Art is a Way Project

A friend of mine challenged me to participate in a 30 day creative challenge. We have to commit to creating some kind of art and present it at the end of the month. My project has been to complete the first chapter of my next sci-fi novella, and so far I'm very excited about it.

Here is a snippet of the first draft:

"Waking up in an alley is pretty poetic. Or pathetic. Alleys have seen so much, from teenagers searching for a high to ashamed men, limping back to their lives.

Alleys should be explored alone. The fading smell of gasoline only appeals to a few, but it's hard for someone who appreciates it to relate to someone who doesn't. Granted, hardly anyone would be able to withstand the wafting fragrance of old vomit and alcohol.

This particular alley was hosting a man without a shirt, lying face down in what seemed to be a mixture of drool, blood, and vomit. It was a rather normal sight for this alley. Soon, he should wake up and walk away, possibly to return the next day. But that is not what Ethan did."

Coffee and words

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, working on a potential new novel about a dystopian 3-d printed society. Will see how it goes, but I'm enjoying doing something creative and productive with my time. I am not a fan of unemployment!

Changes!

It has been ages since my last post and man, has it been a ride. In these past few months, I moved up to Seattle to work on a project for AT&T (hackathons), settled down here, finished my work with them, and have started searching for a new position.

So far, Seattle has been amazing. I've been really luck to have met a ton of amazing people and have learned a lot over the past few months. There is so much talent and intelligence in the world- it makes me believe in a great future. Seattle itself is filled with such talent - music, technology, biotech, art, and the list goes on! The rain and greenery is beautiful, and the days with sunlight are just as exciting. Coming from a drought-time state, this rain has been breathtaking. The people here, despite the so-called "Seattle-freeze", have been extremely accommodating and friendly. I'm definitely starting to get a grasp of the scene here and am hoping to get more involved in the community. I've looked up several interesting tech meet-up groups and am also looking to join a martial arts gym! There is definitely a lot ahead!

This has possibly been the longest year of my life, and it has been the most challenging and rewarding thus far. I'm really looking forward to what the new year has in store for me!

"Humans Need Not Apply"

Everyone keeps saying that there will be more jobs created and that it'll be enough but I've never believed that. There is no way. There are too many people and their jobs are all replaceable. Any new jobs that are created will never be able to account for all the unemployed. And if robots can replace all these jobs, who's to say they can't replace those? This goes with that story we're writing. People are going to become aimless and confused. They're going to have everything and not know what to do with it.

PS AI is great!

A new challenge.

I've entered a new chapter of my life. I made the decision to move on from Coding House - a company I spent endless hours with. I loved the company and the people - it was just time for something new. A new challenge.

I've been searching for new opportunities, fixing up my resume - it's a bit daunting. In the mean time, I'm teaching music again, which will be a lot of fun. I'm also working with Lyft and driving people around. It definitely going to be an interesting phase in my life. I haven't been without a job for a long time.

I'm taking this time to learn some coding as well. I used to do a bit in the past, but forgot most of it. I'll be working on my own website, using basic HTML and CSS. Keep an eye out: uditaplaha.com

Here's to new challenges!

GoDaddy support is terrible.

I've been trying to get a hold of them for an hour, to fix the setup of our emails. Nothing.

We're in a competition and time is so valuable. I don't understand why they're system isn't intuitive and there are too many places to do the same thing.

>:[

The EIA to this date.

What a ride.

It's been several days since I last wrote, mainly because by the time I get back, I pass out. 

The first week was all about ideation and user validation. We decided to change the name from The Box to ExplorIt, which I much rather prefer.. We thought we were falling behind, but it turns out that we've caught up now. We're working on customer development, business models, prototyping, and much more this week. It's past 1 am here and I'm still up working on customer development. My team is doing great - we have to go live by the end of the week and everyone is working extremely hard to make things happen.



It's also extremely hot and humid here, so I can't fall asleep. It's been such an exhausting week and the public transportation hasn't been the best. Twice I've had buses drop me off at the wrong University. The first time, I had to walk 5 km in heels, uphill, to the dorms. The second time, I was just carrying my laptop bag and thankfully wearing flats, and only had to walk about 2.5 km. And the SMOKING. Way too much here. I've gotten a little to used to how much people smoke - kind of worrying.

