Reliving the childhood game

I only played one computer game when I was a kid. It was an old DOS flight simulator called F-19 Stealth Fighter with 16-bit graphics and horrendous sound. But I remember it fondly. Firing maverick missiles and getting Distinguished Flying Crosses consumed quite a few hours of my childhood.

This past weekend I decided to relive the nostalgia and play it again. I installed a DOS emulator for my macbook pro caller Boxer and it wasn't too hard to find a copy of F-19 floating around in the abaondonware universe.

The game is still fun. Even more than before.

For one thing, I'm a lot better. I decided to glance at the manual this time around and figured out how to play the most difficult levels. When I was a kid I could never advance far enough, because to play this game properly required a lot of patience. Flying a stealth fighter, after all, is not about blowing everything up. This time around, it was quite easy to win the Congressional Medal of Honor (the highest achievement in the game), where as before it seemed impossible.



Another added fun factor is that I've actually visited some of the places in the maps. This game was made during the end of the Cold War. So one of the maps was Eastern Europe and I had to fly missions into Czechoslovakia and Poland. It was quite amusing to fly across cities like Prague, Brno, and Krakow and see the low res renderings of them that looks nothing like the real thing. Even more fun to attack targets in those cities and imaging what those parts of the world was like frozen in time.

In the end, this was just a well made game. No wonder, because Sid Meier made this before he became famous for making strategy games. It is amazing after more than 20 years, this game is not only still playable, but still amazingly fun. Sid said of F-19:

Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game.

So there you have it… a bit of my childhood that is still accessible. No matter how much two decades have changed me and the world, some things remain preserved forever.

The Secret to Retiring at 28

Two things happened this month. I turned 28 and I retired for the first time. Napoleon conquered Italy when he was 28 and Beethoven finished his first symphony around the same age. So I think I might be on the right train here. But where did this journey originate? And how did I find this train? I've been thinking more and more lately about what brought me here.

I was an intelligent but socially awkward kid in high school during the dot com boom. I read, with wide eyes filled with wonder, about the exploits of entrepreneurs, not much older than me at the time, striking millions overnight. It was then, when I first heard the term post-economic.  I thought it was a great concept. Why work as Camus' absurd hero, Sisyphus, when I can break out of the day-to-day cycle of everyman? I could buy a fast car, maybe even an aircraft carrier, or get my own island. And more importantly, the girl I had a crush on at the time, but was too shy to talk to, would fall madly in love with me.

And like that, the seed for the dream was planted.

Reality turned out a little differently. I don't own a car (anymore). I've only visited aircraft carrier museums (twice). I found out I'm not a fan of beaches (so island is out). And that particular girl just recently married a dashing Stanford graduate (and I'm very happy for her). But the one thing I really really wanted, to be post-economic and to shed my shackles, I got.

Looking back, I can't pin-point the exact starting point of this journey. Was it three years ago, when I dropped out of grad school? Or maybe it was ten years ago, when I went to college and was inspired by a friend who had a little taste of the dot com roller coaster. Maybe it went back even further. High school? Junior High? Maybe it was my entire life. Do I believe in destiny? (I do). Is it just dumb luck? (I don't think so).

Even if I don't know when the journey started, I do know a little about what it takes. A lot of hard work, that's a given. I kind of knew that before I went in, but I grossly underestimated how much was really required. But beyond hard work, I had the right partner. I could've worked myself to death and still got nowhere, if it wasn't for my partner, working equally as hard, if not harder, beside me, day in and day out. This has taught me everything I know today about relationships, trust, and my own failings as a human being. And then, there was luck or fate or destiny or whatever you call it. That invisible hand of god or gods that guided us every now and then. In short, I made it here because I wasn't alone, we worked hard, and we avoided enough landmines on the way.

Of course, my life isn't perfect. The past 10 years, as far as love and relationships are concerned, is one big write off. I guess I'm just not very good with people, but I'm changing that. Out of everything I've learned so far, the most important may be how to make dreams come true. As long as I follow my process, I know I can make anything in my life that is imperfect or deficient, better. I may never have the perfect life, but I do live a charmed life.

