Frank Comments by Dennis Ng on various Topics

[Ms Tan]

I noticed Warren Buffett tends to buy early largely due to his superb rich position as he has no problem holding them long term, the rate he gets is usually lower than us too (like volume discount specially for him)! So average people cannot mirror what he is doing.

Actually, I noticed some of my rich friends are following major market cycle without knowing it - they have exited Stock/Commodity/Forex markets with reason such as "is too volatile now, is best to go for holiday with the profit now and enter again when the picture is clearer."

[Dennis Ng]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

Dr Masaru Emoto (江本 勝 Emoto Masaru?, born July 22, 1943) is a Japanese author and entrepreneur known for his claims that human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water. Emoto's hypothesis has evolved over the years of his research. Initially Dr. Emoto claimed that high-quality water forms beautiful and intricate crystals, while low-quality water has difficulty forming crystals. According to Dr. Emoto, an ice crystal of distilled water exhibits a basic hexagonal structure with no intricate branching. Emoto claims that positive changes to water crystals can be achieved through prayer, music or by attaching written words to a container of water.

Interview with Dr. Masaru Emoto about the magic of "Love" and "Hate" on Water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujQAk9EM ... re=related

Dr Masaru says that we can create our own reality...becos everything is energy, everything is vibrations...

http://www.thankwater.net/

[Ms Tan]

This is such a powerful findings. Thank you Dennis for sharing about the magic of "Love" and "Hate" on Water. Our human body contains 70% water, which explains clearly why & how positive thinking can impact us.

I've started spreading love and appreciation after hearing this is the solution to save the world. I'm sure many of your graduates have done the same.

[Dennis Ng]

This is such a powerful findings. Thank you Dennis for sharing about the magic of "Love" and "Hate" on Water. Our human body contains 70% water, which explains clearly why & how positive thinking can impact us.

I've started spreading love and appreciation after hearing this is the solution to save the world. I'm sure many of your graduates have done the same.

Hi Ms Tan,
great!

These are Truths, not my theory, so I hope all seminar graduates can first change ourselves and also influence and spread the message to our relatives, friends and colleagues.

The world needs to Move from Selfish to Selfless. When that happens, the world will be such a nice place and as the song lyrics goes "we'll make heaven a place on earth".

[JIMMYKKL]

http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/ephoto.html

yes,

in the psat i always doubt by just chanting or so call bless the water n it can become miracle water?

until more 7 years ago when i saw the water crystal then realised trees, water also can feel n they are more pure than human.

so E=MC2... can also also reverse back to mass theorectically if ceratin condition is met.

EMW. even over long distance praying can change that water structure.

UNIVERSE............ haha.

namaste.

[danielcheng]

The Great Disruption: How humankind can thrive in the 21st Century
Paul Gilding, an environmental business expert & passionate advocate for sustainability warns of a coming crisis, a Great Disruption to a world economy based on overcomsumption & waste.

He is right that deep down, we all know these facts & we are borrowing from the future based on our current consumer driven material economic growth model. We could be heading for a social & economic hurricane that will cause great damage. Future generations will be left with much lesser resources at their disposal.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsXID1kS ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1h-jwFe ... re=related

[Dennis Ng]

Hi yhendra,

as I said, it'll be the Worst Financial Crisis anyone has ever lived through. There will be social unrests throughout the world. Many governments throughout the whole world will be toppled.

What can we do? We (all of us seminar graduates) will choose to live differently, we will reach out to as many people as possible with Selfless Love and Concern, and to help as many people to survive the Crisis as possible.

I highlighted what I think are really KEY in your posting.

Cheers!

Dennis Ng

At first I was quite reluctant to post my view below. I keep it as a draft...
But, then, after some thoughts, and reading Dennis posting here
... and looking at this website "We are the 99 Percent"


here are my views:
============================================
Reading this news, just a simple question pop-out from my head...
Could this be the start of the tipping point for BIGGER unrest in US to happen?
When the blood flow on the street... What will the people do?
People not satisfied with the system, the gap of rich and poor, politics, jobless, just retrenched, people lost money in stock market, people lost their savings, inflation...

From US Bureau of Labor Statistic: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

"The number of unemployed persons, at 14.0 million, was essentially unchanged in August, and the unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent. The rate has shown little change since April."

Because of this movement, when this 14 million people come together hand-in-hand... who can stop them? What about another millions in other countries??

It seems in U.S., the REAL STORM is COMING, the calm before the storm has gone...
Hopefully this will not happen here in Singapore...
I hope, we all graduates here maintain strong bonding between us to ride through the turbulence time ahead... supporting each other with whatever/however we can... and we can help our family, relatives, and friends... So we all can come out stronger from the crisis... And we all can be a millionaire with heart...

[Dennis Ng]

Back to 10 percent cash. Caught by warrant buffet

As I shared, in Oct 2008, I also followed Warren Buffett to buy stocks, ignoring my TA knowledge, when TA shows that the markets were clearly still in downtrend and not bottomed yet.

Some of the stocks I bought eg. Metro went down another 40% from Oct 2008 to Mar 2009.

The Bear market has just started, most bear markets last 1 to 2 years, I think Warren Buffett can be too early this time. He's not god, he has been wrong before, and he also openly admit and share his investments mistakes, which I similarly do as well. We don't claim to be 100% right or pretend to be 100% right. Nobody can be 100% right, not even Warren Buffett. (But of course Hu Li Yang claimed in his recent talk that he's been 100% right, and I was so shocked when I heard him said that.

