An amazing story

I just read the story of Gary Dahl, who made 15 million dollars in 6 months selling rocks, that’s right… rocks! In 1975 he worked as an advertising executive and had this crazy idea. He probably picked up a rock or something and wondered if people would buy it if he made a good “package”. His gimmick was that the rocks could be used as pets and the “pet rock” was born. Now my first thought reading this amazing story was: “Why the hell would people buy rocks and keep them as pets?” I can just imagine the scene with little Billy getting a rock for his birthday. I can’t believe it worked.

The rocks didn’t look like anything but a rock either which adds to the mystery. I suppose it wasn’t a huge investment for people because the pet rock sold for $3.95. Dahl sold over 5 million in the first 6 months. He imported the rocks from Rosarito Beach in Baja, California, Mexico. It cost about 30 cents per rock; packaging and delivery cost about 65 cents so he had a profit of over $3 per rock.

His sales pitch was that keeping a real pet like cats, dogs and fish was just too much work, and too messy, too much of a hassle, plus it would cost so much money for food and things like that. In the package he sent to his customers was a pet training manual which contained instructions on how to care for your pet and teach it tricks like sit, stay, roll over and play dead. It sounds unbelievable to me, but this guy was a marketing genius.

His marketing strategy was simple. He sold the idea that pet rocks give use more pleasure than we know. He convinced the consumer that although the items itself doesn’t give joy to a child, but the idea of it does. The pet can be anything in your imagination. So he basically sold an idea, feeding on kids vivid imagination. People who bought the pet rocks gave them names, talked to them, petted them and had them do simple tricks.

Pet rocks are still alive and well, and you can buy them on the internet now, there are collector’s items and special editions, spin-offs and memorial pages. Not many gray pebbles are sold anymore, but you can buy rocks that are inscribed and painted.

It is an amazing and inspiring story that just goes to show that “anyone” can do something to change their lives. Every idea is potentially a winner given the right “package” and advertising. I think I will start selling toilet roll pets. Anyone interested? Only $4.95!

130 free days

I am obsessed with time at the moment trying to figure out how to best use my available time. This week I will be working about 54 hours, exercise for about 11 hours, sleep for 35 hours which means I have about 65 hours of free time. 65 hours is a lot of time when you think of it. This is the time which I am at home doing “nothing”. Now every week won’t be like this, it will be differences over a whole year, but let’s say I had 60 hours on average free time per week. That would amount to 3120 hours per year. That’s actually 130 days. 130 days where I don’t sleep, but 130 x 24 hours. It’s fair to say that with all that time, I could pretty much do anything I want and still have time to spare. If you had 130 free days per year, what would you do with them and why?

My ear still hasn’t cleared up, but I think it is a little better now. Could be that the doctors were right. Olive oil might do the trick. If it hasn’t cleared up by Wednesday I think I will go see the doctor anyway, just to see what they have to say.

34 days until I go to Indonesia and see Kei. Hehe I remember when it was 100. The time really flies. I’m so excited! Today is a bank holiday in England, but I still have to be at work. That’s fine, because the pay is really good. Speaking of, there will be no lunch at work today so I better go prepare something.

The beauty of sound

Friday morning I woke up with a strange sensation. The alarm clock didn’t sound as annoying as usual. Something was wrong. All I could hear in my left ear was a strange wind sound. I couldn’t hear a thing on my left ear and that truly sucked. I knew what it was though since I have had trouble with this last year. My left ear canal is blocked by some ear wax. Usually it goes away by applying heat so I took a long warm shower. It didn’t help this time.

It was interesting to work on Friday since I have to talk on the phone all day, but it went ok. I got some ear drops at the local pharmacy to be used 2 times a day for up to 3 days. I’m on my third day now and my left ear is still blocked. After work today I will go to a doctor and see what they can do. I am getting used to this condition though and it’s not so annoying anymore. When I do get my hearing back, I will enjoy the beauty of sound.

Yesterday was Sunday and guess where I was? At work! That’s right, Sunday work. I applied for some weekend work a while ago and now I will work 6 Sundays in a row. Never worked on weekends before but it was actually kind of nice. It was a lot more challenging as half of the issues were things I am not trained for yet. Working for 6 days might be hard, but it’s good to get the extra money for my future expenses. I am working hard for me and Kei. I hope I can continue to work weekends but I hear rumors that they might stop it here and move the weekend work to India.

