December 16, 2009
“Do You Want To become Rich or Want to be Famous?” Year End Reading
Come end of the year from mid-November till December I decided to catch up on some readings. I ordered a number of books from Amazon.com, all together 7+1 =8 of them. They are:
#Making a Living Without a Job - Barbara j Winter
#Making A Life, Making A Living - Mark Albion
#20 Master Plots - Ronald B Tobias
#The 4-Hour Workweek - Timothy Ferriss
#The Accidental Startup - Danielle Babb
#Make Money Teaching Online - Danielle Babb & Jim Mirabella
#PHP In A NutShell - Paul Hudson
#ILLICIT - Moises Naim
Well currently reading “Making a Living Without a Job”. I managed to finish “Making A Life, Making A Living”. Very likely not able to finish all the books this month )slow reader), but will try. I learned about the book “Making A Life, Making A Living” some time back and was curious why did Mark, the author, a successful Harvard Business School professor, fortune 500 consultant gave it all up to start all over again. Why would any sane person do it? So that is why I bought the book to find out. In his book, he told his own story and lessons he learned along the way. The book also contain other stories of people who had gone down similar paths as him.
A part of the book that I will remember always. It was a question asked by the author’s late father when the author was just in his first year in college. Both of them were having a conversation when the father said : “You ought to decide what you’re going to strive for in life, for example do you want to become rich, or do you want to become famous? Or maybe both - that’s what everybody wants. But if often comes down to one or the other. Which will you choose to pursue?” Well, the author just did not know how to answer that question at that time.
Only after 25 years later did he known how to answer the question. As quoted in the book ” I finally knew how to answer my father’s question the way I wanted to answer it.” Well what’s the answer? Right people I will leave it here, do get the book and find out. By the way it is a great book and it opens up your horizon to possibilities when you read the many inspirational stories in the book.
After completing Barbara j Winter’s book, which is another excellent one, I am heading for the “The Accidental Startup ” or maybe…”The 4 hour workweek” , man . . .this is just hard to decide when you 2 great books isn’t it.
The other thing I learned this week was it took close to 45 days for items to arrive to Labuan, Malaysia from US. I ordered some Lego parts from an eBay seller in US. He only uses normal mail and sent out the parts on the 25th Oct 2009. I only received the items on the 10th of December 2009. I thought it will be a lost thing but fortunately this is not the case. However it you use DHL like what I used for the Amazon books, all it takes was 5 days.
And since it is almost Christmas for the year 2009, here is a beautiful song by Sixpence None The Richer. Enjoy.
