That is the current motto that I live by. I don’t try to apologize for what I say or do, I don’t take time to think about a person’s possible negative reaction to possible implied meaning that I didn’t think about.

I noticed that I go through cycles of over thinking and over doing where I touch both extremes before pulling back. Usually as a result of too much negative response from people I interact with. With time, I started calibrating the type of extremes to the type of person I am interacting with.

Thinker

When I am in the thinking extreme, I write a lot, I am also quieter than usual as I turn everything in my mind 3 times to tune it to the new personality trait I am aiming for. I read, I look for things that attracts me and analyze why they attract me. I absorb whatever comes my way and try to interact with people to find out their opinions/reactions.

Achiever

After times of thinking, comes the doing phase. I take care to completely cut myself off from influences during the thinking phase, subconsciously due to a genetic trait that makes me easily addicted to anything. I detach myself so I can create my own style, because I realize that only after finding my own equilibrium and my own way can I grow the confidence that my decision will eventually work out. I also need this so I am not forced with the dilemna of having to choose whether or not some idea is right or wrong.

Fluid self

The basis of human nature is such that whenever an opinion is presented, the self generate a very strong sense of agreement and disagreement. It strip away the choice to observe and then decide which way is best suited for your own person. This process is usually done for the other person’s benefit. So that they can have a clear mental image of who you are. The truth of who I am or who you are is fluid.

From time to time, I meet up with people I know from my past and always, I try to uphold the person that I am today, instead of the person ingrained in their memory. So far, the interaction have always fallen back to the old ways. Perhaps because my newer self is always weaker or perhaps because to communicate with that person, I have to fall back to my former self that is already molded to their liking in their memory. This is why, I always dress up during my first encounter with strangers. It is better to be known latter in a football game as dressing comfortably in a t-shirt than to be seen as in my usual attire in my Ts.

On the subjecting of pursuing your passion

The latest personality battleground for me has been the matter of a pursuit in my passion. I have been discussing this with several people who are both in pursuit or have given up their passion. I will leave this to my next post since I have ran out of motivation for writing. The zone has dissappeared, but it will make for an interesting discussion.

Update on life

Social life is picking up quite a bit this year to a point where I have to constantly decide whether to go to an event or stay home to finish up a project. I usually prefer the weekend for social events, but they have recently spilled over to weekdays. This type of life is something I used to dream about having, but once I get to the point, I immediately realize that it is nothing to gloat about. I am an introvert, this type of things requires effort, but I am willing to work on this bug in my personality.

I had the opportunity to meet up with Kush in a get together recently as he visits Montreal for a short period. It is always a pleasure interacting with his group of people whom I’d otherwise not had a chance to meet in real life. The sheer diversity of their skills and the success that each person have is an inspiration in itself. It is exactly the reminder I need to keep myself going. I have yet to figure out my place in his group of friends, but hopefully it will be something along the line of investment as I chase after my passion. Once I crossed the 5 year mark of experience and after having survived this greater depression, I will have the confidence to say that I have the skills.

I have a new roomate now. After only 2 days of posting my add and several inquiries later, I’ve chosen Mayira as my roomate. She is from Venezuela and is a translator. I liked her stability in her job as well as her perspective that is surely to be different from mine. Some people ask how I can trust a stranger like that to which I replied:” I don’t, but I have absolute confidence in my ability to judge a person.” It doesn’t mean that I will be stupid though. If engineering taught me anything, is to have redundancies in any checks.

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Our relationship is getting better now, but from time to time, he still lapse back into his old ways and use that disapproving yet condescending tone on me over the phone. It’d always leave a bad taste on my mouth when I hang up feeling angry of the intrusion. The disrespect on my judgment and most importantly, the lack of support for a decision that I arrived at. It also explains why there’s such a big cultural difference between the races.

It wasn’t until I left home and started dating people from other culture did I understand that there is another type of parental love. Families where parents actually cared and asks about what the children wants instead of having an imaginary “future” shoved down the kids’s throat. I envy most of you and am appalled when I learned about how teenagers lash back. Too much of what dad cared about is saving face. To have an outstanding kid is the reason why Asian parents constantly pressure their kids to fit that image of a professional money making machine. It is shameful when your kids turn out bad and they seem to lose their standing within the family structure if they do.

Often, I’d try to bring up certain interesting people I meet and my dad would harrumph as usual before dismissing those people as the garbage of society or certain hobbies as a waste of time… but really, what on earth isn’t a waste of time in the end? There is no curiosity, no sense of exploration. Just the usual: “You better not do that, because I’ll look down on you.” Till this day, it still have limited effect on me for a short period of time. I’d just end up doing whatever he disapprove of anyway, but because I have to struggle against this long established habit, it leaves me more vulnerable compared to people who never had to.

I hated him when he opposed my first passion in dancing, threatening to cut all financial help for school. I showed him my way by working part time and paying my own bills until I started flunking classes due to lack of sleep and time. He cared more about my education than I did, which was the only reason I won the fight between us. That is probably when I realized that what he wanted me to grow up to be, is very boring. Was he jealous that I did what I wanted without constrain because he couldn’t do it when he was young? Was I threatening his illusion of absolute authority and control that he felt he needed to reassert his position? At one point in time, I realized that I have surpassed him in terms of the evolution of my spirit. Asians, I find, don’t spend much time on improving their spirituality.

