In my opinion, a majority of these conference calls is a waste of time. Most of the time a short email can accomplish what is spent in a one hour conference call. That’s just my opinion. Speaking of which I better head to bed since I’ve got a 6 a.m. call in the morning — ick.

For JLC 4 we met up in L.A. this year and experienced the star studded city, although we didn’t see any celebrities besides the wax ones and hand and footprints of those left behind in cement at Grauman’s Chinese theater. It was quite spectacular to experience Halloween night on Santa Monica Boulevard with the thousands of people all decked out in lavish costumes that must have taken days if not months to prepare.

The night before Halloween we trekked all the way to Knott’s Scary Farm for some spooktacular night of fright. For $45 with the triple A discount, we wandered into a theme park with roller coasters that was transformed into one of horror. With thirteen individually themed haunted houses to choose from, there was no shortage of fun and terror. Throughout the park scary monsters, clowns with chainsaws and zombies roamed around scaring people left and right. It was usually funny to witness some girl screaming while being chased by one of them.

For more photos, check out my L.A. set on Flickr. By the way if you’re a Twitterer, you can follow me @michleephoto. I’m quite new to it so still trying to get the hang of it.

I’m currently working in Pune, India and will be here for three weeks. Since arriving on the 3rd, it’s been quite interesting to observe the people, culture and daily life here. I was looking forward to this trip though not the long journey to get here, which took about 28 hours and two long layovers in Hong Kong and Bangalore. Since the moment the hotel car came to pick me up at the airport, I was eager to see for myself what it is really like in India.

Pune is considered a small city when compared to Mumbai or New Delhi, though it’s population is about 3.4 million. It is a developing city with a growing number of IT development centers. But mostly it is a city of extreme contrasts. Driving past neighborhoods of tin shacks, I arrived at the Taj Blue Diamond, a rather posh hotel. Everywhere I go it’s quite common to see extreme poverty next to some swanky hotel, restaurant or shopping mall.

The traffic is very chaotic, but somehow people here know how to maneuver through it without getting hit. Four-wheelers and two-wheelers weave in and out of lanes while dodging pedestrians crossing the street in between vehicles and auto rickshaws that look like black beetles swarming the roadways. The bigger streets have lane markings though no one stays within them and the honking never ends.

I’ve taken a number of photos, but I’ve been quite busy so it’s been hard to find time to edit and post. However, I’ve finally been able to post some to my Flickr stream and I’ll also be posting to my photo blog that I’ve just launched.

I have an idea. And I’ve had it for quite some time. But the problem is I’m not sure who to share it with; more specifically, the person who can make it a reality. So I’m going to share my idea with you and I hope that you might find it to be a pretty darn good idea. Good enough that you’d help me share it with whomever you know and maybe, just maybe, the people you share it with will want to do the same. And eventually the hope is that this idea will reach the right person who can take it to the next level.

You may wonder why I can’t take this idea of mine and turn it into reality. The answer is simple really. I’m not a rocket scientist or an engineer, but I do have an idea and one that deserves consideration. Because the thought of having to ride in a saddle with only 23 inches between your seat and the one in front of you sounds terribly uncomfortable. Sitting in economy class is already a pain as it is and now it’ll really be a pain in the arse quite literally.

For some time now the airline industry has been cutting costs and tacking on fees to everything in order to increase profit margins. Charging for things we used to get for free like checking a bag, meals and pillow and blanket set. And those little bags of pretzels—no more! Now they want to introduce semi-standing seats. This is getting worse and I don’t see it going back to the way things used to be. Flying used to be fun. Not so much these days.

This is the reason why we need to totally reinvent the way we travel because the airline industry will continue to seek ways to make money and not in your best interest or anyone else who flies for that matter.

