The Winklevoss Loss

The US Court of Appeals has finally handed down the verdict denying the re-opening of the $65M settlement the Winklevoss twins had previously agreed on with Facebook.

If you have been living under a rock in the past two years, and do not live anywhere near a cinema – the Winklevoss twins are the ones who originally thought of the concept for Facebook. They subsequently hired Mark Zuckerberg to be the technical brain to orchestrate the ‘programming’ for the website. Short order is that Mark Zuckerberg took the idea, ran with it, launched it himself and thus Facebook was born.

The Winklevoss brothers therefore, finding themselves outwitted by the technical genius that gave life to their idea, sued Zuckerberg and after much discussion settled for a $65M payout. You’d probably say – for an idea, that is not a bad pay check.

However, the rebound is that Facebook became the biggest internet news since Google. Goldman Sachs for example wanted in on the Facebook phenomenon like the rest of the world does in some shape or form. Press releases quoting the availability of $1.5B in share placements in the US alone for Facebook for Goldman-Sachs clients must have really grated on the Winklevoss twins. Reading things like that must have gotten the wheels turning in their heads “$65M for OUR idea and this guy makes $*%@@!!!!B? Call the bloody lawyers!”

Listen, I come from advertising, which is an industry that lives and dies by ideas. We glorify the great ones and hand them lion trophies. The lot of them "most creative ones" get blindingly drunk at great parties in Cannes thrown for them annually. You might think it would naturally rankle me that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them but frankly – it is a big fat NO.

In fact, I salute Zuckerberg for having the balls to realize that while a great idea is a fantastic thing to start with, it takes hard work to make it happen. In this case, the starting idea for a website needs to be cracking but it takes a genius programmer to get it live.

Also in this case, this particular arena of technology is so dependent on programming skills – the ability of the programmer to design the structure to make a vague idea come to life in itself becomes a formidable if not THE essential component of the idea.

It is not for his programming skills though that made me go “Team Zuckerberg!” from day one. It was the fact that it was he who did the hard work to make it come to life. He was hired by the Winklevoss twins to do their programming after demonstrating his prowess with the success of “FaceMash” – a super successful viral which Zuckerberg programmed and launched in a few hours while drunk. Therein lies the difference. One Monkey Say (or in this case 2 monkeys), One Monkey Do. Who gets the banana?

The Winklevoss twins fatally believed that Zuckerberg would be content to be their hired gun. Were they naïve? Perhaps. The plausibility however, of purely operating on a ‘trust thing” since they were just young university students just doesn’t wash with me.

I believe the Winklevoss twins suffered from and continue to suffer a grandiose sense of entitlement – they’ve come up with the idea therefore that’s it. Let’s now hire people to go away and do it. That’s the first. Why they didn’t think of doing the coding and programming themselves for what was supposedly their moneymaking idea is beyond me. Even university students understand that ideas get stolen.

The second was that, once Zuckerberg launched Facebook and they saw that it was so similar to their idea - what did the boys do? Complain. Complain to the Harvard President. When they could have in fact gone out there, either hired an army of programmers or did it themselves to immediately launch a similar site to battle Facebook. Didn’t they ever hear of Google, Yahoo and Bing? Oh but no.

In the meantime, Zuckerberg’s Facebook was growing stronger, wider eventually becoming the behemoth that it is today.

After all the time that has passed, what have the twins done? THEY'VE SUED. Settled. Appealed. Re-appealed. SUING YET AGAIN.

Have they gotten any work done on perhaps getting a better version of their idea on the market, which not an unlikely suggestion since supposedly they thought of it in the first place? A BIG FAT NO.

Their attempt to even re-challenge the settlement they agreed on further highlights how entitled these twins seem to be. “We thought about it, we’re entitled to ask for more money.” Please boys. If you spent less time rowing and posing, I would be more sympathetic.

How about taking that $65M and doing something to beat Zuckerberg on the head?