Amongst the numerous negative traits passed down to me from our relationship, condescension is the one I am having the most trouble getting rid of. It’s something that I have to struggle in order to hold back. The control slips from time to time when I wasn’t checking and is especially obvious when I drink too much coffee.

Dad has probably realized some of what I wrote also. He is a more humble person now, perhaps through realizing his own mortality, he’s able to see what I see. I forgive him for what he did, but it still hurts. I only wish that I turned back in time so I can still change while I am not too set in my ways yet. I hope in doing so, dad can learn and transcend his own faults through watching me.

For the longest time I’ve asked myself: “Where is home?” And for about two third of my life I answered: “I don’t know.” It used to be a clear cut answer when I was small. When I only had one citizenship and lived in the same house in the same city for 10 years. My home town was Taipei and my home was a house there. My home country was Taiwan.

Where the line blurred

Then, things got blurry as I added citizenship after citizenship and moved around the world a bit. Moving between cities is a common event, provinces about once every 4 years. Countries… around once per decade. So you see my dilemma when I ask myself, where is home? I can’t really say that it’s the place that I stayed at the longest, not the country I was born in nor any description with “most” in anything.

My condo

Buying this condo, was an attempt at growing roots and to have something to call home, because I desperately wanted a sense of belonging. I don’t want to admit to myself that I only truly feel I belong when I am on the road, in stranger’s company. Perhaps, I prefer to be on the move because I liked the niceties of a newly formed relationship but dreaded the strain of hurting old friendships.  After all, strangers are nice to strangers and if they don’t like you, it doesn’t hurt as much because they don’t know you. I was afraid that I’d have to face the reality that I am not really good at making long term friends if I settled down. Or perhaps I find the same wanderlust in the heart’s of people who are on the road. A sense of carefree attitude that is unbounded by anything. We go where we want to and when we want to without following anyone else’s orders. Everyone is in a sense, the boss of their own lives. While in contrast, I have more bosses that have a say in what I do when I am tied down to a spot.

So I settled down to face my fear and made an attempt to do whatever I want with the place. My preference in life is reflected in the space that I occupy, especially so in the living room, where everything converges. My living room is not a living in the traditional sense where you get a TV and couches to sit in order to watch TV. Instead it has a more utilitarian function where everything is there to serve a non-entertainment related function.

I am a firm believer of less-is-more and have not bothered wasting time on TV for the majority of my life. The big empty spaces are so that I can practice and teach dance if I have to. There’s also the bowflex for muscle training and a projector for movies. The screen for the projector serves a second purpose for photography backdrops. The furnitures are as close to nature’s unchanged state as possible and are chosen due to their proximity to the ground for an informal and laid back environment. Things that are easilly moved around to make space for whatever occasion.

The Kitchen

I still haven’t invited many people  over yet, mainly because it is not finished. Nothing is fully furnished and nothing has been done to my taste except for the kitchen. The reason is very simple, my greed made me put all the cash in the stock market. Why the kitchen? I am a very big fan of good food as well as cooking them. So I am not going to skimp on kitchen appliances. Sadly, everything else suffered because of that.

The guest room

I’ve recently cleared out a guest room from what used to be my woodwork shop/ storage place. I figured that if I am tied down and can’t travel to my heart’s content, I might as well bring the travelers to me. I am offering this to international students or professionals who just moved to Canada as well as couch surfers if nobody is occupying it at the moment. Hopefully I will get to expand my horizons this way.

So that’s it, my little corner on earth, that I’d rather not expose, but glad I did. It has been too intimate a thing to reveal until recently, when I started having guests.

Nadia Bashalani

Nadia knew what she’s going to do with her life and so did everyone else who knew her.  At least, that’s the impression I got when we were all in high school. Like everything else, there are ups and downs in whatever path one decides to take. What counts is whether or not you get knocked out of the race during the down time.

Performing art is, from my point of view, one of the hardest to master because everything is live and there are no room to hide your mistakes. Mistakes will happen, whether or not the audience notices them is dependent on the performer’s personality. Watching Nadia on stage made me understand some of the questions I had when I was still performing and dancing. Also, probably the part I missed the most: your fans.

I am glad that she made it to this point. It gives me hope that I will be able to achieve the goals I set and inspires me to keep going. This is someone I knew, this is real.

The Tchotchkes

The band that’s playing is called the Tchotchkes. I am not really sure what their relationships are like, but from observation, it looked very harmonious. I like to watch the little interactions between its members. The questioning look to the guitarist, the reply as a nod and the confirmation back through some other form of signal. Synergies only possible when you’ve played together for a while.

And yes, the bass player’s braids are real hair.

