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Dengue fever should really be eradicated. I have such a hatred for that little effin’ mosquito especially since one bite snuffed out the life of a dear friend I knew since I was 13. Ian was in my same year in secondary school and we were in the same Scout group from 1994 through 2000. Subsequently, we co-founded a small business between 2003-2004.

Let this blog post, no matter how insignificant it might seem, be my little way of remembrance for a dear friend who taught me to live a life without fear of social expectations but one of following your internal passion.

Ian ditched his studies at Uni. of Washington in his sophomore freshman year to return to Singapore and startup. He was the person who inducted me into entrepreneurship when I could barely fathom what it really means other than a massive ego-trip of being your own boss. With 3 other friends, we ran a bricks-and-mortar business distributing outdoor retail goods imported from US and Europe. Ian’s passion for the outdoors was unparalleled by none other I knew. He was such an avid rock-climber despite the frailties of his physical body.

And how cruel it is to die this way. Ian survived the worst road accident, for more than a decade, in a remote part of Melbourne when a massive lumber truck crashed at full speed into their car on the highway. An accident that robbed him of another of our friends, Yaoping, weeks after we celebrated his 21st birthday and landed another friend, Kiat Han, in a coma for 3 months. Ian escaped with a spinal injury due to his being thrown out of the back seat. A fortuitous escape considering he did not wear his seat belt.

He next cheated death again when he survived a 6 metre fall during an indoor rock-climbing mishap and then one more time at the Dairy Farm natural rock climbing range in Bukit Timah - a 15-metre plunge which broke his leg after his cable snapped due to the brittle rock.

A man who could not be killed by extreme sports nor horror road accidents died due to a mosquito bite!?! Can life get more ironic that that? Whence the fairness in robbing the vigor and vitality of such a young man, i ask?

I only hope Ian’s final blow was inflicted fittingly in the outdoors. It would be due respect to him, if anything else. Despite his short life, he had left indelible impressions of his life philosophy on many of our friends. Many of us will remember how he challenged “mis-authority” with covert campaigns and audacious public acts during secondary school. As a college dropout and entrepreneur, he demonstrated a rare ability of daring to dream, venturing into the unknown as he pursued a career in the outdoor sports retail business — such an offbeat path in the concrete jungle of Singapore, albeit one he truly believed in. MORE crucially than any of the above was how his appetite for living was never diminished by all the brushes with death he had, setbacks which could only injure his physical shell but not dent the strong armor of his mind.

You taught me the courage to dream through your actions in life and I shall seek to repay you for the rest of mine.

For that, my dear friend Ian, go forth in peace. You will be sorely missed.

Rohit Bhargava put together a list of tips for soon-to-be graduates. For those of you who are graduating this summer like me, do go check it out. FOr those in Singapore, you had better read it because we are not getting the same quality of graduation speeches as long as the speechmaker continues to come from the public sector.

And I really like this comment by Mike King in the same post:

I would add 2 things: First, you may have no idea now what really fuels your fire. You should stay on the course you’re on long enough to show your talent and commitment, and to pick up some real world skills. If you discover another passion you’d rather pursue, go for it - just make sure you’ve put in at least a year at your first job. And don’t let someone else define you - people have a tendency to define you interms that are convenient for them. Know yourself and pursue your passions with vigor.
Second, build a network. Understand now that other people are as vital to your success as you are to theirs. Build relationships through authenticity, and always be ready to give first. Whether you believe in Karma or not, believe this; what goes around really does come around.

One regret I will have for my current Vietnam trip will be missing out on meeting Jeremiah Owyang of Podtech when he arrives in Singapore next week for the iX Conference. Jeremiah is one of my most respected figures in the social media space and notable for many insightful articles on his personal blog which will influence the direction of online marketing for years to come.

If you are interested in this space, sign up for the June 21st dinner here.

First popularized on Sex and The City, Frenemies (noun, pl): Friends, yet enemies (via Urban Dictionary)

(via)

Thats Steve “iPod” Jobs on the left and Bill Gates on the right. Dun you wish you could hear their conversation?