Perhaps you may have heard about the space elevator a few years ago and how they are working on making this become a reality. You might have thought this came out of a science fiction novel and actually it did. If it’s conceivable to take an elevator ride to space then shouldn’t it be possible to ride the elevator to a space pad which serves as a waiting station? Here passengers would get off the elevator and wait for the earth’s rotation until it reaches their desired location. They would then take the elevator back down to earth. These space pads could replace airports and include hotels, restaurants, spas, theaters and shopping malls to make it a pleasant waiting experience. And all without having to fly!

So if you’d rather take an elevator ride to space and wait for the earth to reach your destination than to possibly fly in a saddle seat in the near future, please share this idea with everyone you know. Hopefully someday not too long from now we’ll enjoy traveling again.

All of that tension is polluting the thoughts in my head and as a result I've got a workover. It's got me thinking about a lot of things lately because of it. Mainly how it's not worth spending my time doing something I don't enjoy. So I've decided to focus on what it is I do want to spend my time doing and figure out how I can begin to make those changes happen.

One of the things I feel I need to do is to begin de-cluttering my mind and my life. Getting rid of junk that's not being used will help me focus on what's important. Today I dropped off old computer equipment and electronics at a recycling center. It felt great to get rid of the clutter that had no value to me anymore.

I've also come across a few blogs that provide advice on simple living and how to work on your own terms. Rowdy Kittens is one such blog with a strange name, but has some great resources and links to other sites. The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau is another blog that provides advice on how to do what you love and travel the world at the same time. Chris' goal is to travel to every country in the world and has currently been to 125 of them. Illuminated Mind provides a free ebook called the Zero Hour Work Week, which explains how the author broke free from the 9-to-5 routine and started his own online business.

Some of the commonalities I'm noticing among these bloggers are:

• They earn income by writing on a topic that targets a specific group of people
• They make use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to market their message and build a following
• They give away a lot of free advice, but also sell ebooks on their site to generate income
• They build relationships with other like-minded people in the online community and cross promote each other's work

These bloggers are producing some really great work that they're sharing with the world. I'm sure a lot of effort goes into generating the attention of the online community in order to build their business and I'd like to explore this idea. But some things I need to think about are:

• What do I want to produce and share
• How will I brand myself
• How do I market my content and create awareness and a following online
• How do I generate income from it

It's a lot to think about and leaves me with lots of homework to do so I better get crackin' if I want to spend my time enjoying what I do.

So yesterday when I decided to grab a quick bite to eat down the street at Crystal Mall, I noticed a lot of celebrating going on. Decorations were up in the plaza, eight roast pigs were neatly lined up on a table, dragon dance performances were being held, lettuce with red envelopes were hanging from the rafters and a photographer was on site to document all of it. Then I realized it must have been Mid-Autumn Festival, though it seemed quite early for it in the year. But we are in mid-August after all and Chinese holidays never fall exactly on the same dates every year in the Western calendar.

I kept thinking how I wished I had carried my dslr with me, but all I had was my camera phone so I followed the dragon dancers snapping photos and videos as they went from stall to stall performing their lettuce-eating dance. It wasn’t until I passed a table with two five-foot length sheet cakes with the words written on them celebrating the tenth anniversary of Crystal Mall that I realized the reason for the celebrations. So after confirming with a co-worker, Mid-Autumn Festival isn’t until mid-September actually. Oops! False alarm, hehe… but now I can be prepared for when it arrives so that I have my camera in hand.

I’ve been meaning to post this illustration that I finished a couple weeks ago. It’s my ode to bubble tea and all its fantastic goodness. Sometimes I meet people who have never tried bubble tea before and I’m astonished especially living in Vancouver. How can you not have ever had the curiosity to try such a unique drink? I tell people that it’s like a drink that fills two needs at once: you can drink tea and snack on the chewy tapioca balls at the same time.

In the beginning I didn’t like the tapioca pearls because I thought it got in the way of drinking the tea, but over the years it has grown on me and I can’t order one without them! Recently I’ve discovered a new flavor—tiramisu—that’s now my second favorite next to the classic milk tea flavor.

