Hey, I have a Life!

been ages since my last post; too much going on in the 'real' world to dedicate time and effort to blog to be honest.

Nonetheless, I will be back.

Soon.

Like this week sometime.

I apologise profusely to my legion of fans -- which basically is some dude from Norway (if statcounter is to be trusted) and my wife.

Yes, I am pathetic.

Obey Kiyosaki

Uploaded 3 ½ hrs of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad onto my Ipod. I read the book a couple of years back and gist of it was – get money to work for you. Not the other way around as we've all been taught. Creating passive income through investments in real estate and the like until you get to the point where said investments start making $$$ for you, in effect creating a phenomenon Malaysians know as "goyang kaki".

Good stuff. I’m giving myself 6 months to end up fabulously wealthy. ME a self made Auckland property tycoon rubbing shoulders with NZ’s beautiful crowd. ME throwing wild weekend parties aboard my 10 million dollar superyacht berthed at the downtown marina.

And ME by mid next year reading about my coke-ruined lifestyle in the tabloids and wondering where it all went wrong.

Seriously though, I’ll take financial coaching from Mr Kiyosaki on my Ipod any day.

That or it's back to Scandinavian death metal.

Koontz

I love book sales. I got a copy Dean Koontz’s Forever Odd for 70% off the hardback price. FO is the sequel to the bestselling Odd Thomas. Simple engaging plot; kept me hooked till the very last page and left me bleary eyed at two in the morning.

Cant’ say as much for Life Expectancy and The Face – Koontz’s other recent works. And there's Velocity which (from reading the free pdf sampler) didn't exactly had me frothing at the mouth in anticipation - so gave it a miss.

And The Taking – War of the Worlds by way of alien fungi was pretty good for the first few chapters then everything went south. And the rushed ending was .. a bit crap.

I remember Koontz used to do great novels back in the 80s and 90s - the likes of Dark Rivers of the Heart, Mr. Murder, The Bad Place, Tick Tock, Watchers. These days he's mostly hit and miss for me. I usually read up reviews of his books on Amazon before shelling out my hard earned dollars.

Anyway FO goes on my read pile -

• Lee Child’s One Shot
• Peter Abrahams’ Wildest Dreams
• Mark Billingham’s Burning Girl
• Jeffrey Deaver’s Garden of Beasts
• Kyle Mills’ Phoenix Rising
• Stephen King’s Dark Tower (a brick and the end of the series)
• Tad Williams’ Shadow March (another brick)
  
• Jack Canfield's Success Principles
• Softwar: Larry Ellison & Oracle

Dropped Mark Billingham’s Sleepyhead couple of weeks ago. Bloody slow book that went round and round in circles, I gave up halfway through.

I am a lazy blogger

Whoa. Way behind on my blogs. Will be catching up this weekend.

Mamoru Oshii's Ghost In The Shell 2 : Innocence finally made it to NZ shores in a special 2 DVD edition with an English dub. Breathtaking visuals with a heady mix of 3D backgrounds and 2d cel shaded animation; lots of neon and rain and retro looking cars in Japan 2032, in parts very similar to Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.

Plotwise Ok though bogged down at times with some serious navel gazing and philosophical musings - characters quoting Descartes and Milton and the Holy Scriptures - which had me scratchin ye olde noggin.

But still worth repeat viewing. I particularly enjoy the gun battles between our two cops and the Yakuza (akin to a John Woo flick) and again when Batou was remotely hacked in a grocery store and his vision and hearing got seriously messed up. And dig the the jaw dropping imagery of Tokyo especially the street festival - which it is said took Mr Oshii's men a year to do.

Yup, leave it to the Japanese to get anal over these things. But damn if Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence isn't one big visual wankfest.

I hear voices

Finished Tony Robbin's Power to Shape Your Destiny programme; 6 CDs + a 7th Bonus CD that covers practical application of what you've learnt. Great, life altering stuff though some parts were a wee too long and could've been halved without losing the core message. Defintely deserves repeat listening - least now I can skip the boring bits and focus on the areas I need coaching on! And having all these on an Ipod Nano just makes it easy.

Of course I'm keeping a journal the old fashioned way - on hardcopy - and getting the missus involved. No point getting all stoked the first few weeks only to revert back to your old self by end of the month. Something a friend said about a new broom ..!

Next up Zig Ziglar's Success for Dummies and See You at The Top. I was introduced to Mr. Ziglar's material years ago (we're looking 10 yrs or so) through a Direct marketing group I was a member of. It was a tape they loaned me called Even Eagles Need a Push and if memory serves, the first time I had a listen I ended up sitting in my car until I had finished the tape. I left the direct marketing business - wasn't my idea of a part time job no matter how lucrative it was made out to be - but I never quite forgot Zig Ziglar.

Fast forward a decade later I'm revisiting the man via my Nano.

For those interested I recommend a visit to Zig Ziglar's website and check out his programmes, his books. A wee pricey but heck he's up there with the likes of Covey, Robbins, Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carnegie. Worth it.

Ghost Writer

Just built another site primarily for writing short stories. It's quick and dirty writing - practice stuff.

Feedback is welcome though :-)

The stories start here

The end of days

Gale force winds all over the North, brought down power lines causing Auckland-wide blackouts. Chaos on the roads and railway lines; Airports closing down and heavy snowfall down south. Photo shows Georgina my coworker watching the storm. My house is across the harbor shrouded in that wall of white.

We're told to go home as no word when power will be restored. Problem for some but I commute by ferry so avoided the traffic jams and general mayhem (that naturally precedes the downfall of civilization).

Only had to brave the rough seas in a sturdy old tub and then a mad dash to my car.

Rest of the day at home working on my tax rebates. You know, fun stuff.

Coincidence

Finished Coincidence. I give it 3 out 5 stars. Our protagonist - George Daly, writes a book about coincidences and then finds himself in several disturbing coincidences of his own. And to complete his personal Twilight Zone - George runs into his evil twin he never knew he had. Evil twin sends nasty people George's way and with his brother out of the way assumes George's identity, takes over his life and his marriage (or what's left of it). Midway thru the book, the story went sci-fi and it appears they're all living in some kind of quantum computer and Mr. caretaker has to fix a glitch by removing either George or Larry his twin. OR is that all just a figment of George's imagination? Was there really an evil Larry going around killing folks or was it George all along doing a Jekyll & Hyde? Good interesting read, interspersed with real coincidences from history.

Anyway only 3 out of 5 as the ending was a bit predictable. Might check out Ambrose's Superstition; which I'm told is far better.

Starting on Lee Child's One Shot. An autographed copy by the man when he was in Auckland. I had expected a large burly ex-SAS type (from reading all his previous books) but Mr Child turned out just a regular guy; soft spoken and very approachable.

The week that was

Long week at the office. We're a smaller team now after a recent company wide downsizing. Same amount of BAU work with half the people. Should be interesting how the new 'regime' works out over the next 3-6 months. And we had a few new projects kicked off this week with all day workshops to follow.

TGIF eh?

On saturating my grey matter with all things Success - I'm continuing with Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey to and from work. Lots of good stuff and Covey's dense approach definitely calls for repeated listening before it all sinks in.

Not much progress on the Success Principles, need a bit of catch up reading this weekend. Important thing is momentum. It's hard; old ingrained habits and all. Covey made a good metaphor - a rocket leaving the Earth's gravity takes a lot of energy but once you're in space, things are so much easier. Conquering oneself is like that. You need to exert enough force of discipline and consistency to escape your old self.

An there endeth the lesson this week :-)