Anyway, going to work soon. It’s Monday and I start work at 6.30. Wohoo! Oh, and happy birthday to Kei’s dad today.

I'm engaged!

I apologize for the quality of the ring picture. It is a still frame taken from a video Kei sent me of the rings. That's her hand with the ring on. That video was taken July 29th, so I guess you can say we have been engaged for a while, and the plan was to tell the world in October when I went to Indonesia, but we couldn't wait any longer, hehe.

It's been quite a year hasn't it? Right now I am just so happy that I have her. Every morning I wake up smiling to her good morning text message to me. I still remember when I asked her to be mine on May 7th. What a great decision that was, probably the best decision of my life. We found each other long time ago, I am sure of that. I will tell you all about it in another blog.

I can't wear my ring until I get to Indonesia but that's ok. In my heart I can feel the love every day. I am so proud that my future wife Kei is wearing the ring right now. I must be the luckiest and happiest man alive. It’s Only 1.5 months now until I get there and we will have the best 3 weeks of our life, and we will start planning the wedding together. The details of that will also come in a later blog.

You know, this just goes to show that if you believe, if you really want something you can get it no matter how impossible it seems. In April when everything seemed doom and gloom I kept thinking that this is not the end, I will fight back, I will never give up, I choose to be happy no matter what. Then I got a great new job and my love Kei come into my life. And folks, the best is yet to come!

I am engaged to the most wonderful woman I have ever met. I am so thankful for you Kei, thank you for loving me, thank you for everything you give me every second of my life. Love, this is just the beginning of our happiness. I love you so much Kemala Ayu Lestari, I am so proud and happy to become your husband.

What's in this envelope?

As I was walking home from the store on Saturday a little kid ran up to me. He stretched his right arm to me as far up as he could and with a thick mancunian accent spelled out: "Mister, This is for you!" I took the white envelope he was holding in his hand and asked him what it was. All he said was: "Don't open until Christmas!" Then he ran away with his little legs. So my guess is as good as yours. I will open it at Christmas time and the mystery will be revealed.

Only 1.5 months now until I get to see my love. Kei is really wonderful and we have really grown closer this last week. Last week there was an earthquake 100km away from Jakarta. It was really scary for me as I called her but couldn't get a hold of her. She was of course fine, but I always worry when I can't get hold of her. That's because I love her so much.

Yesterday was my last free Sunday for a while. Last week I applied for Sunday work and I got it. I will work 6 Sundays in a row from this Sunday. I will work 9 hours every Sunday and will earn 20% more per hour than I usually do. It will be hard, because I have never worked on weekends before, but it will really help me and Kei. On Sundays, all I do is sit at home surf the internet and chat anyway. I can do this at work in-between calls and get paid for it.

These shoes were made for walkin'

As I was walking on Sunday I realized something. I love my shoes. They are so comfortable to wear and it doesn't matter if it's winter, summer, spring or fall, these shoes will not let me down. I don't think about it, but these particular shoes have been walking through some exciting places.

They have been walking through the streets of Dublin, Ireland (which is where I bought them). Then they went on walking through the snowy streets of Liverpool, UK before they walked in the more snowy landscape of Tromso, Norway. Not long after that they were walking in the busy streets of Shanghai, China... The hills of Chaohu, China... The cold streets of Beijing, China... Now they are back in the UK, walking through the rainy streets of Manchester. They have even been walking through the airports of Copenhagen, Denmark and Paris, France. Soon they will be walking in the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia.

It's amazing isn't it? And they almost look as good as when I bought them, still as comfy as ever. Yes, I love my shoes. If there was one object I could take with me on a deserted island it would be those shoes. Keep on walking, you'll never walk alone...

Power restored

Yesterday I found out that me and Superman has something in common. We are both powered by the sun. That's right, yesterday the sun shone. It's really for the first time in a month for me that I could enjoy it. I took a nice long walk and let the sun just restore my batteries. I feel energized and ready for another month without sun.

It's a great new week ahead and I am so thankful for everything these days. I guess you can say I'm a very happy and lucky guy. I'll be going off to work shortly and I am so happy that I have a job to go to, that I can go to the training studio after work and just enjoy life and what it has to offer.

Kei, I am so thankful for having you in my life. I love you so much.

Have a great week!