Despite the craziness, it's been an amazing trip so far. I got really lucky to have a teammate with a car, so we do get to go travel all over. We went to Nice for Bastille day on Monday, which was amazing. We walked around the city, went shopping, went to the beaches - just had a great time! The beaches in Nice were quite rocky, so we also ended up in Antibes, to find some sand! We came back just in time to watch the game, creatively projected on the side of a table, while all us students gathered around it outside our dorms, in the woods. 1-0! Such a close game!

Here's to another great week!

Day 2 at the EIA - Team Formation

That game last night was insane! I was in a bar in Antibes called The Blue Lady, with most of my newly formed team, where we saw Simon Baker (from the Mentalist). A yacht boy bought us all shots in celebration of the crazy score. The best part was definitely being there with my team. 

We did a lot of team formation exercises yesterday in attempts to build a team. We created many ideas and pitched them for each other, hoping to create a stellar team. It went back and forth a lot as team members went in and out. 

Finally, my team came together and I couldn't have been more satisfied. Everyone is very smart and all excited to work together and make things happen, including myself. 


Here's to the start of day 3!

First day at the EIA

Yesterday was the first day at EIA and man, was it a wild one.

The program itself was fine. We started out the day in the University of Nice in Sophia Antipolis with an Art Hackathon. We created a painting, which we are going to have to peddle in Nice to raise some funds for our companies. The team that raises the most money will get a helicopter ride to Monaco! We listened to a bunch of speakers, including Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio (Angry Birds). We also built Lego cars and helicopters as a team building exercise. We got to meet a bunch of people, but nowhere close to how many I want to meet. Everyone seems really interesting and passionate - I love people like that. I really want to start building my team and start to work on our projects!

The day went wild after we went the wrong direction on the bus. We ended up in Antibes, quite the opposite direction from the dorms in Valbonne. Then it started to POUR and I was in a thin, flowy dress. We waited in the rain for the next bus, which took us to a town near the dorms. We then had to walk 20 minutes in the rain, carrying groceries, all the way back up to the dorms. It was definitely an adventure, and I got to become friends with some cool guys from London and Norway.

We all unwound later and played some games in the common room downstairs in the dorms. We got to know each other a little - although I'm not so sure they've gotten to know me quite yet. I tend to observe at first. There are people from all over the world, which I found really cool.

I'm writing this while eating Doritos, since there is no real breakfast here (I didn't feel like walking down to the main hall for hot chocolate today). Send me food please! #nomnom

Definitely looking forward to today, when we get to form our teams - wish me luck!

Flying to France today.

I just finished packing all my bags to fly across the world to Nice, France, for a start-up competition called the European Innovation Academy.

We have to create a company in three weeks! I will be pushing an idea I had a couple years ago called The Box: a personalized Yelp/EventBrite for adventures. The name is derived from Pandora's Box, a box full of mystery and wonder.

I will be traveling around France, as well as taking a trip to London, all within the next month. I'm very excited and looking forward to meeting the 300+ people participating in this program!

Keep an eye out on here for updates on my adventures in Europe - à bientôt!

How much is your time worth?

"Think of your time as worth $300+ dollars an hour."

That is something my mentor and boss reminds me of all the time and I find this to be the best way to place value on the things that fill my life.

From work to having a social life, what you do matters. It matters to you, and others can only place value on your time accordingly, so value your time. The people that surround you take up your time an energy. A text message that takes one minute to write is worth $5. Is that message worth it?

What about a task assigned to you at work? Is that task worth $300?

It's only natural to now add that tasks and people are also more than just that moment. Everything you do and everyone you meet has more value to it than meets the eye. There is also the other side of that, where those tasks and those people are not worth as much as you think. Be very careful when judging someone or something's real value. They could turn out to waste your time.

So how much is your time worth to you?



PS Remember to value other people's time accordingly as well. Are you asking for a favor? Is it worth their time? 

Finding Talent - Should you settle?

Finding talent is always difficult, but at what point do you lower your standards and decide that this person will have to do for now? That sounds a bit grim, but it seems to be the reality of the situation. Do you lower your standards or not? It's like my boss and mentor says, hiring is like dating. You have to test each other out first to see if you're the right fit, and if not, you move on. But even in dating, the longer you wait to find that right fit, the lower your standards become.