Likes/Dislikes

Sound wise, I believe they are a band who sounds better in real life than on CD. The overall feelings I get from the song is that of optimism, a style that I haven’t delved in much and could come to like in time. They did have a few that suits my current mood: Invasion. It is a jazz type song which, along with film noir, makes up my current preference in entertainment. View from Below will be a good one for you swing kids to dance to. There were also 4 songs that is not on the CD. Two of which I really enjoyed and am anxiously waiting to be released. You can tell that they are branching out and experimenting with their style from these.

One thing about the live concert I didn’t enjoy is how loud the speakers are. Granted, I was in the front row so it stands to reason that my ears were ringing when I got out of the place. That isn’t what I am trying to get at. I believe some of the feeds were amplified too much that the speakers reached saturation at numerous points. I would’ve preferred if the guitars were tuned down a bit so it is easier to make out the durms, and the other instruments + chorus. Then again, that’s just my own personal preference.

Songs

Drifter Beside You

End of My Time

Invasion

Swinging

The City

The Indecision

Two Sides Denied

View From Below

Waterfall Serenade

Photography

I’ve been able to get all the shots I wanted thanks to my previous experiences shooting dancesport competition. It made me feel good that I am improving in night photography, the area that I am most interested in. Compared to fast moving dancers, capturing musicians performing on stage seems like a piece of cake. Sure, I still get blurry images from time to time, but I only have about 1/3 of the images that are blurry compared to my first time where only 1/500 is good enough to be used. As I progress in my knowledge, I have more time to enjoy the actual show and the singing instead of trying to capture the shots by luck.

The editing wasn’t quite as obvious. I have never investigated what style is good for concerts so I just opted to make it crisp and clear while showing a color tone that’s closest to the lightings that night. Everything turned out the way I wanted it to. I am just ignorant of what’s a better way to present them.

Contacts

If you enjoys her music and would like to find out what’s going on next, you can contact her at nadiabashalani@hotmail.com at the moment, I am not sure how you can get her CD beside going to her live conert. I guess stay tuned to find out.

Here’s the mySpace profile page which isn’t obvious: http://www.myspace.com/nadiastchotchkes

Leverage, when used wisely to invest, is the shortest path to success. The application of debt has to be based on your income stream, the theory of which I will leave to another day. Suffice to say that at certain point of debt load with certain interest, you will not be able to pay down the principle at all. That breaking point has to be established before you try anything wild. My advice is to start small, but I want to move on and jump straight to over leverage.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser and I DO NOT recommend taking any of the statements below seriously. YOU WILL BE RUINED if you try it.

100% leverage

I want to theoretically go over a certain death way of managing your investment. A way to gamble it all and have a do or die moment in your life. Through all this running around and raising funds, I’ve become increasingly aware of just how easy it is to get money. As long as you have a job, you can usually leverage up to 100% of your annual income. Let’s take $50,000 as an average because it is a easy and rounded number to use. The first step to start a personal hedge fund with excessive leverage is to go to your bank and get a line of credit. While at the same time, send out application to several credit cards with locked in cash advance interest period (at around 2%). The reason why you want to do this is so that they all perform a credit check on you while your profile is still on the most pristine of all conditions. Once you got approved, your risk profile increases and each subsequent request for credit score will net you less money.

So in the event you are able to do this well, you will get: $50,000. Add that to all your income, assuming that you are leeching off your parents still and you get $100,000 in a year. Now, you will want  to do this fund raising potentially during an economic crisis so that the interest rate is low and easy to pay off. I find it still tolerable at around 5%, but 6% is a bit too much. Health care professional gets a rate at prime (I recommend becoming a chiropractor or pediatrician. Easy to get into and same benefit). Engineers and financial pros gets prime + 1. Now that you have done this, you are at 100% leverage.

400% leverage

The next step is a easy part. The brokerage are usually disconnected from banks and gives you a certain amount of leverage if you request for a margin account. They then adjust the amount based on how successful you are at trading, but suffice to say that they give you double your equity to begin with. So once you deposited your $100,000, you get $200,000 of buying power. I personally recommend skipping this step. Margins are the wild card in investing since you lose all control when your broker does a margin call on you and force sell your stocks. Compounding the pain.

1200% leverage

There are funds out there that moves at 3x the movements of a given sector. Buy these ETF and you immediately triple the previous leverage. You increased your potential money power to $600,000

12000% leverage

With options on these type of funds, you enter into a different realm. I used a simple formula of 10x whatever purchasing power you have. Real options give you more leverage than that, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just use 10x . So now you have $6 million of purchasing power on your hand.

1% movement

Now here’s the kicker. Remember that your real capital is only $50,000? Well, guess what? It still is. A 1% move up will double your money, but at the same time, a 1% move down will deplete all your cash reserve. With every 1% decline, you lose 2 year of your life at paying back the debt. So you can potentially only sustain a 30% decline before your whole life is meaningless. That’s not even including the interest payments. The S&P suffered a 50% decline since its peak, now do you understand why certain individuals feel the need to kill themselves?

DISCLAIMER: All this is theoretical and has not been attempted. Individually yes, but not as whole process. I DO recommend using this if you are an idiot or wish to ruin yourself.