The loss of the Winklevoss brothers is nothing more than proof of the old world truths. That the one who seizes the opportunity is the one who will win. Two monkeys just wanted to stand there and talk about it. The other monkey just went away and did it. Guess who got the banana?

To say it more kindly, this is a lesson about never expecting others to work at making your dreams come true. Now - how about working harder and doing the work yourselves Winklevoss boys? 

Til then – ‘Go Team Zuckerberg!’

Confessions of a Reluctant Convent School Girl

Like most Filipinas, I went to an all girls’ school run by nuns. In the Philippines, especially in the 1960s-1990s, there wasn’t much integration of sexes in schools. Girls went to school with girls and boys went with boys.

That pretty much is the tradition in my family – we only ever encountered the opposite sex at university. Usually, you go to the school attended by the elders in the family when you were growing up.

These schools are mostly run by religious orders of every sort. How progressive or regressive they were in terms of teachings and environments were and remain dictated by the order.  My brothers (and uncles and grandfathers) had the luck to be in a school run by the Jesuits – notably the most progressive order. I went to the school attended by my aunt. During her time, it was incredibly prestigious and their class rosters were dominated by important family names. When I entered it was still alright but by the time I hit high school, they forgot it was the 1980s and went back to even stricter, more ridiculous, incredibly regressive ideas of womanhood. It was only later in life that I learned the order then was actually run by German nuns.

That was the worst – a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns.

I digress. I like saying that as an excuse to explain how I turned out this way.

Anyway, pretty much from day one, religion, specifically, Roman Catholic doctrine is staple food for any child in the Philippine educational system.

From day one, I HATED it with a passion. I hated the subject and did everything I could to give the nuns and my teachers a terrible time. I was an absolute tiny terror. Making teachers cry and getting the nuns to lose their tempers was something I looked forward to on a daily basis. Sometimes, I won and sometimes I lost and got punished.

It didn’t matter – I HATED religion classes with a passion. No let me be clearer – I HATED everything they did in that school.

I absolutely detested the way they painted God as someone who was obsessed with doling out punishments. I hated the way they squashed any questions they could not answer about faith, about their conscious promotion that God wanted women to be docile, idiotic, unquestioning, unthinking, unblinking, perpetually smiling, “nice and simple” sheep following their damned idiot of a shepherd.

I may have been all of nine years old but even then I thought to myself, “If that’s the life I’m supposed to lead, I think I’ll follow the devil instead”. And follow the devil I did.

Looking back I suppose it really was in my nature any way to question everything. Everyone who knows me can attest to my personal nature as being incredibly defiant of any sort of authority and would instigate an argument quicker than you can sneeze. I cannot explain it but even now that I am an adult, I still have the incredible tendency to go left when everyone is going right and right when everyone says left.

It did not help matters at all during my schooling that my aunt told me “You don’t have to accept everything they tell you in school as the truth. You can think for yourself. If you don’t believe what they are telling you, then you should tell them. They cannot hold it against you for believing differently”.

My aunts were all American entrenched immigrants encouraging an exceptionally defiant Filipino 9 year old studying in a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns. I think that was God’s funny idea of “if you’re going to make a situation explosive, don’t hold back on the gasoline.” He certainly made sure there was lots of it and I was an incredibly enthusiastic flame-throwing participant.

Sometime before I went on to high school, my aunts were forcing me to move to 2 other schools due to the changes in the way my school was being run. Unfortunately, both of those schools had an extra year in primary school (what we used to call 7^th grade). In my school, we only had 6 years then we moved on to high school. I could not for the life of me stomach the idea of adding another year to my personal hell. Every year, they forced me to take the exams for the other 2 schools. I always passed them then I stonewalled about moving. Finally, they gave up and let me be. I sighed with relief knowing I would be gone in 4 years instead of 5.