Could my views be affected by my western upbringing where in the West the culture tends to be more individualistic and independent while in the East it is more focused on the “we” mentality rather than “I”? Are eastern cultures more accepting of the idea of destiny if they already believe in serving the greater good? How would my life be like if I was brought up in the East instead of the West? Would I have entirely different beliefs which would lead me to make decisions that would lead to a much different life than the one I lead now? Or is it possible that whatever decisions you make which can lead to multiple paths, the outcomes will always be the same? If I believed in destiny then wouldn’t my life be much easier in terms of making decisions? I wouldn’t get caught up in worrying about making the wrong decisions and pondering the what if’s. It just is.

Would I be happier if I can accept the idea of destiny? If yes, then isn’t that a good enough reason to see it as something positive? This thought leads me to the idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH). You must have heard of it before. The king of Bhutan was the first to come up with this concept of measuring his nation’s happiness rather than its wealth. Though the Bhutanese can hardly be considered wealthy in terms of money, they are certainly wealthy in happiness. They are one of the happiest in the world and perhaps it’s because they have no trouble accepting that though they don’t have much, it just is.

So back to destiny… maybe I should think of it this way—we may not have control over predetermined outcomes based on whatever decisions we make in our lives, but we may have control over the decisions we choose to make. In other words, it’s not important what the outcomes are, but rather how we arrive there that makes the difference.

You have no idea how long it took me to get there and formulate the thoughts in my head to press the keys that would form the words and eventually the sentences that appear here on this page. I’m currently experiencing a condition that is commonly known as severe lack of motivation. Every day I go through the motions of life of waking up, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, going to work, sitting in front of the computer, coming home, eating dinner, getting online, going to bed and doing it all over again the next day. I’m having my very own Ground Hog’s Day experience.

What’s worse is knowing that I’m in this never-ending cycle. I almost think it would be better to be completely unaware like a robot. It’s like moving through quicksand. The harder I try to get out of it, the deeper I sink.

Something said by somebody important during one of the Ted talks I watched recently has stood out and stuck in my head. You’d think it be something inspiring, but it was actually depressing and made me think about the condition I’m in now. To think that of the two groups of people in the world there exists, that I’m in the camp that simply endures life and waits for the weekend is sad. But I can’t deny it, which makes it even more sad.

So as you can see, I’ve lost my motivation and I’m desperately searching for it. I certainly hope that whatever terrible funk I’m in now doesn’t last long ‘cause it sure is depressing.

It’s hard to visualize exactly how much area the oil gush covers in the Gulf of Mexico until you compare it to the area in relation to where you live. IfItWasMyHome.com provides a tool that allows you to overlay the oil gush in Google Maps.

After comparing the size to different places in the world, it gave me a better sense of the scope of this disaster. It’s quite astonishing to say the least. As you can see in the map above, all of Vancouver is covered and stretches west over parts of Vancouver Island. It reaches as far east as Kamloops, about a four hour drive from Vancouver and about 1.5 hours drive south across the Canadian-US border. The oil gush easily covers all of the islands of Hawaii and most certainly the entire island of Taiwan.

It does baffle me that even after a little over a month, no one seems to know how to stop the oil from spewing out into the Gulf. Of all the engineers that work for BP, the government officials and the consultants brought in to help solve this problem, you’d think with all that collective brain power that hole would be plugged up by now. And of all those groups of people, you’d think that BP should have the most know how on handling this issue. After all they deal with oil day in and day out. They are the oil experts, but maybe that’s stretching it. BP’s ineptness at bringing the situation under control is near to being a farce. You can’t help but think they’d have as much trouble handling a coffee spill. Their unsuccessful attempts to stop the flow of oil and their inability to mitigate this risk in the first place shows that they’re incapable of doing their jobs and have no right to be in the oil business. By “they” I mean BP as a company and not specifically the employees that work there. It’s the management and leadership of this company that has failed tremendously.