Below is the Oct 2008 article that Warren Buffett wrote that made me followed him to "be greedy when others are fearful." Alas, it was too early and I bought stocks at prices 40% higher than the low.


Buy American. I Am.

By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: October 16, 2008

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.

[positive7]

Thanks for the article. Shall go into hibernate mode now. Will perhaps make a come back in two years.

[Dennis Ng]

it's a sad day. The visionary who brought to us Apple, Mac, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad has passed away on 5 Oct 2011...his legacy lives on in our hearts...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... under-dies

I hope we can continue to learn and live an inspired life like Steve Jobs did.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

I emailed to remembersteve@apple.com the following:

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

It's not how long we live, it is how we live our lives, it's what we do while we are here. What's life about? To develop to our utmost potential, to serve the world while we can, and hopefully, to leave the world a better place than we found it. Steve Jobs, you've done it and inspired us through your life and actions.

The best way for the world to remember and honour you is to live our lives applying your principles and vigor.

Thanks for making the world fall in love with technology, once again. For making technology, so human. My next phone is an Apple. Can't imagine holding anything else.

Dennis Ng, Singapore


Full Text of Steve Job's speech at Stanford University:
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Be inspired by Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford University: 3 of his life stories he shared: Connecting the dots; about Love and Loss; About Death. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

[Dennis Ng]

busy writing to rush for my deadline for submission to my Publisher to get my book to be published in time for launch at the Popular Book Fest in Nov 2011.

My 3rd book will be 100% in English and entitled:"What Your School Never Taught You About Money."

It's what I want to share with the whole world, including lessons I want to teach my children...

It is a work of love.

When we do what we love, the mere doing of the thing is the Greatest Reward I have, the feeling of pure bliss and fulfillment.

So I agree 100% with Steve Jobs, do what you love, don't settle.

You can feel Steve Job's love for Apple and what he does...he says:"love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Steve Job's presentation is great becos he speaks from his heart. You will know and feel it when a person speaks from his/her heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=15107GLdSy4

[Dennis Ng]

Most people struggle to survive becos they only focus on surviving.

It might surprise or even shock you that your life will start to soar when you stop thinking about yourself and family but instead Focus on serving more people and focus on increasing your value add to society.

Live a life of Purpose, a life of Meaning and Contribution, don't just survive.

We have too little time on earth to waste it on merely surviving.

Live each day as if it was your last, for someday it will certainly be.

Cheers!

Dennis Ng

busy writing to rush for my deadline for submission to my Publisher to get my book to be published in time for launch at the Popular Book Fest in Nov 2011.

My 3rd book will be 100% in English and entitled:"What Your School Never Taught You About Money."

It's what I want to share with the whole world, including lessons I want to teach my children...

It is a work of love.

When we do what we love, the mere doing of the thing is the Greatest Reward I have, the feeling of pure bliss and fulfillment.

So I agree 100% with Steve Jobs, do what you love, don't settle.

You can feel Steve Job's love for Apple and what he does...he says:"love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Steve Job's presentation is great becos he speaks from his heart. You will know and feel it when a person speaks from his/her heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=15107GLdSy4

[cool]

it's a sad day. The visionary who brought to us Apple, Mac, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad has passed away on 5 Oct 2011...his legacy lives on in our hearts...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... under-dies

I hope we can continue to learn and live an inspired life like Steve Jobs did.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

I emailed to remembersteve@apple.com the following:

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

It's not how long we live, it is how we live our lives, it's what we do while we are here. What's life about? To develop to our utmost potential, to serve the world while we can, and hopefully, to leave the world a better place than we found it. Steve Jobs, you've done it and inspired us through your life and actions.

The best way for the world to remember and honour you is to live our lives applying your principles and vigor.

Thanks for making the world fall in love with technology, once again. For making technology, so human. My next phone is an Apple. Can't imagine holding anything else.

Dennis Ng, Singapore


Full Text of Steve Job's speech at Stanford University:
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Be inspired by Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford University: 3 of his life stories he shared: Connecting the dots; about Love and Loss; About Death. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

[Dennis Ng]

Most people place their self-interest as first priority, they go around the world asking "WIIFM" ie. what's in it for me? Me, Me, Me...that's all they think about all day.

What do I get if I do this? If I don't get, I don't do...

This is a "Trading" mindset, a "Transaction" mindset.

It is NOT Giving. Give and you shall Receive.

This universal Law only works if you Give without expecting anything in return, that you think about Others first instead of yourself.

Most people have very little, becos they Give very little.

Some hold on tightly to what little they have and not willing to give, without realising they are blocking the path to receiving.

Until you understand and Practise (take action) to Give, you'll then Receive. Once you truly understand the Law, then you'll realise how silly it was for you to withold, to hold on to what little you have, and not Give.

[Dennis Ng]

the journey (process) is what brings us happiness, not the destination (results).

If you really love what you do, just doing it is the best reward you get, you don't think or focus on what rewards you might get for doing it...

I'm sure Steve Jobs will 100% agree with what I said, but for many people, they probably thought I'm just sprouting nonsense.

Cheers!

Dennis Ng

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRShWun7 ... re=related Dan Millman: Life has just three rules?
Socrates: And you already know them...
Dan: Paradox, humour, and change.
Socrates: Paradox...
Dan: Life is a mystery. Don't waste time trying to figure it out.
Socrates: Humour...
Dan: Keep a sense of humour, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure.
Socrates: Change...
Dan: Know that nothing stays the same.

Dan: The journey is what brings us happiness... not the destination