I believe in people. I want to give everyone a chance and if I could, I would. We have been searching for interns (we say interns, but really just looking for trainable people), and can't seem to find hungry, capable, young talent.

How do you solve this problem? Would you settle?

What do you want to do with your life?

Many people have asked me, “What do you want to do with your life?” I usually just list of whatever I have planned as a career or answer, “I don’t know yet.” But I do know, and my career is not what I want to do with my life--it’s how I plan on doing it. The other day, someone asked me this question and I decided to actually answer. I want to inspire.

I want to inspire people be better, stronger, alive, and awake. I want people to want more, fight for more, and live more. I want to inspire people to be happy, sad, confused, thrilled, upset, and renewed. I want people to marvel at everything and to feel like what they do matters. I want people to stop wondering if life is meaningless and act like it’s not. Because why not? I want to inspire people to read, run, play, hike, swim, dance, feel. People need to feel. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s always been easy for me to do all these things. To believe in a good life is one of the hardest things in the world. But it can also be one of the simplest. You’ll find that once you start believing, things will start to fall into place. Whatever misfortune or heartbreak chooses to cross your path, if you believe life has more to give, the more you can take.

I want people to take more from life, not other people. I want people to believe in their own strength and to love what they do and do what they love. There are plenty of other people in the world to do what you don’t want to do. And then I want people to go out and infect other people. Have a conversation with someone who is tired of living life and help them understand how important it is to be passionate about something, anything.

Someone once paraphrased Gandhi and said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But I can’t just be this change, I have to share it. People have become so apathetic that they have stopped looking around them. I want to compel people to see. This is why I do everything that I do. It’s why I over-stuff my schedule and work a little too hard. It’s why I teach music and choose to learn and play music. It’s why I write. It’s why my first business is based on community development. It’s why I’d rather be a part of ten different things over one stagnant thing. It’s why I smile when I’m upset. It’s why I drag my friends out of bed to go to Santa Cruz for a day.

I don’t know if this answer satisfies all the parents of the world that want to hear about a stable job and a predictable life. It probably won’t. But if you want to know what I want, this is it. I want to inspire people to live. 

In and Out of the Box- Commentary on Creativity in Society

Every decision–every thought–that we make brands us as innovative or conventional. Take, for example, a story of two frogs. Two frogs jumped into an urn filled with fresh cream and could not find a way to jump back out. One of them finds a small crevice on which they can hang on to. The other is left without the handhold, and is not sure which way to go. The frog mulls over its options and decides to swim, realizing that if it could churn the cream, the cream would solidify and it would be able to jump out. After the frog spent a considerable amount of time churning the cream, a chunk of butter formed. In a flash, the frog waiting on the side jumped on the patch of butter and jumped out of the urn. The patch of butter broke as the frog leaped, and the remaining frog had to start all over.

Consider this story a metaphor for two people, one innovative and the other conventional. Which frog would you choose as the innovative one? And as the conventional one? I conducted a small scale survey (using people from different aspects of life) and the result was unanimous. I presented the story in two parts. After reading the un-italicized part, they all immediately identified the innovative frog as the one churning the cream. After reading the second part, there was some hesitation but none of the answers changed. Everyone claimed the frog that was churning is the innovative one and the one hanging on is the conventional one. Just as I predicted, the respondents who faltered after reading the second part of the story were the ones who are more creatively-inclined. That is because their answer developed through a sub-conscious pre-disposition.

The answer that this question generated was an idealistic answer. Most people, myself included, romanticize creativity. We draw up elaborate veils to mask the true identity of creativity. The truth is that creativity is just another word for manipulation. In business, marketing teams strategize how best to manipulate their audience. Writers manipulate words to form different connotations, sometimes multiple connotations, of an idea. Artists manipulate colors and light to achieve original descriptions of similar ideologies. Why is such a veil cast over something so aggressive?

The vast majority of the world strives to “think outside of the box.” This is simply an internal Darwinistic mechanism. Or should I breach the matter of Capitalism? It is our greed to survive, but to survive better than anyone else, which allows us to mask the hostile nature of creativity. CEO’s, movie stars, and Nobel Prize recipients all have one thing in common: their ability to manipulate their surroundings for their benefit. So why have we let this slide for so long? The reason lies within Utilitarianism; “the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its usefulness in maximizing utility and minimizing negative utility.” (Wikipedia definition) In other words, creativity is simply better for society as a whole, and for the happiness of the individual.

