07 JulOctopus was right!

Paul the octopus residing in Oberhausen, Germany has done it again – apparently predicting that Spain would win over Germany in the semi-finals of the World Cup! Okay, not that great because I’m actually in Germany right now.

Anyway, I’m neutral, I’m only rooting for Netherlands to win because I’m an Oranje-supporter! (And Jeroen is taking care of my mini friend)

12 JunAmsterdam update

I’m so tardy in updating about anything lately – I’ve been kind of busy – because I’m now based in Amsterdam! How cool can that get! :)

A little out of sync here but I always like photos in my post, so here is the growth and growth of mini b.

When I first got him he was a sweet, sweet friend…

A week later he was still sweet but he bit Jon, so I guess he was already ferocious inside.

For some reason, it seemed that he couldn’t stop eating, this is only one week later.

And this is one week after that, at the rate he’s going he’s going to kind of explode or something. :)

But he’s so cute!

Otherwise, I have made Amsterdam my new base station and I’ve changed my function (we’re encouraged to move within every couple of years to understand the entire business – I’m still in the same company – this company is a good one – especially when yours truly will now play a part in its future strategy). Funny enough, if there was one question I can remember during the interviews, it was the: What do you want to do in 5 years? I said: No idea. Later I was on the phone with my dad and I was like, maybe I’m like the only candidate who said, no idea, and everyone else said that they wanted to be a business leader, VP or something ambitious and I sort of like screwed up. I got offered the job anyway.

BTW, my new job is super cool, and the team is super smart and hardworking, even the CEO called us “bright MBAs”. :) :) :)

PS: I think you can’t have too much of a plan in life. Whatever comes, comes you know. You just find couple of things you love, couple of things you are fantastically great at, and then, stay happy and healthy, and well, party harder. ;)

10 MayLittle piggy land

Everyone seems to want to see piggy…

Isn’t he the sweetest!

10 MayEverything I learnt about business I learnt from Poker

That plug was by Tony Hsieh and he owns Zappos.. so..

This is a shameless plug for a friend who has written an excellent eBook called “Winning Tournament Poker” which teaches people how to win in tournament poker in just under five hours, and his site is here and his eBook is sold here.

Why Poker?

Well, I like poker for a variety of reasons, not just the extra cash and some people do agree with me, just read Zappo’s Tony Hsieh’s “Everything I know about business I learnt from Poker” and his thoughts about it. :)

09 MayEveryone, meet Piggy

Lately I’ve been incredibly busy, there are many changes in life which I might (or might not) blog about. To cut a long story short, life is short (as you know from my Christmas post), so… I am now the proud owner of a little pig. Piggy is one of the new additions in my life which I must introduce to all of you, and he looks like a sweet cartoon character. :) :)

03 MayThe conversation

Which one are you using?

14 ApriWhatever addict

Apple has sold 500,000 units of iPad on its first week, 150 billion dollars on its first day. Seth Godin kind of labelled it as the greatest launch ever. Me? I kind of agree with him, the iPad falls into that very blue-ocean of I think we don’t need one but we want to have one, we always knew we had to have one, category.

Someone would probably ask, what is the thing with Apple, and what’s next? I think the underlying thing with Apple is probably pushing it to the corporate and business world. Consumers are nice, but enterprise would also be a whole lot better.

11 AprLittle Holland

I went to little Holland in Den Haag few weeks ago, I thought it was so cool – because I was there more than twenty years ago!

Look how much I have grown since:

28 MarMy brother, the better chef than me

Over the last week, my brother came over – to help me set up my new house. Firstly, its crazy about how much putting things in the new house cost – not to mention all the shifting, fixing in the lights, etc. I’ve not even painted the place nor thought of what exactly to put in the rooms yet. And of course, my furniture is still not here, so I’m going to resolve to just buy IKEA furniture for the rest of my house.

I did however, managed to catch Alice in Wonderland 3D! I don’t like to spend too much at the cinemas, but since I’m on a Alice mode and even bought one really pretty time bunny Swarovski necklace I figured I must see the movie on the IMAX 3D theater. I thought it was awesome, even though the White Queen was kind of interesting – she kept making everything look so light and happy and it was deliberate.

And we went Amsterdam on the days I wasn’t working. I think he was happy walking around in Amsterdam and wondering why the red light district had women from “big mama house”, we also went through some of the usual Dutch foodies which I’ve encountered: Pancakes, Fries.. and pasta from Rick Steve’s guidebook. :)

09 MarMacHeist’s monkeyBundle

MacHeist has come with a new nanoBundle, which is absolutely unattractive with the exception of Tales of Monkey Island. Unfortunately, I played Monkey Island on the iPhone and was absolutely addicted to it until I finished. But I can’t fathom forking out money again for the game and having other apps which I’ll never use lying around…