My Quarantine Journey

At the beginning of every year as themes are always about new beginnings I always have a burst of energy to try to meet with some friends discuss some ideas to see what opportunities or businesses can be done. I actually realized this pattern as the year was ending. But this year for some reason I decided to take it slow. Ironically, on the very first day of 2020 I wrote about 'memento mori', 'amor fati' and 'carpe diem'. (You can read it here)

I decided to some personal growth techniques which I learned about when I went through a personal development seminar in around 2006. Since November though, I already started doing daily goals which I write on index cards. It's a good way to journal and create baby steps towards your bigger goals but it did seem I was just doing it for the sake of doing it. I stepped it up a bit at the start of the year by making more concrete goals. Not really grand what is your dream type of goals but small achievable but not quite easy goals because it does change your routine. I actually achieved my 1st goal which was to get myself an electric bike. Because of the traffic and the hassle of lugging around a car, I felt getting an electric folding bike help me expand my experience of the city. It will help me go around and wiz through traffic and give me a different perspective. My other little goals were to go a place I've always wanted to visit like museums and travel to visit some friends. I believed achieving these little goals would help me create the bigger goals.

Sadly 2020 had other plans. Not just for me, but for the whole world. The world was forced to stop due to the pandemic. As I was absorbing the situation I looked for things to do and fortunately a lot webinars were being offered and I decided to join those that interested me. I came across a post by a Facebook friend about a personal coaching session. Here is where I met William Hitzke.

I just saw coaching session on the post but I didn't read through it because he was a offering a 12 session free coaching program. I call this my 'happy accident'. I've been doing coaching techniques on myself the past few months and was actually considering looking for a coach and boom! A gift.

When I first entered the room and realized it was a small group, my first instinct was to get out quick but fortunately I didn't. When I stayed I just committed myself for the full 12 sessions. William was starting his personal coaching journey and just like any long trip it starts with the first step. This group was his first step. Having gone through personal development seminars before I knew what I was getting into but unsure of what I would get out of it.

Coincidentally, this is not the first time I was in a "test" group. A friend of mine who is now a successful personal and corporate coach offered to coach me as well. That was the better deal though since it was one one one coaching. Sadly, the better deal wasn't that good. I found myself comparing this experience against that. The meditation process and the teachings William shared were very helpful and can easily be done even after the coaching sessions are long over. His openness and acceptance to everyone was also felt even though we were a group separated by oceans and only connected via the internet. I felt the strength of his coaching was most tangible as the session were closing because the strangers that started sharing in the beginning were opening the hearts as the sessions were ending. It became harder to leave the sessions because we wanted to hangout a bit longer.

As we were stuck in this quarantine, William us an opportunity to journey within ourselves, our past, our present and the future we are about to create. It taught us to live in the present and use it to propel ourselves one step at a time to a future that we envision. I do not wish to go much into the process since it's best that a person goes through it with an open mind and and coach like William Hitzke would be your best guide through it.

Be still, be kind, be patient, be grateful. Love and be loved. Take it one day at a time. We will all come out of this together. Just believe and have FAITH.

KITT 2000 (Knight Rider) vs Tesla Model X

This is essentially an expectation vs. reality post. In September 1992 a TV show premiered which starred KITT - the most technology advance car imagined at that time. Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) was essentially a weaponized talking car equipped with the most modern technology at that time. You can view KITTs full features in this website but for this purpose we will only focus on feature relevant to everyday consumers, because we don't really need missiles and smoke screens for our everyday commute.

Maybe it would be good to start with basic features relevant to consumers today:
- 2 door 4 seater sports car
- 0 to 60 mph in 2 seconds
- 12 ft breaking distance, 60 - 0 mph
- full and autonomous self driving capability
- it has artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that can make the car carry actual conversations with the driver
- powered by hydrogen gas with almost unlimited range
- self tinting windows
- auto doors
- video display monitors
- surveillance capability
- printer (good as a mobile office)
- GPS

If compared to to the Tesla Model X:
- 4 door SUV
- 0 to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds
- semi-autonomous driving
- electric powered with a range of about 300 miles
- auto doors, gull wing rear doors
- digital display
- sentry mode
- GPS

Aside from the cars being different as on is a sport car and the other an SUV the specs seem to be very par with each other. Obviously one is imagined and the other has come 30 years in the future. While a fully autonomous car will be a long time coming even with all the breakthroughs in technology, a car that can actually drive like a human in all types of road conditions and no roads at all is still in the early developments. While fully autonomous vehicles such as the martian rover has been developed and autonomous vehicle that can guarantee human safety has a long way to go.