This video from the Los Angeles Times provides an insightful look into Phan Plork’s life after the oil disaster who used to catch shrimp in the waters of the Gulf, but now works for BP cleaning up the mess. It’s sad to see how the oil disaster has disrupted the livelihoods of the many fishermen who depend on the Gulf of Mexico.

Cognitive Media’s visual animation of Phillip Zimbardo’s talk on The Secret Powers of Time is a great way of visually translating the concepts into a more tangible and engaging approach similar to The Story… videos I wrote about not too long ago. The talk itself is thought-provoking, but the addition of the time-lapse drawings makes it much more fun to listen and watch. The drawings help add meaning and aid in the recall of information presented.

The six perspectives of time that Zimbardo discusses are: past positive (focus on happy memories), past negative (focus on regret and failure), present hedonistic (live in the moment and seek pleasure), present fatalistic (life is fated, no use in planning), future focused (work comes before play) and future transcendent (life begins after death.)

I can probably relate to most perspectives and have spent more time in one view over another at different stages throughout my life. Though I don’t quite agree with the present fatalistic view. It seems rather depressing to think that you have no control over your future. Presently (no pun intended), I’d say my view of life right now is majority in the present hedonistic perspective with a future focused view to provide a bit of balance and self restraint. I can’t exactly claim that I indulge in every pleasure without a care in the world, but I also don’t exactly have the discipline to plan everything ahead in my life.

Zimbardo brings up a funny point that I totally relate to at 8:06 in the video. That is our digital life has made us all impatient. Anything that takes a minute or more to download is considered too slow. Though the talk is American-centric, I think most of the developed society can relate to this point.

Technology is getting better and faster, but this has affected our perceptions of time in every part of our lives. We have grown more impatient over the years. Remember dial up? Remember when it used to take forever to boot up the computer? Almost every invention or trend these days has something to do with saving time and making ordinary tasks more efficient.

Think of the Slap Chop (cut and slice faster), the Magic Bullet (a blender that does everything), Twitter (instantly tell the world what you’re up to in under 140 characters), Facebook (get instant updates from all your friends in one place) or the iPhone (a phone, computer, gaming device, music player and camera all in one)—all devices or apps designed to do more in less time.

In a USA Today poll that Zimbardo points out, Americans were asked what they would do if they had an extra day in the week and fifty percent said they would work harder to achieve more rather than spend time with their family, friends or sleeping. Hmm, there seems to be something wrong with that picture. (That’s also why I’m not entirely future focused. I’d much prefer to have a 3-day weekend!)

There are more RSAnimate videos here. Daniel Pink’s talk on what motivates us is also an interesting one to listen and watch. Money may seem to be the ultimate motivation for people. However, in an experiment that Pink highlights, when the level of rewards are linked to performance, the results provide a surprising outcome.

The sun is finally showing its face here in Vancouver, but it’s still not as warm as I’d like it to be. I’m ready for another vacation.

Watching the video of a 15-year-old girl from Texas doing whatever it takes to live her dreams, I must admit, was quite moving to see. She moved miles away from her family to study at the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow, not knowing anyone or even the language. On the day of her big performance, she continued on even though her foot was in great pain. Well, I can go on, but you can see all of it in the video.

There are many challenges that make it difficult for her to accomplish her dream, but it’s clear that nothing will stop her. She has the determination, perseverance and willingness to do whatever it takes.

One of the great things about having a dream is it’s never easy, but that just makes the journey more meaningful. I remember being like that—young, hopeful and full of dreams. Sometimes I wonder what happened? Where did all that ambition go? Was it naivete or does realism come with age? Or perhaps I’ve changed?

I don’t know… but one thing’s for sure, I’m getting older.

All photos of Oahu are finally posted here on Flickr. The photo above was taken from the site of the Pu’u O Mahuka Heiau historical landmark. It is described as Oahu’s largest temple where human sacrifices once took place. Yikes! I bet this place can be pretty spooky at night. No human bones were spotted—just a bunch of rocks. Although its location on top of a bluff provides an amazing view of the Waimea coast.