The important thing to take from this is the fact that it is the conventional people who build our society. They are absolutely necessary, otherwise society would collapse. Conventional people are not completely void of ideas, but they are limited to their scientific/tangible proof. Innovative people live for the unknown. But it is because of the conventional people that the innovative people have a footing to take off into the unknown. Without the conventional people, there would be no butter and we would all be barely hanging on. So is the innovative frog the one who churns the cream, or the one who jumps out with the help of its urn-mate?

Itsy Bitsy - Reflection on Modesty

Please watch this first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVHRJbgLz8


I would just like to take a second to applaud Jessica Rey. The topic of women's modesty is a touchy one, and has troubled many. I normally would have watched the video, shared it with a select few, and moved on. However, I found some of the comments in the video to be ignorant and rather disturbing, and wanted to pen down some thoughts.

We would never wear a bikini to a formal function, so why should we wear one to the beach? To tan? If mobility is an issue and you don't want to get held back by fabric, why not wear a wet suit?

The crux of this issue comes down to power and nature. There are many arguments in favor of exposing skin. The number one reason for exposing skin, that I have found, is that exposing skin supposedly gives women power over men. Women's subconscious mentality is of "you can see but can't touch", which supposed to give women a sense of power over men (when they say no). However, the truth is that in men's minds, this is the exact opposite. If women expose themselves, men's instinct is that the women is an automatic "yes". When women say no to this, they feel better about themselves. The process behind that is so disconcerting. Do women have such low self-confidence that they feel that the only way to make a statement and be powerful is to expose their body?

I really do believe that by exposing their bodies, women limit their own rights. Specifically, their right to say no.

This image says it all:




Of course, these are two extreme cases. I'm not in favor of either. But a middle ground, where women still look like women, is definitely the way to go in my opinion.


I look forward to hearing your opinions on the matter. Why do women wear bikinis? Please do watch Jessica Rey's talk.

Passion does not equal CEO?

My whole perspective on loving your job took a 360 degree spin after listening to an interview today. I was riding the shuttle to the parking lot from SJSU, not really paying attention to what was going on around me. And then, a sentence, spoken by an unknown man on the radio, struck me. (I suppose I had been listening subconsciously.) He said that passionate people do not make good business people.

Passionate people do not make good business people.

In that one sentence, he threw my whole concept of success out the window. I've always felt that you must find work doing something you love. And I applied that concept to the creation of businesses. However, this unknown man pointed out that working on something you love, does not mean being successful in the venture. To become successful, it is important to know the business side of things-the spreadsheets, networking, and people management.

Loving what you do can be a good thing, but it can also be bad, as you can end up closing your mind to other business opportunities. You would also tend to try to get investors and the like to fall in love with your product, rather than get them to see the financial benefits. And as cold as that might sound, people want to see the numbers!

He also said that personal energy was really a driving force for the success of many business folk. CEO's have a charming charismatic personality and enjoy their work. But passion is a far stretch.

It was then that the RJ announced the speaker's name: Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and the author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the story of my life.

I do think that it's important to enjoy what you do, and love it, but now I realize we must also be careful to not be over-passionate, and maintain a sense of reality.

Advice from Will Smith

Worth the read.


“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guys’ eating, I’m working.

There’s no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you’re not skilled. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you’ll never be able to communicate with people - with your artistry - the way that you want….

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. You might have more talent than me; you might be smarter than me. But if we get on a treadmill together, there’s two things: you’re getting off first, or I’m gonna die.
It’s really that simple."

- Will Smith

Endless Opportunities

There is an opportunity for everything and anything you can think of. It amazes me how many opportunities are out there. If you're passionate enough about something, you can make it happen, no matter what it is. A new business concept, at least one that is new to me, is cheese sculpting. You can see what I'm talking about here.

A cheese sculpture by Sarah Kaufmann

Who ever thought that cheese sculpting could earn you enough to live comfortably? Another unique career is YouTube. People post videos on the site of anything they can imagine, and profit from the views! Some videos are really helpful, like those of Khan Academy.

If these people can find what they are truly passionate about, what's holding most of us back? I say we find our own version of a cheese sculpture and just go for it!

Gary Vaynerchuk talked more about becoming successful by doing something that you're passionate about. Give this a listen!