I am the 487,400,414 richest person in the world!

Imagine that. I am one of the richest people on this planet. There are about 6.7 billion people on this earth and I am in the top 8.12%. According to this site anyway: Global Rich List. How rich are you? As a curiosity for UK people, you can check out this site: Channel 4's Rich List. I'm a bit worse off here. Apparently there are 14,336,289 people richer than me and 43,463,711 people poorer than me. That would put me in the top 24.8%. Still, it's not bad, I'm not even a UK citizen. Isn't internet fun?

Jakarta

Yesterday I ordered a ticket to Indonesia. I will be going on September 30th. The flight will take about 1 day and October 1st I will meet Kei for the first time. I am so excited! I will stay there for a whole 3 weeks. It's not long now, only a little over 2 months and I am counting the days.

I think there is some kind of rain record in England right now. Yesterday was one of the few days without rain, the second in about a month. People are talking about the wettest summer ever. It could very well be, but it doesn't bother me. I am used to the rain, and I actually like it. However they predict that August will be really nice.

My life is full of sunshine anyway (metaphorically speaking)

The seconds are ticking away

Sometimes I wish I could record my life, so I could go back and watch certain things. I want to know what I did January 5th at 3:15pm 1987 for some reason. Play my life like a movie, rewind and fast forward. Life is passing by us so fast, and most of our moments in life are quickly forgotten. I don't remember when I swam in the ocean for the first time or when I hugged my grandma for the last time. These are memories I wish I could just bring back whenever I wanted, but they are buried deep in my subconscious somewhere.

I wonder when I ate chicken wings for the first time. What was it like? I know that I love chicken wings, but it would be great to taste them for the first time again. I can't even remember what I had for lunch last Tuesday. Living in the moment, sensing every moment, enjoying it, be thankful for it. That is the ideal, but it doesn't work that way.

I saw the movie 'Next' with Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel yesterday. It's about a guy who can see 2 minutes into the future. Interesting idea, but the movie was flawed. They could have done so much more with it. The scope felt so small. Time is always interesting though. I love movies that deal with it in some way. I remember I watched a movie called 'Déjà Vu' with Denzel Washington earlier this year. That was a great movie and a great soundtrack too.

Time, where does it go? Does it just cease to exist once the moment has passed? Are we all synchronized or do we all live in slightly different time bubbles? Time that has not happened yet is very interesting. When the future becomes the present and past in the blink of an eye. Fascinating....

Yesterday’s gym practice was more intense than ever. I felt knackered after I was done, thought I had overdone it. I broke all my records though, but I think I have to be careful not overdoing it and I must remember to enjoy every moment, because today will be a memory by tomorrow.

Thank you for Monday!

This weekend was fun! On Saturday I went out to this fancy hotel for my team coach Lars wedding party. He got married to Christine 2 weeks ago in Malta. It was my first wedding party. I got dressed up and felt like a million bucks, hehe. The only thing is that as the night went on, I missed Kei a lot. Wished she was there with me. But you know, as I watched the happy married couple I realized how lucky I am to have Kei in my life. That would be us in the future, I feel it, I want it, I need it.

Monday is great! A new week, new possibilities. Every day is great these days, so I am thankful for everything that I have. Monday is just as good as Friday or Saturday I think. It's just as beautiful. In an hour I have to get ready for work and I look forward to it. I like to sit on the bus on my way to work reading the morning newspaper and just feel that energy that I have these days.

After work I will go to the gym again. I think I am addicted, hehe. I have so much energy now and I can't wait to go there and beat my old records, become better than I ever was. I love to run, the treadmill is my favorite. I can just keep running there for a long time, but I know my limits. Every time I am done there I feel really dizzy, so I better not overdo it no matter how fun it is. Well enjoy your week!

Inside a procrastinators mind

My internet connection is so slow this morning, and it’s testing my patience. I know that I will win though, because in the end it doesn’t matter if my internet connection is slow or fast. Wait, let me start over… I was supposed to get up 47 minutes than I did and that is not so good. I kept ignoring the alarms and I do have a lot of alarms going off. I am trying to see if I can do anything about my procrastination so yesterday evening I made a lot of tasks and appointments in Outlook and it’s those alarms that have been going off this morning. Since I overslept by 47 minutes, the procrastinator gets to live another day.

