Clarity through pictures

I am at work. Suppose to do coding, but fuck it.

I stumbled upon this blog post by MySuperKids.net and I find it very amusing the way the pictures were used to describe her life and I realized, why it is a bit hard for me to visualize what I want through words. The reason why I occasionally find coding so unexciting is because I need to see what I have created.

So, tadaaaaa using pictures, herein represents what kind of life I wish to achieve.

I hope to run a business that looks like either this:

or this:

Researching, developing, and manufacturing things like this:

and this:

Spending my time playing with this:

and at the same time being able to do this:

and this:

While at the same time being able to make enough this:

to be able to take my family to this:

and be able to give my kids this:

and pamper my wife with this:

and have dinner, watch TV, laze on my sofa, in this:

Simple as that. Only by doing so can I count myself as successful Hmm .. too greedy? Nah, I think is a reasonable goal to achieve.

Sometimes I still find myself asking whether it is wise for me to resign now, and not stay on until I collect 200 – 300k of startup capital. But, how long would that take? 3 years? 5 years? Staying in the telecommunications billing career and being out of the country means I will have zero opportunity and exposure to build technical / business experience and establishing network. After that how long more do I need to gain working / technical experience and build network ? Another 3 years? 5 years? So a total of 10 years until I can venture out, that time I will be what .. 36 ? By that time, would it really be possible for me to venture out? Or I would be tied down by housing loan and kids education savings?

So my strategy is simple. By quitting and returning to Msia, it may now take me longer time to reach a 200 – 300k capital, let’s say 10 years. But I will be building technical knowledge, cultivating my interest, building network, and at the same time building up savings in that 10 years AT THE SAME TIME.

And who knows, maybe with some network, some knowledge, and some capital, it would be enough for me to start out and the snowball will just keep rolling from there.

A colleague today asked me. “How come you suddenly will think of doing this? Inspired by who?”. Well, it is partly the inspiration from people like:
- Teddy Wong (founder of TEDCO, Rueben’s grand dad)
- Takahiro Ueno (Japanese drifter who built his own business T&E Car Make specializing in bodykits)
- Colin Chapman (racing driver + automotive engineer who eventually founded Lotus Engineering)
- Nandakumar (Lotus engineer, rally driver, and business owner now)

and mixing this with my du lan-ness over some of the random people whom I think I am a lot more qualified on paper yet they are living my life. People whom, over the years, I see them growing as a small-fry selling car accessories in forum, to owning a full fledged storefront at the Tuner’s Street in Sunway, driving kick-ass sports cars. Heck, even my own mechanic who works on my car, I see him being an employee in the workshop I used to go, to opening his own now in USJ that spans across 2 shop lots with Nissan Skyline and Silvia being his regular customers!!!

I was so full of resentment because I looked at them then I looked at myself and I asked : What the fuck is it that they have that I don’t have? Why the heck is it they are able to achieve it and I couldn’t?

You know what? I am not going to ask that question anymore, my journey now, is to ANSWER it.

~ by andyboey on November 6, 2009.