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Wrapping up

So I’ve made it to Cairo via Amman Jordan. Cairo is crazy. After a place like Israel, Cairo is so tourist driven. My experience so far is that everyone is trying to scam you and I’ve had to yell at my share of Arabs already.

It is something rather humbling to stand at the foot of the oldest structure on earth and have it be enormous and looming over you. At one point we just sat and looked, it’s all you can do.

The hotel we’re in is something of am adventure as well, I let Mikale pick it and she found one for only 12 USD! Bargains galore eh? Well let me tell you, turns out there are certain amenities I’ve grown accustomed to, like locks and free toilet paper. This place is a disaster. we’re moving out tonight cause I just can’t bring myself to relax in this room. And when I’m not on am iPhone I’ll write more.

Anyway. I’ll hit the Egyptian museum today and a few other sights then new years eve is reserved for sitting in my hotel (hopefully nicer than this one) room and writing in my journal, then new years day I’ll be flying home.

Thanks for all the comments and quick emails, it’s great to hear from people as much as possible while your out and away.

Enjoy

good times indeed

so I am here the night before I fly out from Tel Aviv to Cairo and my heart is full. In the last couple of days I’ve been able to visit some places that I am still in awe about. Places like Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb, and Bethlehem are not places that one would normally expect to see in their lifetime. It’s been an interesting range of feelings too as each day continues. I’ll write more on this later, but sufficeth to say, standing where something great happens does very little for me, but working to wrap my mind around a principle or concept in a concerted fashion has opened my mind to some great insights and thoughts which I’ve been consistently journaling. So after a Christmas in the Holy Land, I’m loving life. Jerusalem, and Israel as a whole, has really grown on me. I’ve spent quite a bit of time away from the groups and such (as me and Mikale are pretty much on our own most of the time) I’ve gained a small appreciation for their preservation of, and adherence to, many of their customs and nuances that make them a unique people. I would love to make my way back here again someday.

But that is today, off to Cairo in the morning. The adventures will continue. Stay tuned.

whew

So everything is fine with the car yada yada, here’s the run down…

First, driving in israel is truly an art, with everything being a bit ridiculous, people swerving into oncoming traffic, people jumping out in front of you and so on. So we rented the car and went to Galilee, were touring around and went to Capernum and to the mount of Beatitudes, etc, and then went to Nazareth, which really gave me a run for my money driving wise. Then on the way back, we’re parked at a stoplight with a lady in front of us and the rain was pouring, and I look in the rear view mirror just in time to see this guy plow us. So i go into the lady in front of us, our car is totalled, and needless to say, we didn’t make it to the mount of transfiguration… dang. But I had a couple of arabs who knew no english to deal with and work out insurance details. Merry Christmas indeed. In other news, we feel fine, a bit whiplashed, but nothing crazy, and after a nights sleep, we’re doing great (this is the next day, I put in the 7 hour delay between posts to build exitement. I’ll write more about seeing jerusalem, and the antonia fortress, and the temple mount, and so on later…. love you!

well shoot

Got in car wreck…. STOP

All is fine…. STOP

I’ll give you details when I can…. STOP

Bakor Tov

Well, merry Christmas, this very moment I am sitting at a hotel in Ein Geve Israel, which is right on the sea of Galilee, and thought I’d take a second to wish you all a merry christmas.

I am doing great, and stuff here is amazing. I’m in awe that I am really here, wondering the old city, haggling with arabs over lunch prices, etc. I am loving it.

Anyway, all is well, time is short. Today I goto the sites around the sea (mount of beatitudes, mount of transfiguration, capernum, Taberius, etc.)

I’ll try to keep in touch,

Enjoy

24601

so I’m in England, just accross the pond, if you will. And let me tell you, international flights have restored my faith in airline customer service. Food was great, people were great, etc.

But anyway, London is great. Heathrow is a disaster of an airport, but the city is amazing so far. Love, love, love hearing the accents all around and such. We got in and rode the metro into town,

and are staying with some friends right downtown, so that’s fun.

But yeah, haven’t done a whole lot yet, went and wondered around trafalger square and listened to carolers out (see below),

then wondered around town a bit to see the lights and the fun.

The highlight of day one though was definitely seeing Les Miserables on the stage in London. Fantastic. Seriously, I don’t know if I just haven’t seen it in forever, or if it really has gotten dramatically better, but it is such a powerful story and the music is great. Cool thing here is that all the accents are real too.

Anyway, I’ll post as I can and keep you up to speed on the adventures.

Merry Christmas!

the last train to clarkesville

so I’m off tomorrow (today) on my big adventure. It’s not coming at a very opportune time for me, but all the same, I am looking forward to it. The itinerary is to fly to London, spend a few days there, fly on to Jerusalem and surrounding israeli areas through christmas, then do new years in egypt and make it home in one piece.