We have friends and then, enemies. Sometimes, it ain’t too good to listen to your friends all the time. You run the risk of what is commonly called the “echo chamber” syndrome, where positive, lyrical feedback lull you into warm and fuzzy complacency. We do need a social blanket to satisfy our own ego at times, for sure yeaaa, who doesn’t like being sung praises to all the time?

But you are not an Egyptian pharoah or Chinese Emperor so you must never forget to listen to that ranter at the fringe of your social comfort zone..  He/ she might have some good ol’ fashioned wake-up call to your stubborn and pig-headed ways. This applies to any social relationship and business too..

I was just reading Noah’s blog about his career path. Lets just say he’s working in smaller and smaller companies (Intel to Facebook to Mint) as he grows up (thot this sounded better than “ages”, Noah =)

I hate working in large companies and here’s my career path thus far:

Singapore Armed Forces: Biggest cluster-f”lower” organization you can ever work for in Singapore. Links you to almost every other friggin organization like Defence Science Technology Authority (DSTA or wateva), the Singapore Technologies (ST) group and all those little battalions.. The organization is about, say.. 10,000++ ?? I “worked” for 2.5 years, 1.5 years as a logistics officer. People always thinks its a crappy dark phase of their life but I actually learnt a lot about organizational culture and management when I was there. You simple have to when you work with so many different agencies and especially military drivers.

Motivation/ coercion takes on a whole new different meaning when you try to encourage someone to send 5 boxes into the jungle at 3am in the morning, or how about waking up to 35 missed calls by a senior commander between 2-4am in the morning. I always remind myself that the Israelis have it worse at dark periods of my life like that. Guess maybe thats why I stopped liking big organizations after 2002.

MOSS Equipment : Ahh.. Fond memories, my first startup with friends. 5 of us to be exact. Our biggest ever was 6 people, one hired hand. It sure felt good to do anything you want and smell that sweet air of liberty 1 year after leaving the thousand-member organization of the army. I enjoyed the independence of making decisions myself with no one being able to shove their own thoughts onto me. Did this for 15 months to leave for a new continent.

BitMicro: 50 employees I last counted. I went up the numbers game to a more hierarchical startup but in a different culture of Silicon Valley. It was much more cosmopolitan experience too, we had a Filipino management team, my entire department and my supervisor was Vietnamese and almost the entire company was Asian-American, save for 3 or 4 white guys and African-Americans. I quit after 6 months.

Alpha Innotech: Another startup in Silicon Valley. Again, small setup of about 50 people. My department was Iranian-American this time and I worked with a lot more white Americans. Being the only Chinese-speaking guy in my team, I worked with a lot more Chinese than ever in my life as I became the point man for a project with a Beijing-based company. Spent 13 months in this company.

Ahh, i count about 34 months worth of time spent in small organizations between 6-50 employees. My mentor thinks I should work in a big organization with a real brand name in order to make my resume look decent. His logic is that I can at least make my resume look like I fit within a big organization and be employable years down the road, should I fail in my startup. This beats having only small startups on my resume.

What would you do if you wear my shoes?

Woah, its been a long time since I blogged. Anyway, I met my ex-vice-dean (”ex-” because I graduated) yesterday in school and she asked me the question I always get these days.

Have you found a job yet?

Sometimes, this kind of questions irk me but I know she has good intentions. She thinks a graduate with no job 2 months after graduation is a cancerous anomaly in the booming economic climate of Singapore today (not counting the Shanghai-instigated stock market meltdown recently).

I laughed off her probing questions with my usual answer. I work for passion, not money nor social recognition of my self-worth. I also proceed to tell her stories of me rebuffing job offers, which is only met with expressions of horror and disbelief. Someone who understand me less will think I am arrogant (to actually reject employers, WTF does Bjorn think he is?). But I see it as a case of being fair to the employer. If I do not have passion for what you are hiring me to do, I shouldn’t do it.

So how do I survive?