My hatred of all things ‘nuns’ and ‘religious’ led to my considering a solitary application to a university that was public therefore non-religious. Luckily it happened to be and remains the premier university in the Philippines. God must’ve decided to give me a break because I got exactly into the course I applied for without any difficulties. Had I failed, there would have been a lot of explaining to do as I hadn’t applied to any other university.

Looking back, I don’t blame my elders for putting me in that school. Neither do I blame the nuns because they were simply doing what they believed was right. They were all simply following tradition and hey, it worked out for my brothers who are both kind, intelligent, well bred and well spoken in the tradition of men that their school like to make. I on the other hand, remain this formless mass who still likes to make lots of noise, the only difference being, I now wear make-up.

My main terror in life is giving birth to a mini-me, which is not unlikely. However, I already have a head start because there is absolutely NO way I will be putting her in a school run by nuns. On second thought, it could actually be fun….hmmmm….my second wind at torturing nuns this time with a miniature sidekick. Now THAT is a thought. 

I'm Filipino and I Cried While Reading in an English Bookshop

crying in public. that is NOT the done thing in the country where i currently live. the brits are astonishingly reserved. foreigners mistake their utter respect for personal privacy and utter shyness for coldness and aloofness. trust me - many of them are wonderful, warm, kind and sincere. you just have to understand that to be british means very careful observance of, avoiding intrusion and utter consideration of personal space. its the total opposite of us filipinos who think nothing of smiling at and chatting with completely random strangers and telling them about the inner workings of our lives at the drop of a hat.

anyways, i am in a certain life state. if you say AGAIN it means you either know me very well and you understand OR you don't know me very well but you have been reading my blog postings IN SPITE OF.

i needed to clear my head so i went out for a walk. i went into my neighborhood bookshop and as i am always wont to do, was browsing around reading random chapters of several books.

for some strange reason, i picked up the alchemist by paolo coelho. i had read that book early when it came out and i LOVED it. i loved it so much, i re-read it a dozen times in three days and i think in that space in time, i internalized it.

i sat down in a corner of the shop and started reading it. at his opening message, i started to cry and before i knew it, i was sniffing away while turning the pages.

the alchemist is an incredibly easy read. you can read it within an hour and a half. the beauty of the book though is hidden within the deceptively conversational writing are deep messages about personal destiny,    personal prophecy, love and conversing with God.

i realized while re-reading it, how much actually my life has been like that of the shepherd who, on the basis of a dream he had one night, found the courage within him to meet a king, sell his flock, lose his money to a robber,  sell crystal and tea, cross the dessert with an englishman, fall in love, meet the alchemist, predict an invasion, turn himself into the wind, have his money stolen from him and beaten to within an inch of his life, return to where he always was and find his treasure and fulfill his promise to his Fatima.

strangely, the same things i found resonant then were the same things that made me cry.

the shepherd's father, giving him money and his blessings to sell his flock in order for his son to fulfill his dream of travelling - and seeing in his father's eyes the dream that continued to burn. it was the dream of travelling which he had all those years buried because he was concerned with food, water and shelter for his family.

the crystal shop owner who told the shepherd - 'you know i will never go to mecca even if it has been my dream. some people are only meant to continue dreaming of what they want and that is enough. for me that is enough. you on the other hand are made to realize your dream and that is why i know, that you are not going back to your sheep,  you are going to the pyramids. you may go, you have my blessing'

the shepherd, when he falls in love for the first time, realizes, it is the first time he ever wanted to live in one place forever.

the alchemist telling the shepherd, when he was wavering in his decision to leave his Fatima, tells him if you have found something truly lasting, it will still be there waiting for you when you get back. if it was nothing but a spark, it will be gone when you get back therefore it would have meant nothing to go back for anyway. and love, said the alchemist, does not stand in the way of personal destiny. it is love that will bring you to it.

too many beautiful things in that book. too many that were too resonant in my life...too many parallels.
if you don't know anything about it, the alchemist is a fable about following your dream.

 i cried silently for the hour and a half that i re-read the book.

i'm filipino and i cried while reading in an english bookshop.