So now, I'm going to take a little break, hence the retirement. I want to use up a little of that freedom I saved up in my piggy bank and travel to far away places. When I come back, that's when the real fun begins. I've officially crossed over from working because I have to, to working because I want to. It would be a waste, for me and for humanity, if I never get to use my secret formula to change the world.

And someday, I will even share that secret formula.

On Failure

Last week, I failed.

There are two types of failures. In one case, you fail and haven't a clue why. In the other case, after the failure, you knew exactly why you failed. Last week's failure was of the latter type, which makes it more interesting to talk about.

The first reason for my failure is because I lost sight of the goal. I knew what I wanted before it happened and I remembered what I wanted after it ended. But while it was happening, I completely lost sight of my goal. In fact, I found exactly what I wanted; so perfect, so right. But not conscious of my goal at the time, I didn't work hard enough, I didn't push far enough, and I didn't value what I had enough. When the dust settled last week, all I was left was the feeling of stupidity and regret. That made me sick to my stomach.

The second reason for my failure is because until last week, I didn't realize that time is my enemy. I used to be cavalier about time, so much so that I could be considered lazy. For some reason, I thought that I had all the time in the world and with enough time, I will find clarity and solve my problems. But time never makes anything better. Time reduced the Roman Empire to rubbles and brought the mighty Qing dynasty to its knees. The clock started the moment it happened and I let the clock run out on me.

The last reason for my failure is because I ignored the problems. It's not that I didn't see the problems; I had ample warning ahead of time. I simply swept them under the rug. This is a particular nasty character flaw of mine that has manifested itself many times in my life. There are problems that scare me, because I don't know how to tackle them. So I ignore them in the hopes that they'll go away or become easier. That never happens. In fact the opposite is true. The more I ignore a problem the bigger it gets, until one day it explodes in my face.

The frustrating part is that I had all the tools to prevent the failure from happening. This makes the failure all the more difficult to swallow. Had I honestly tried my best and if then, I still failed, then it just wasn't meant to be. But I didn't do my best. Hence the regret.

On a higher level, a large part of my failure must be attributed to my mental state. When I'm having a good day, I'm an unstoppable genius. But when I'm having a bad day, I'm a pathetic shadow. In the past few months, I had more bad days than good, was more shadow than genius. And fortunately, this is something I have a lot of control over. So from henceforth, I will be having a lot more good days.

Look forward to seeing me on one of those days.

2 Years in San Francisco

It's almost exactly 2 years to the day since I moved to San Francisco. Jeff and I just came back from our epic Euro Trip and my luggage was delayed at JFK. I had no clothes and had to buy a t-shirt at the airport souvenir shop. I still had an apartment in Berkeley at the time, but we already signed the lease for our place in SF before we left a month earlier. But since my key was in the luggage that didn't make it, I had to crash on the couch in our new apartment on Van Ness Avenue.

That was two years ago. Memories likes to play funny tricks with the mind. I could remember some things vividly, yet it all seems so distant.

I was just starting my first full time job and still had a Master's project to submit. It felt very different, not being a student anymore. The funny thing is I had no idea what my future held in store for me. I was so different then. Insecure, both financially and emotionally. A little dumb and a lot unwise. I seemed to be okay playing the same game everyone else was playing.

Then, life happened. Someone hit the fast forward button. Was I ready for it? No, absolutely not. But it happened anyways.

Quitting my job and starting our first company together was probably a very stupid thing to do. I was so naive. All we had was a grand idea, a fuzzy path for getting there, and an unshakeable belief in our ability to execute. We didn't think it was going to be easy, but hell, we had no idea it was going to be that hard. Had I known all the obstacles, would I have started?

And that is one secret to be an entrepreneur: dare to be stupid. When Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year, it was probably a stupid idea at the time. The important thing was to take that leap; and that leap is almost always a little stupid. Smart people doing stupid things and somehow wonderful things happen.

That is how it all started.

The unfortunate side-effect is that I never quite got to live in San Francisco. My physical body is here, but only to shuttle myself from home to work and back home again. One of these days, I'll really live in San Francisco. Maybe I'll throw a party to celebrate that occasion...