I do freelance (but not free!) consulting projects. Currently, I have 2 open projects. One is an online marketing project to build and publicise a microsite with viral videos, podcasts and blog articles to engage with a young audience in the educational field. Another is a project to write business plans for an entrepreneur seeking funding in the healthcare recruitment sector. I might also have a new gig to consult in corporate blogging. At the same time, I network a lot through my role in Entrepreneur27 Singapore, meeting with professionals, entrepreneurs and students as I build a local Web 2.0 community for like-minded individuals to meet and share ideas.

Where am I headed with all these?

I want to work in the web industry, where changes are happening rapidly in media consumptions habits, marketing tactics and corporate-customer communication strategies. This is a pretty big space and that is where my values come in. I strongly believe in community-building; in being open, direct and frank in interactions with the masses of consumers who now have a voice on the internet and have no qualms about complimenting or complaining about a product or user experience exercising that right (pity our neighbor Malaysia is taking a step closer to the Stone Age by censuring [political] bloggers)

Few companies in Singapore, my home country, truly understand the value of reaching out to consumers over the web. This is where its disheartening and maybe one good reason why I can’t find a suitable job. There is no visionary mentor I would enjoy working with, someone who dares to take chances and bet with big stakes for an even bigger payoff. Most companies look at the young spending huge amounts of time on the internet and jump to conclusions they are either bootlegging illegal content through P2P downloads/ youtube or penning down thoughts into their “public diaries” or blogs. This is a common stereotype even for experienced professionals and one which requires much industry education to overcome. While the mass media’s hyper-ventilation over breathtaking buyout numbers of Youtube or Google’s revenue figures make some of these companies do a double take on such “new media”, it is not enough. My interactions with some entrepreneurs and businessmen still make me believe they only see the obvious “whats” of this “new media” phenomenon but not the “whys” of how this phenomenon gained such success. I don’t think anyone not understanding the “whys” of how Web 2.0 or user-generated media came about, will be successful in making money from this market.

A good rant while I am sick and stuck at home, missing out on a good party in Sentosa Cove with the E27 folks. Don’t mind me while I sneeze my way out of my drug-induced stupor..

I had to republish some of my posts recently due to a few lines. of malignant code from the Youtube embeds. Youtube videos still don’t go well with the Wordpress blogging platform. Do bear with me if you repeat duplicated feeds

To website visitors, the code screwed up my site layout for some days too while I troubleshooted it frantically. Thanks for the Buddha-esque patience, except for Jarrold who complained. =)

BusinessWeek calls the blogger the “Borat of Wall Street”. Exposing the idiosyncracies and incredulities of the lifestyle of smart Ivy-leaguers who spend the better half of their lives in front of computer screens. A mock cover letter to Goldman has these lines proclaiming the applicant’s skills:

“I have been practicing staring at a computer monitor for extended hours,” he wrote. “I can currently sit motionless in front of a screen for 28 hours, and I am improving daily.”

Check out the Leveraged Sell-Out blog. A blog for investment bankers who want a reality check.

This Wired Magazine article puts the case forward for Helium-3, an isotope that could have commercial applications in the energy industry. The mining of Helium-3, in abundance on the Moon but scarce on Earth, was on of the many objectives for the proposal of a permanent lunar colony. It was estimated that a space shuttle load of Helium-3 can power the United States for a full year.

Looks like the United States face competition too from other space-faring nations like Russia, China and India who are mulling more moon exploration missions too. Space Race II anyone? This race might prove to have more economic benefits than ideological ones.

The Major Reward: Leadership of the post-hydrocarbon industry 50 years from now..

Sean Parker’s resume has come through his founding or early management experience at startups like Napster, Plaxo and Facebook. He now takes the spotlight courtesy of his new position as VC at the Founders’ Fund, at the age of 27 years old (Source: VentureBeat).

This blog by Numair Faraz lauds Sean Parker as the new Jim Clark of our 2nd dotcom boom. Premature, I say, to slap that tag. Jim Clark created a lot of value from his creations such as Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon. Sean, on the other hand, Read the rest of this entry »