Your Thoughts Now...v6

i wish i had something witty or funny to say except there isn't any.
i've just got a lot of human things going on in my mind.
some of it really isn't kosher to say in public.
some of it i've chosen to keep purely as mine alone.
they bear no relevance to anyone except my life
and it seems pure indulgence to post it all on the internet
or maybe i just don't want to be accused of wanting attention?

whatever....

these thoughts remain purely mine.
where i won't have to make excuses if they aren't witty or remotely funny.
just imprints and cycles in my neurons - nothing more.

i've started thinking - of what use are half measures in this life?
half measures...are like tepid water...
or a low insipid stuttering fire that won't give out enough heat nor light

tepid water won't ever make good tea or coffee
tepid water is like tepid love

of what good is tepid love?
its as good i think as a low and insipid stuttering fire that won't give out enough heat nor light
it will never be in sufficient amounts for it to hurt enough
nor will it ever be in sufficient amounts to cause you to die of happiness

who wants a tepid love?
that like tepid water that doesn't make good tea or coffee
that like a tepid, insipid fire that won't ever be enough to cause hurt or happiness

I'm too tired for anything tepid....
Too tired for anything stuttering...
Too tired for anything insipid....

Your Thoughts Now...v5

it is cold and raining outside much like autumn weather and all i want to do is curl up in my bed with my books and my notebooks and my mac....the heat of the machine is great on my lap because the radiator in the room isn't working very well.

i keep thinking about what a colleague told me on the shop floor yesterday as i was saying my goodbyes to various people before i left. she told me 'my dear let me tell you that all your dreams, all that you've ever wished or hoped for will come true. happiness will be with you - trust me'. 24 hours later her words are still ringing in my head - this after my nightly prayers asking for comfort and reassurance. it couldn't have been more blatant a sign.

her kindness made such an impact on me - more than any material gift anyone could have given me as a parting gift. it reminded me that the things most valuable really can never be bought.

it also reminded me that gifts of incredible value can come not just from the ones you love but sometimes from complete strangers as well.

i keep hearing it in my head....'my dear let me tell you that all your dreams, all that you've ever wished or hoped for will come true. happiness will be with you - trust me'.

not a bad playlist in my head i say.

Jagged Little Pill

is the album of my life.

i know every lyric of every song - well almost. including 'your house' which was a hidden track in the original CD pre-Ipod days.

when it first came out, it officially became the anthem album of all the angry, angsty, depressed and vengeful. i guess the janis joplin pop equivalent of my generation.

'hand in my pocket', 'you ought to know' and 'ironic' were constantly on repeat in my head.

then i got into psychotherapy, got medicated a bit. the same way we go through music depending on what's going on in our life, the album was relegated to the bottom of my CD pile.

i completely forgot about it. then ten years after it came out, alanis re-made the cd completely re-doing the arrangements using an acoustic approach.

i didn't know what to expect. when i bought it, i stared at the packaging for some time trying to recall how MUCH I LOVED this album. strangely, i was frightened a bit remembering how incredibly angry i was with myself and with life when i loved this album so much.

except at that point, i wasn't angry anymore.

it took me a few days to unwrap the CD and when i finally summoned up the guts to listen to it, i realized alanis had grown up with me.

the acoustic arrangement gave the lyrics a whole new feel. it was as if, the angry woman gave way to someone who was wiser.

it was a world of a difference - those two versions. its like two different women: the first was someone who just discovered her power and was enjoying inflicting it on every person. the second was someone who finally recognized that real power is acceptance of the fact that occasionally we will be powerless, but it will be alright because, as with all things in this life, good or bad, everything will eventually pass.

when a woman is 25, she rages and demands for the world to accept her on her own terms. when a woman is 35, provided she has learned to live a little, the woman has accepted herself on her own terms and no longer gives a damn whether the world feels the same way.

that is the difference between the two versions of both albums.

or maybe, in the absence of anything better to do, i am trying too hard to justify why this album just won't quit my playlist. ever.