Upon my return home I’ll be moving to Toronto to pursue business interests with my old buddy Mifsud, so I’m very excited about that. I’ll be heading over under NAFTA so we’ll see how long that lasts.

Also, I will be changing my phone number for the first and only time ever, I’ll be moving everything over to Skype, but I’ll mess with that come the new year. So big things are a brewing.

While I’m away, I am purging some of my pics I’ve been meaning to put up on doangang.com to make room for the new ones to come, so for at least the next three weeks, you get one a day. Enjoy them. – doangang.com

Send me notes via email, I love them, or just post on here, and I sincerely wish everyone a merry Christmas. Enjoy it, life is good.

lifes a dance, you learn as you go

So life has been pretty crazy as of late, and I figured I’d take this 3:30am moment to update you all. If you’re a regular reader of this blog most of this should be no surprise, and if it is, I apologize for not keeping in better contact.

But yeah, so about a month ago Symantec Corp, whom I had worked for since college moved me from my sunny home in Orange County to the place I would soon call home in Boston. That lasted 4 days before I got a call from the bosses who informed me that I was a casualty of the latest 5% RIF (Reduction In Force) and that today was my last day. Needless to say I was a bit blindsided by it as we were a very strategic group that was heavily involved in the success of the company vision, particularly with the consulting partners, if not consulting delivery as a whole. But alas, corporate life is prone to such frustrations. So in a matter of 15 minutes life went from peachy to turmoil.

I spent the next several hours in a personal strategy session, as being so new to the partner and consulting realms I don’t feel like this was my given career and I needed to find a new senior partner manager position. I decided this was going to be the perfect storm for me. I have enough in the bank to last me a few months, and have determined I am going to try and make a go of being an entrepreneur. I flew home from Toronto and got back to my home office, ordered a personal laptop and have gone to work.

I am now working on 3-4 projects looking to expand to 5-6 projects and hoping to have revenue to pay the bills within the next 3 months. My overhead is 700 bones, (I love being a single schmuck in these situations) and if I can cover that I’m in great shape and will keep doing this till I die. I love the work, I love working on startup ideas, I love the creativity process, and I love boot strapping. So my 12-14 hour days that were so long with Symantec have turned into 18 hour days of pure joy. It’s a nice change, and will be nicer still when I make some of these stick.

So I will be moving from Boston in January to Toronto to live in my buddies basement while we grow two of the projects and plan to be back in Missouri sometime towards the fall with some new projects for the states as well.

So if any of you guys have great business ideas you’ve been meaning to start, give me a call. Lets rock and roll.

Lessons learned though, there have been many.

First, it can’t happen to me is a stupid mentality and needs to be done away with immediately. A company is in the mix to make money, and despite what logic would dictate, you have no idea what they’re thinking. Prepare yourself, pay down debts, keep some savings. It goes without saying, but had I known a month ago how things were going to go, I would have saved a bit more aggressively, and now I just wish I would have been smarter.

Second, the how could this have happened to me is a stupid mentality and should be done away with immediately. My initial response was to be incredulous but that was very quickly replaced with ‘strategize and adapt’. The latter served me much more. You have to ask yourself what doors of opportunity are open, and they may not be what you are thinking. For me, I don’t plan on finding a job that is going to pay me as much as I was making in this recession, so I had to think, if not a job then what. Arrive at a position that allows you to keep progressing.

Third, loyalty is lost in today’s world, don’t bemoan that, use it. A company will never think ‘don’t fire bill, we promised him a job for a few years’ so why do we think ‘I should stay here for x years, that’s the good thing to do, they’ve invested in me’? A company does what makes it money, for employees, they should treat their career like a chess match, with each move being strategic, but the key there is they are moving. You have no business riding down a sinking ship cause it’s the ‘right thing to do’. Don’t get me wrong, you be ethical, if you commit to a time frame, keep it, but commit cautiously, and move where opportunities open to you.

Anyway, good luck to all of you who are meeting similar fates, but on the bright side, adventures are back and I’m waking up smiling again.

mo star quilt co

So I’ve been putting in a bit of energy into the quilt shop over the past few weeks working to get it on its feet. Though honestly my contributions pale in comparison to those of the two pros running the shop. Mom has really become a pro at running the gammill and Sarah has created a retail niche in a community where there wasn’t one before. It’s a lot of fun working a project like this with them. But as it sits, there has been a lot of progress, and Sarah has started blogging about it on Missouri Star Quilt Company . blogspot.com so you can keep tabs on it. Here’s a few pics of the shop though so you can get a good feel for what I be talking about,