becomes a huge deal for all of us.  Our lovely condominium has been turned into a Chinese temple.  I just could not help but to take a picture of it and posted it on my Facebook.  Sure enough, some people started commenting on it.  The conversation was just too funny not to be posted on my blog.

Click on the image to view the larger version.

That is “Happy New Year” in Mandarin in case if you do not understand it. I know I don’t. That is why I had to google it first.

So My roommate and I were in the middle of watching a movie (it was I Spit on Your Grave), when all of sudden his Chinese girlfriend came out to the living room and looked very upset.

He was like, what is wrong, sweetie?

She said, I do not want to watch this movie!

He said, owwkay…so what do you want to watch huh?  You want to watch a Chinese movie?  Okay let’s watch a Chinese movie..with subtitles, okay?  He proceeded to grab the remote, paused the movie, and switched the channel to the computer channel (we call it the computer channel because we have a computer hooked up to the TV and it is assigned to a specific TV channel. It allows us to watch any YouTube videos, Indonesian TV shows or some legally – I repeat, legally – downloaded movies on TV).

She’s like, no I do not want to watch any movies.  I want to watch Chinese shows.  It is Chinese New Year, okay!  I only want to watch it for an hour.  I always follow you, now it is your turn to follow me!

Believe it or not, my roommate just gave in and let her watch her Chinese TV show.  So basically, we went from watching a unbelievably hot girl running around the woods butt-naked while being chased by a group of rednecks..to watching some Chinese people doing some magic shows on TV, celebrating Chinese New Year.

Mean while, I was just sitting there and had no clue whatsoever how I should respond.

I guess that is what some people call…LOVE.  Xin Nian Kuai Le!

There is a reason why I always look forward to going to ZoukOut every year. To those who have never been to ZoukOut, I decided to put together a video showing pictures + videos that I managed to capture while I was there – in the midst of music blasting from huge-ass speakers everywhere, people screaming + singing + shouting in my ears at the same time, lots of sweaty butt-nekked people dancing, drunken teenagers bumping into me, etc. Yes, that is what ZoukOut is like…and yet, it was one helluva beach party. So much FUN!

However, if you have never been to ZoukOut and you have always wanted to go but somehow your dear husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is not really into “that-kind-of-music”, well this video is a good presentation of what you have been missing all this time. Some of you probably want to go there (even just for once) just so you can at least tell all your friends that you “have been there.” But others are probably not made for this – so if you are not up for it, do not even kid yourself about going there.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again…. ZoukOut 2011!

And here’s the line-up:

• Armin van Buuren
• Bob Sinclar
• Chuckie
• Avicii
• Roger Sanchez
• Karizma
• Scratch Perverts
• Ladytron
• Ming
• Eclipse
• DJB
• Hong
• Jeremy Boon
• Aldrin
• Ghetto
• Pfadfinderei VJS
• Donn
• VJ Nakaichi, VJ Numan & Lighting Aiba (Womb)
• Kiat
• Simon Dunmore & Shovell
• Masterpiece
• Gui Boratto
• Funk Bast*rd & Kaye (Cosa Nostra)

I guess it’s time to start practicing some of my signature moves, such as Spinning the Pot of Love, Hitting the Air Drums, Fax Machine, Water Sprinkler, Shopping at Giant, the Running Convict, etc.

Has anyone read Steve Job’s speech that he gave at Stanford in 2005 for the graduation commencement?  Nobody brought it up again until recently when he announced his retirement.  I found it really touching and motivational as well.  When I was reading it again last night, it really reminded me of where I was exactly today, 11 years ago…

11 years ago I was hired as a part-time intern for E-site Marketing, a small marketing company located in Bethesda, MD.  It was my first real job and if I could recall, I believe I was only paid for $7/hour.  At that time, I thought I hit a jackpot (I had become tired of working at restaurants and I told myself I needed a change in my life).  I was poor, extremely poor I might add.  I only had $300 in my savings account (which was my monthly average) and I had been moving from one place to another since I could not afford to rent an apartment (I believe one time I slept in someone’s living room for months since I could not afford to pay for a full-rent).  Even $6-sandwich for lunch seemed very expensive to me at that time.  My school’s vending machines and I had a very special relationship.  Since I could not afford to get a proper meal, I would get most of my meal from vending machines.  I was even able to tell what kind of food was available in which vending machines.  Sometimes two chocolate bars were enough to fill me up for lunch.  It took me a while to graduate from college, and after I graduated, I had accumulated $14,000 school debt (half of it from several credit cards with 25% interest rate).  Yes, studying abroad is not all romantic.  I am not a part of the lucky sperm club and my parents are not even a millionaire.  Everything that we have accomplished is the result of hard work and faith.

Moving forward now, 11 years later, I live in Singapore and still working for the same company that hired me 11 years ago.  The difference is that our small company is now part of Sabre Holdings, a $2-billion company.  My school debt has been fully paid off – I can actually brag about this since I paid this on my own, without anyone’s help (it took me 7-8 years to pay off everything).  I am currently working with the greatest team in Asia Pacific (as well as in the US) doing something that I really love, and have the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world (even though I haven’t set foot in Europe yet, but it will happen soon!).  I can now buy or eat anything I want/like without having to think twice about the price (unless if it’s a thousand dollar watch, then I will still have to think twice about it).  I also feel grateful that I have close relationships with both of our CEO and Vice President – something that only a very few people have in our company.

I do not have any regrets of anything that happened to me in the past.  Things happen for a reason, even when you meet someone, there’s a reason/purpose why your path crossed with his/hers.  Every person that you met serves a purpose in your life.  I never regretted the day when my mom called and told me their savings had dried up and could not pay for my tuition anymore.  I had to move out and lived in a neighborhood which was not quiet safe at that time.  I never regretted the day when I had to move in to someone’s basement and sometimes I would have to sleep with socks and sweater on since the heater would automatically shut off in the middle of the night during winter time.  I never regretted the day when I had to work two shifts at the restaurant and when I got home, I was so tired and felt so much pain in my back that I could not even study/do my assignments.  All of these had happened for a reason.  I do not think I would be here right now if any of these had not had happened.  Just as Steve Jobs said, It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.  Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don’t lose faith.

It is all about connecting the dots.  You can only connect the dots when you look backwards, not forward.

Having said that, I think it would be best to let you read his whole speech and hopefully, you can learn something from it.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.