It does seem that technological advancements on the automotive industry moved more rapidly in the past two decades compared to the previous years due in part on the growth of faster internet, faster computing and the swift development on smaller technologies such as smartphones and cameras. I drive a 17 year old car and it seems like ancient technology. KITT is now 38 and the imagined features are almost all a reality.

Pandemic Romance Going Viral

I love following the Instagram account Humans of New York and more recently I followed New York Nico. The compelling stories of Humans in New York and the characters of the people in New York Nicos account provide a window to what many believe to be the greatest city on the world. I've been to New York once when I was probably 10 years old. At that time my goal was to visit all the tallest building in the city we would visit in the US. I got to go up the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers. What stuck to me however, if my memory serves me right, was seeing the police arrest a guy in the streets. It must have frightened my mother who was taking 3 kids along with here to see this kind of scenario. All the movies and songs about the city however, creates such an impression about the city and it's characters. With it's blend of culture and the mix of nationalities I can't argue when people when they say it's the greatest city in the world.

This story just adds to the millions of stories that makes New York - New York. It happened in Brooklyn though. But isn't that part of New York as well? As a Filipino, I hope I'm given that leeway to clump them together. The video can easily tell the story but as a romcom fan, and in the age of social media you can easily look deeper and follow through on their story.

Here's Jeremy Cohen's account:

And here's Tori Cignarella's account:

As I was looking through their accounts I sadly found out that one of Tori's aunts was a victim of the pandemic. Her name was Remy, which sounded very Filipino. One of those who posted a comment asked if she was Filipino and it turns out she 1/4 Filipino. If you are part Filipino, even if it's 1/100 as long as you have Filipino heritage, Filipino's and the local media would love this content.

This story has been on the news for the past two weeks and I just came across it. It does seem the their story continue to develop and I've started following them on social media. I do hope, I'm sure we all do, that this story goes on to their happily ever after since we all need a feel good story to come out of this tragedy.

Imagine

When I was younger, I didn't like this song because of the lyrics. Specifically the line "no religion too". I think this line still disturbs people because they find that it offends their religious beliefs. And that is exactly the point the song is trying to say. Ironically, religion can be very divisive. An extreme example of this is ISIS. They oppress women and will essentially kill anyone who will oppose their religion and their belief system.

Anything that clearly delineates people from one another creates some sort of friction. The song simply invites you to imagine a world where nothing separates our beliefs from one another. Where the world can simply be one unified entity maybe a world simply believing in LOVE.

A Happy Accident

The 'lockdown' in the Philippines started March 15, 2020. Prior to this I was quite anxious not knowing what to do. While there was a potential opportunity, I has some doubts on how I can push it to move forward. When the quarantine started the world stopped and it gave me the sense that now we are all in the same predicament. My anxiety about my situation shifted to issues of the pandemic. Since this was beyond my control inner uneasiness seemed to have been tempered.

While making the most of of the 'break' was all over social media, it seemed like a regular day for me. I work from home with a few clients so I do have a lot of time. When I normally look to be more productive with my time, I shifted to the opposite and spent more time on social media following the pandemic and consuming my miscellaneous interests on YouTube. I did watch or join some online webinars that went on my feed.

Three weeks on the quarantine my mindset somehow shifted to join more of those productivity and business related webinars. This is when I came across Coach Russ' feed and saw a coaching webinar. I've been wanting to reach out to a personal coach for the longest time but resources was always in question. I said to myself one session would be nice and I just wanted to see what it was all about. My expectation was that it would be a big group where the person would be helping us out on how to cope and move forward in this crisis.

- I was about 5 minutes early. Suddenly realized, this won't be a big group thing. I wanted to leave. I did not.

- As it went on, I participated in the exercises. Communicating privately....

- Dinner at my house was usually at 6:30pm. If I was called for dinner I would leave....

- Dinner was late. I told William privately that I was potentially looking to reach out to coaches. He told me to wait till the end.

- Towards the end of the session William was looking for people to share. He called me out. I didn't want to share. I didn't want to be that guy, so I spoke up.

That night I went to check on the post again and realized I didn't read it thoroughly. It was clearly stated that 12 session will be offered for free. Looking back at it, maybe if I had seen that I would not have went to the meeting. I wasn't mentally prepared to go talk virtually with a bunch of strangers.

A happy accident. Serendipity would also be an appropriate term for it but I would rather call it a happy accident. In my sharing I think I consciously said a happy accident because it communicates it much more clearly. It was a happy accident.