Nollind Whachell

Jeff Jarvis: “The value is in relationships.”

With Thanksgiving just around the corner up here in Canada, I wanted to do a little something extra to give thanks for how good things have been going for me so far with regards to work. Therefore, just like how others are helping me to improve my business so that I can sustain myself, I’d like to do the same for others as well. With that in mind, and discovering Kiva.org just the other day, I decided to invest in a store owner, Adriana, located in Monterrey, Mexico to help her business grow so that she can sustain herself as well.

I can’t give much right now but hey that’s the beauty of the Web. Collectively, with each of us doing just our own small little bit, we can do some pretty big and amazing things as a whole community.  🙂

I just noticed that a company got “acquired” today. Who the company is, isn’t important. It’s the usage of the word “acquired” that always seems to make my skin crawl whenever I see it.

I guess the difference with me is that instead of seeing companies, I see people with ideas. Instead of seeing acquisitions of ownership, I see relationships of mutual respect and understanding. I’m sure people in these companies feel great when they get acquired by a prestigious company but I’m wondering how they’ll feel when they’re sold off to someone else at a later date (which I saw happen to another company just the other day).

“Sorry honey. We’ve had a great five years living together but it’s just not working out for me anymore. I’ve decided to sell you off to my friend Tony who’s going to acquire you. He’s a great guy and I’m sure you’ll be happy with him.”

Ugh.

If you know who Nikola Tesla was then you’ll probably have a pretty good idea what Tesla Motors is about.

A couple of posts on Seth Godin’s site just caught my eye, as I’d say they describe me pretty accurately (especially with regards to how I like tweaking Squarespace).

Where are the tweakers?
More on Tweaking

A post I wrote a while back entitled Sing It Like You Hate It also relates to this as well.

Wow what a difference a day makes! I’ve had some major revelations and insights into some approaches I can take in the future, primarily brought about by a conversation with a person whom I’m helping with site work. I’ll explain more later when I get the chance!

I think I’ve had enough, with work related to the Web that is (and I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while actually). You see for the past five to ten years, most of my enjoyment with the Web has been in creating community sites where I explore and share information with others. Yet in all of these ventures (including my recent Exploring Squarespace site), I didn’t make a dime from them. Thus the thing I’m the most passionate about, I can’t see a way of making any income from it.

Since this may be my last post on the Web (for quite a while anyways), if anyone has any ideas on this, definitely let me know. I mean the only two options I can see are adding ad banners, which would basically provide pocket change, or a more substantial approach would be making new content to the site subscription-based for a monthly fee. Yet I honestly don’t see many people being into that and actually I’d rather avoid that if I could, since I believe information on the Web should be freely accessible. Yet there in lies the problem. If everyone makes their content free, how can they sustain themselves?

Seems like we haven’t made much headway since the dot com bomb period when many sites experienced the same problems and closed up shop, even though many may have had thousands of people visiting them daily. If there isn’t a way to sustain what you’re doing, no matter how valuable and appreciative your content is, then don’t expect to be doing it for long. End of story.

I’m not sure why I thought of this (maybe it’s because I’m running now) but I remember reading about professional athletes whose development is like a series of inclinations and plateaus alternating one after the other. Over a period a time they make dramatic gains in their performance until one day they reach a plateau where they level off for a while making minor improvements at best. Then after a while, again something happens to spark their development and they take off again in making dramatic improvements in their performance.

In thinking about this, I was reminded how similar it seemed to life itself. We may learn something, spending many months or years increasing our knowledge and skill level until one day we feel like we have mastered that knowledge. Sitting on that mountain top of knowledge, we may think we know it all and are masters over others below us. Thus we stop exploring, feeling as though we “know it all”. That is until one day something happens. We see or experience something that let’s us look at life from a different angle or viewpoint, making us realize that our mastery is fleeting, as there are many more mysteries of life yet to be revealed.

Location: 2958 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6K 1R4
Tel: 604-737-7529
Rating: Excellent (5/5)

Sandra and I finally had the opportunity to go together to The Flying Tiger restaurant the other night (as she had already been twice with friends of hers). This restaurant, just down the street from us on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, is getting rave revues and I can see why.

First off the atmosphere and ambience are great. Whoever did the design and lighting did an exceptional job. The menu itself is also superbly done as it has a great selection of food. Even my wife, who is a vegetarian, found many delicious dishes to choose from. During our dinner we had the following dishes.

• Drunken Prawns
  BC Side Stripe peel & eat prawns flash-seared with garlic sweet chili and Shaoshing wine, 5-spice.
  Delicious! These prawns were huge in size and since Sandra doesn’t prefer seafood, I enjoyed them all to myself!
• Three Mushroom Shoyu Tofu en Papillote
  Shiitake, oyster & enoki mushrooms, roasted sesame oil butter, edamame and tofu steamed in a parchment envelope.
  This doesn’t seem like much when you get it but the flavours within it are incredible!
• Hawker Street Noodles
  Fresh egg noodles, shiitake mushrooms, crispy chicken, wild prawns, squid, snap peas, bok choy shoots, nam prik pao, oyster sauce, sweet soy.
  We had a vegetarian version with no seafood or chicken in it but next time I’m going to ask for it on the side so that I can still have it myself, since they charge the same price with or without it. The waitress said she didn’t think it would have much flavour without the seafood and chicken but we both enjoyed it a lot.
• Szechuan Green Beans
  Wok-seared green beans, garlic, shallots, sweet chili.
  This was the only dish that wasn’t up to par. Sandra said she had it before and it was amazing but this time they dumped too much sauce on the beans and they got a little “drunken”. 🙂
• Deep Fried Chocolate Stuffed Banana with Caramel Sauce
  Deserts are not listed on the menu and this was the only one they offered but it was still delicious nonetheless.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal and I’d highly recommend it to anyone in town. Tips for next meal? Since dishes come out one at a time (tapas style), we think we’ll order basmati or garlic fried rice next time, as I would have loved to have soaked up the sweet garlic chili sauce from the prawns with some rice and it would have helped out a lot with our “drunken” green beans as well. If anything I’d say go with a group of at least four people if you can, as you’ll really get an opportunity to explore a lot of different dishes in one sitting.

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand
Rating: Good (4/5)

A lot of people to whom I have spoken, including my wife (who had seen the movie on her own with a friend of hers), didn’t find this movie very enjoyable. However, I was quite surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed it when I rented the DVD the other day. I think the particular reason for this is that I enjoyed the depth of the movie and I’m not sure if a lot of people saw that depth to it.

For example, my wife found the movie depressing. And yes, while the apparent primary subject of the movie is depressing, the inner layers of it instead make us stop and think as to what is truly important in our lives (especially in today’s society where so much emphasis is placed on external materialism versus our internal humanity). If you watch the Special Features section of the movie, you’ll see what I mean, as many of the actors themselves described why they were so drawn to the movie and the emotional human stories interwoven and layered within it. And without a doubt, the director, Nicole Holofcener, sums up the movie perfectly when she asks the following question.

“Are we the people we want to be?”