Only Love Is Real

thinking about the new book i am reading about 'many lives, many masters' by dr. brian weiss.

he's a pyschiatrist who's a super hotshot in the medical world in his field. and the proponent of reincarnation and past lives based on the groundbreaking psychotherapeutic treatment he embarked on with a patient that set him on this course.

because of his reputation as a firm scientist, he has escaped the ridicule that would have been likely to follow him. instead, he has opened the door to people opening their minds to the thought that while we all would like to think that we have only one life to live, we actually have many - one after the other.

the basic tenet is that we are all essentially spirits aiming to achieve the highest level of spirituality. we are all then sent to live physical lives because each physical life teaches us lessons. in order to progress to a higher spiritual state, we MUST learn our lessons and not learning them means being sent back progressively over several lifetimes until we learn. and that the physical state is the lowest state we can ever be in because unlike a soul, the physical body cannot transcend time and space.

albert einstein knew this in his soul before anyone else did. only someone who was tapping into the wisdom of the infinite universe could ever have realized time and space is relative from the point of the universe where you are standing from.

i imagine that einsten is now in a spiritual level further on than many of us.

this is not a wisdom alien to us, from way back thousands of years ago. all religions have their own tenets about reincarnation including that of christianity. it was only erased from the bible by then emperor constantinople and his mother because they feared it would make people complacent and not repent for their sins if they were allowed to believe that we make up for our lack over a course of many lives instead of just one.

i've always believed in reincarnation ever since i was a child who stumbled across it in my readings. yes - i was a strange child who read about many things that were very strange for a child to read.

it's as if this knowledge has always been part of me - and reading about it made intuitive sense to me. when i read about it, i just knew without a shadow of a doubt about its truth.

many times in my life, i meet people for the first time and we feel as if we've known each other forever. some that i meet first time, i intensely dislike for no reason - as if this person had hurt me before and i was being warned by some supernatural signal to stay away.

many times i experience the sense of having been somewhere before, though i have only been there the first time. of knowing, a certain moment had happened before and sometimes even recalling the previous times when i remember that a certain moment had happened to me before, twice or even thrice.

and it's not just me. everyone gets it too. everyone gets their own moments. some are more aware of it than others.

the book also says, over the course of many lifetimes, the same people are often with us. sometimes changing roles, in one life they are our father and in the next our neighbor, in the next our lover. their roles alter depending on what lessons our souls need to learn.

sometimes though someone appears in our lives whom we have never known before. but everyone we meet is pre-destined. NOTHING and NO ONE in our life is a coincidence. what we do with them, how we choose to treat them, what we experience with them whether we learn from them or to distance ourselves from them is OUR CHOICE.

and in the choices we make, we weave our own karma that will determine the circumstances for our progressive lives. ultimately, our life and our future lives will be woven by our own hands, dictated by the choices of our own hearts.

controversially, it also says, our souls choose the next moment when we will again be re-born. and when we will die. and that we actually choose who to be born to.  perhaps, every lifetime is meant to begin with the lesson of acceptance - for as physical beings we always believed we can never choose our parents thus, who we come from. and it is a startling concept to actually be faced with.

that dying is one experience of indescribable immense peace, freedom from any kind or state of pain and luminosity.

that when we die, our souls move to a place where we converse with other souls, where higher spirits tell us what we learned in our lives and what we still have yet to learn. then after our soul is ready, we are again re-born: at a time of our choosing and to parents of our choosing as well.

it also says, essentially, we are all souls linked together into a common universe.

above all, it says nothing ever really lasts in every lifetime - not disease, not war and not even death. when we die, only our souls and love remain.

ultimately, it says, only love is real.

even if you will never believe in reincarnation because you won't or can't understand it, surely you understand and believe that in the end - ONLY LOVE IS REAL.