Lychees From Leechie: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I have read n re-read Steve Jobs' commencement speech to the graduating Stanford class of 2005 several times...pretty helpful esp when one is feeling lost or out of sorts...

Really got me thinking when a 15yr old boy told me tt ppl may look at his slacker attitude n lifestyle n think tt he's useless cos they r busy accomplishing stuff n making tons of $ although they r unhappy...but if the world were to end tmr, he'll still be happy...n these ppl would still be unhappy n miserable...
What is it that u want from ur life? We only live once ya o.O
but the same boy had to spoil it all by suggesting that a leechie should buy a iphone so that i can buy the angry birds iphone cover...damn lame =.=" n he tried to annoy me with this silly iapp which can copy n distort my voice into some cartoonish voice...epitome of lame -.-"

Tears rolled down my leechie face as i read the real-life story of how a hungry 9 year old Japanese boy who had lost his family in the recent earthquake/tsunami sacrificed food for others..."Because I see a lot more people hungrier than I am."...well, "A society that can produce a 9-year-old who understands the concept of sacrifice for the greater good must be a great society, a great people." n here in sg, i see ppl bitching n scheming n backstabbing...n we are talking abt grown-ups who are already donkeys years of age when u add up all their years of existence!!! this 9 yr old boy seemed sooooo much noble when compared to these highly educated "ppl"! they r soooooo damn political that it's such a waste of their talents not to be in politics! =.=" i'm really touched by this 9 year old boy's sacrifice...he made me feel so insignificant...n made my misery seemed so insignificant! i believe in retribution...i believe that these devious ppl will get their well-deserved retributions one fine day! i'm sorry...but leechie is feeling emo n miserable these days >.<" i've been brought up not to cry...but i'm only human...sorry that i juz cant control my emotions now...

“I learned the hard way that I cannot always count on others to respect my feelings, even if I respect theirs. Being a good person doesn’t guarantee that others will be good people, too. You only have control over yourself and how you choose to be as a person. As for others, you can only choose to accept them or walk away.”

"Why does it sometimes take a disaster for us to see the goodness in people? We have much to learn from the Japanese. True charisma comes from thinking more about others than ourselves. True charisma = being generous. When was the last time you gave unconditionally to someone?" ~ Eric

"Being happy doesn't mean to be perfect. It means having to see beyond the imperfections."

As shared my leechie idol, ms. Elim Chew:
"If u r honest and frank, people may cheat u, be honest and frank anyway, if u r kind, people may accuse u of selfish, ulterior motives, be kind anyway, if u spend years building, someone could destroy overnight, build anyway, the good u do today, people will often forget tomoro, do good anyway. give the world the best u have, and it may never be enough, give the world the best you've got anyway. you see, in the final analysis , it is between you and and your GOD, it was never between you and them anyway :)" ~ Mother Teresa

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." ~ Harriet B

"Successful People Have Fear

Successful people have doubts and successful people worry. The only difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is that successful people act regardless of the fear. Even those who don’t have integrity or brains but who act anyway are going to find more success than geniuses with integrity who keep it to themselves because they’re too afraid to put themselves out there." ~ Harv

Another quote from Harv:
"We all need to thank our lucky stars for mountains that seem to be in our way. Why, because I’m a glutton for punishment? No, because personally it was the only way for me to find out for myself one of the most important ideas most millionaires share in common — you have to be bigger than any problem you can ever face."

Love this quote from Robert Kiyosaki...juz imagine yourself saying this when ppl ask u why ;p
"Don’t live below your means or forgo your dreams. I’m Japanese, but I don’t look good in a Toyota"
Btw, here's a pic of leechie with Robert Kiyosaki taken a couple of years ago at his seminar here...i'm abit hesitant to put this pic up cos i think i look v.yucky in this pic! >.<" i guess after seeing this pic u will understand why ppl keep commenting that i look different now o.O
Btw, i felt really honored when Robert asked for my name then ;p

"The one spirit that pervades everything in the universe is your own self." ~ Jeff

This aint a political blog...but i came to know that some cabin crew is harbouring thoughts of running for Parliament...sorry but i gotta say tt a leechie was damn damn amused when i saw her postings...well, that certainly made my nite after a tiring week manz...lol...i simply lurve Michael's response to her postings...lol ;p
"Is shocked that a SQ girl with nothing to show for except a great smile and highly energetic thinks it's unprecedented if she is voted into parliament! I think it would be a DISASTER! What is she gonna be? NMP for Changi Airport?!
Btw, if she hails from a reputable JC and University, what is she doing flying for SQ? She should be flying SQ instead! Well, some SQ cabin crews can get quite air headed or perhaps their brain work better at 30,000ft. You should see her post and the comments! It's a classic example of 'living one's dream through others'! I'm very sure it's another classic example of a lack of attention cabin crew blogging. Amazing the support she have! Errr.....you need a major portfolio to run for president. And I don't think they'll make a cabin crew a president. Otherwise whenever she sees a light come on during national day parade, she might just come up to you and ask, "what would you like to drink"?! It'll be a security nightmare!!" ~ Michael
One can almost always expect interesting views from him! Michael Rockz!!! ;p

Netizens were discussing abt a certain miss Tin's cutie pose with a certain kate spade box...the influence of facebook...v.viral ;p when i commented that i should practise my cutie pose with a kate spade box too, harn said that leechie gotta be more atas n pose with a Louis Vuitton box instead ;p amused with harn's suggestion that leechie shld consider running for some position too since a leechie is better qualified...v.amused...lol ;p oh...n perhaps i would need to close down my leechie blog n remove my bitchy n opinionated comments too if i were to do so ya ;p
Michael's response: "Forget the LV! That's so pedestrian! I say go with the Kate Spade or Hermes.
And forget about politics."

Love this quote from Holman ;p
"For a moment, I actually considered changing the world by running for political office, but then I remembered I have a Facebook page."

Michael's joke on a certain miss boomz-to-shingz:
"Once upon a time, Miss Boomz was to be interviewed by a journalist for an article in Sunday Times. So on the day of the interview, Miss Boomz was late for hours. So journalist called Miss Boomz,
Journalist - "Miss Boomz, where are you? It's Saturday and you're late for your interview"
Miss Boomz - "Oh! You mean the interview is today? I thought since it's for Sunday Times, the interview would be on Sunday"! "

"Talking to media is just like in a minefield, you tend to step in the area you have stepped before because that is the only place you know that are mines free." ~ KH Law
perhaps this could be one of the reasons why some guys see the media in a less than positive light? o.O"

"When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered." ~ Carlos Slim Helu
Mr. Slim Rockz!!!

"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." ~ Steve Jobs.

‎"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows."
Everyone's final destination in life is death...what's more important is the journey there o.O

‎"I don't do it for money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks." ~ Donald J. Trump

Cool quote from my cousin:
"You know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through"

Another cool quote from JS:
"The Power You have for Your Life comes from Your Authenticity."
i'm a leechie...no less ;p

Love this quote from Joey Yap:
"Memories don't find us - We find them. If we wanted, we can be intentional when it comes to memories. We can MAKE them. Best to begin today:-)"

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This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

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.
or
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, its 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 its 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.