I’ve been speaking to a lot of entrepreneurs lately and it’s really exciting to hear all the fun, interesting, and innovative ideas they have! Most are still in early development, so I can’t share what they are, but I would like to say that there’s a certain theme running through it all – a need to make things better. Everyone’s focus is in their own area of expertise and passion, which makes for a lot of promising businesses to come! I think the great thing about startups is the drive that people have. You can’t survive without a deep level of commitment to the purpose of the company/organization, unlike in large and established corporations, where you can get away with a lack of interest in what the mission actually is.
For me, it’s motivating to see all the hard workers out there making their dreams come true. I’ve got a lot that I’d like to make a reality within the next decade and I’m going to start on at least one of them by the time I’m 30. That’s a promise to myself, and something to make myself accountable for. One piece of advice I got was to set real, concrete deadlines and that’s exactly what I’m working on. Too often I like to leave a way out by saying, “sometime around” or “in the next 5-10 years,” giving myself enough leeway to perhaps not quite make it happen. So I’m going to change my mentality and decide that I am and I will. No more of that I hope and I want business. It’s going to be how I choose to make it to be.
At times I was doubtful that I had an entrepreneurial enough spirit to be an entrepreneur, but now that I see those out there, I’ve got no doubt in my mind that I have the passion, drive, creativity, and intelligence to do so. The important thing is setting my mind to it and then going full force. That’s not a problem for me – I decided I wanted to start my own business when I was in middle school and that desire has yet to change. I’ve definitely gotten bitten by the entrepreneurial, if there is such a thing, and I’m excited to develop my plans over the years as I ready myself professionally and personally to handle the tasks I’ll need to for my aspirations to become real.
It’s been consuming my thoughts!
Let’s take sharing pictures, for example. There’s Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and many more that focus more on printing photos. Facebook is useful because you can tag your friends and use the existing social network to share your photos. Flickr is good to share your stuff with the world and make your pictures show up on image searches. Picasa has a fun face recognition algorithm that allows you to have people pre-tagged whenever you upload new pictures. Those people are also linked to your Google contacts, so if you already use one of the other Google services (Gmail, Voice, Wave), you can use existing contacts to tag, much like Facebook. So when you want to share pictures, where do you go?!
Finally, Baseloop caters to both events for your friends and more public events. What I like best about them is they allow you to suggest things to do and they show you a public calendar of events going on in your area. That way, if you’ve wanted to do something but could never seem to find the people to do it with, you can put it out there for all your friends (and even random people) to see. Much easier than e-mailing or messaging all my friends just to see if they’re interested in a particular activity. You can also quickly see what things there might be to do on a Saturday night when you’re bored and want to go have some fun. But of course, few people are on it now, so when I invite friends, they’d need to set up an account. So which of these is best for event-planning?
When I first arrived at the Mid-Levels Escalators, it was around 9 PM and things were pretty quiet. I began my journey upwards and started to count how many stretches of escalator I got on. Along the way, I passed by restaurants, bars, pubs, massage parlors, beauty salons, random shops, and lots of homes. After about 13-15 escalators, things really quieted down and became very residential. Stubbornly, I continued on, even though it was dark and there were hardly any people around. I wanted to make it to the end of strip! After much dedication, I eventually made it (and lost count along the way). I believe I totaled 18 or 19 escalators of varying lengths.
Ear candling is this crazy thing where they take a special cloth tube thing and stick one end in your ear canal while lighting the other end on fire. It burns gently and because of the air being sucked away at the top of the tube, your earwax is drawn up into the tube. I heard a gentle crackling noise the entire time it was burning away and though I felt more refreshed and noises seemed crisper after that, I don’t know if that was just a psychological effect. The result is this honeycomb-looking thing that is the earwax that was drawn from your ear canal! I found it to be a surprisingly soothing experience and you could tell from what was taken out which ear was more clogged up. Nifty!
