RANDOM QUOTES, RANDOM THOUGHTS



Monday, March 31, 2008

NEWCASTLE UNITED - The Revival Begins!!

Newcastle came from a goal down and beat Tottenham 4-1 at White Hart Lane yesterday! Yippee! King Kev is finally getting the revival going in his second coming. I am a huge fan of Kevin Keegan from when he was a player with Liverpool and Hamburg and for all that has been said (and is still being said) about his frailities as a Manager, he is a terrific Man-Manager and a passionate football romantic. EPL has missed the likes of him badly, come to think of it there is none like him, truly one of kind! Look at the teams he has managed: Newcastle, Fulham & Manchester City -- all are in the Premier League!! That is something, isn't it?
I hope he succeed this time around, having came so agonisingly close and missed out in his first spell as Manager there.
I am excited again about football upon his return and I can't wait to see who he will bring in next season.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

About the Blog Title

Why I have chosen the above Title for my Blog?

I first came across "The Journey Is The Reward" on an Apple Computer's sticker in the 80's (I think I still had it somewhere). It made quite an impression on me. I did not know until recently that it was the title of an unauthorised biography of Steve Jobs by Jeffrey Young.

It can mean different things under different circumstances and to different people it seems.

Following are some of what I found via Google and Baidu and what it means to different people and which I think captures the essence:

(1) 不论后果成败, 过程的经历就是收获。
-- 强调经历某个过程的价值
Roughly translate like this:
"It does not matter if you succeed or fail, the experience one got out of the journey and the process is the REWARD"
-- it highlights the value of the experience gained as a result of taking the path.

(2) "走过的路都是财富"
Roughly translates like this:
"The roads you had travelled or the journeys you had taken are all your own WEALTH of
experience"

In Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech, he spoke about connecting the dots. There is a resonance of "The Journey Is the Reward" somewhere in that speech:

"..........you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Every step in life, be it birth, school, work, love or family, started out as a step into unknown territories. The unknown is what makes it both scary and exciting all at the same time! Uncertainty can be quite a force to drive one forward. I think if we forget about success or failure, every journey will be more exciting than scary and uncertain - it is a good way to overcome fear of starting anything.

Steve Jobs closed that Stanford speech borrowing a line from the last issue of The Whole Earth Catalog (in his own words: It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.):





"STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH"









...................these words and the picture of an early morning country road resonate the spirit of
"THE JOURNEY IS THE REWARD".



PROLOGUE: THE INSPIRATION TO START A BLOG?

I was never any good at writing a diary, never had the stamina or conviction to keep it a regular thing. The inspiration for starting this blog?
(1) I had followed a travel blog by the name "HORN OK PLEASE!" some 2 years or more back. It was an incredible blog that chronicled the writer's travels through India (mostly) and other places with some amazing photos of India. I was captivated by the details of his travels in India, I never knew there were so many amazing spots in a country that if you were visiting just the big cities, you would not be bold enough to take a step beyond the cities other than the major popular tourist sites.
It is a country that tends to be overwhelming for some, at least it used to be for me.
Unfortunately this blog is no longer online and what a shame too as it was more informative and real than any travel guide book could ever be.
It was truly inspiring and you would want to make the same trip to see those amazing places that the writer visited and write in the same breath as he did.
(2) I had made a 2-week solo backpacking journey to China in March and I hope to be able to write about this enlightening journey, hopefully I could draw from the inspiration of "HORN OK PLEASE!". I made a lot of new friends from this journey, each one of them made an impression on me. There were two university students, extremely intelligent, beautiful and excellent writers, both had blogs which were very well written and extremely alive and real -- the same way I felt about "HORN OK PLEASE!". I am not a good writer but I am going to try my best to write in the same breath and spirit as the three of them did. It will be an exciting journey for me, I do not know what the result will be but hell, THE JOURNEY IS THE REWARD! So in that spirit I set forth..............