It’s interesting though, I was discussing this with a friend yesterday about how I can beat this procrastination habit of mine. I am trying a new approach now, not only writing down every task that I have to do, but I also made a formula. I am a numbers person and I love stats. That is why I can run on treadmill in a training studio and not outside for real. I need to see my heart rate, calories burned, how long I have been running, speed and distance. So maybe I can take this fact and bring it do my everyday tasks and appointments. Today for example I have 6 appointments and 3 tasks. I have given every one of them a procrastination level (PL) score and importance factor (IF) score. PL goes from 0.1 to 1.0 where 0.1 is something I will do anyway and 1.0 I will do if I get a gun to my head; maybe… well you get the point. Then IF goes from 0 to 100 how important I think it is for me personally. So I multiply PL by IF and get what I call life points. I will add these points to a spreadsheet and see what percentage I am at when it comes to doing my stuff. I want to reach 100% and obviously get as many points as possible. I’m thinking of having a reward if I get a 1000 points. It’s in the test phase, but so far I like this idea a lot. By the way, if I finish this blog I get 10 points. Yeay! I can get 177 points total today. Anyone got other good ideas?

The workout yesterday was amazing. Even with pain I tried harder, ran longer and overall killed all my previous records. Now my body is going to rest until Monday. After all, the muscles need rest to grow. I am thinking of a 4 day per week routine going from Monday to Thursday and rest from Friday to Sunday.

I miss Kei, but she has no credit on the phone right now. Hopefully she will get some soon so I can hear from her.

According to my morning tasks I need to take a shower in 2 minutes. I will not get points for this though because I do it every morning and I don’t see it as a chore, but it will be interesting to see if I can keep my schedule because I have been showering at different times. Have a great weekend!

My arms and legs aren't falling off yet

So my 2 first days of this new workout regime of mine is over and I am happy to say that my arms are still attached and my legs don't hurt too much. I was expecting it to happen, but I don't mind that it hasn't. Anyway, day 3 is today. I plane to do this from Monday to Thursday and give it 3 days rest before I start torturing myself on Monday. Saying that, torture has never been more fun!

It's comfortable at work these days. Most people are on vacation so the calls are less. I get to read my RSS feeds and chat with Kei and my friends. The soup is still good and the lunch is delicious. Happy days!

Kei and myself are doing great, even though we don't call each other as often as before. It gets ridiculously expensive really fast, so we decided to send a lot of text messages instead and of course chat when we can.

Workout

So how have you all been? I've been very good, but I haven't been writing much recently. I've been sleeping a lot though.

Yesterday I was in the gym for the first time for 8 years. Imagine that! 8 years is a long time. I was in Aalesund at the time working as a graphics designer. I remember I wanted to commit to a training regime, so I paid for a whole year in advance. I went there with great enthusiasm and did a proper workout. The next day I could barely lift my arms and taking on my jacket almost killed me. I never went back to the gym. I'm hoping this time will be different though. The gym is basically for people working at Shell Oil, so it's a private gym. It is very cheap too, so it won't cost me the world like that gym 8 years ago. They have a lot of equipment and 3 rooms including a great hall for team activities.

I thought I was in pretty bad shape, but I was mistaken. Yesterday I started the workout by bicycling for 15 minutes before doing 10 minutes on the cross trainer. Then I did some leg exercises before I ran 1 English mile on the treadmill. To be honest with you, I thought I could last maybe 2 minutes running, but I could have run even more than I did. I was really impressed with myself. How did I feel after the workout? Dizzy, but great. I was really lightheaded actually, but I haven't exercised in 8 years so that is to be expected. It's a little after 5am now and I just woke up. There is no pain at all. Today I am going back there, but I'm giving my legs a rest and will work on my arms and tummy. Can't wait!

So anyone looking forward to the last Harry Potter book? I have only read the first 3 myself and watched the 4 movies. Still haven't seen the latest one, but I will. I am not a big fan, but it's a highly enjoyable series. What will J.K. Rowling do next? I mean, she is Harry Potter through and through. She has hinted that maybe book 7 isn't the end, but I kind of hope it is. I want to see what she does next. I really love her writing style which is great for both kids and adults. How do you best Harry Potter though? She will have a lot of pressure to write something great. Everyone will be looking her way. If I should ever become an author, I hope to build a readership gradually by getting better and better instead of writing my masterpiece in the beginning. Not that my first book will suck or anything ;).