A number of people and articles have recommended multi-day fasts for health reasons. As strange as it sounds, I don’t think I have ever even gone a single day without food, so I decided to try a 32-hour “mini-fast” just to check things out.

I was really surprised that I did not fell particularly hungry at all. No strong desire to eat or anything. I did feel a bit light-headed, but not in a bad way. Think I’ll try a few more of these mini-fasts before committing to a three-day affair.

P.S. I’m not even bothering to give any excuses for not blogging for so long. Please feel free to make up your own. They will undoubtably be much more interesting than the truth.

Had my Japanese wedding reception last Saturday. I’m glad it’s over, but was delighted that so many of our friends turned out for the event. It’s been three days, but my face still hurts from smiling so much for the cameras.

New we get to do it again next month in Virginia.

Just finished cleaning up after another home party. (It was a blast. We really have to have more of those.) Other than a mysterious green stain on the rug, everything looks just like it did last night. Quite a difference from the parites I used to throw in the US. The last one I threw there I woke up the next morning to find an enire pizza stuck to the ceiling. At least it made my breakfast choices easier.

I’m back in Cluj. (It’s pronounced like “kludge”) Yes, it’s an ironic place to locate a software company. They know, They’ve heard all the jokes. I think this place is probably beautiful in the spring and summer when the trees are full of leaves and the winter grime has vanished from the streets. At the moment, however, I am faced with dead trees and filthy cars.

Actually, much the same is true of the Romanian women. From the glimpses I catch, there seem to be a lot of cute girls in this town, but during the winter they are buried under four layers of clothes and fur, so I can’t really be sure.

I have to come back when it’s warm.

Last night I discovered that I like Turkish food. I never knew I did. (And no, I’m not talking abut the cloyingly sweet desert for which this post in named! Can’t stand that stuff.)

In fact I always considered Turkish food to be either too heavy and greasy or too spicy and greasy like like those damn street kabobs. Turns out I only dislike bad Turkish food. I just hope I can find good Turkish food somewhere other than Istanbul.

Now, it’s back to cold, cold Romania.

I thought I was going to be in Romania on business today, but the Transylvanian winters are cold, so my two colleagues and I caught a plane to Turkey for the weekend.

It’s early morning and I’m stilling in a hotel lobby in Istanbul waiting for my two friends to go sight-seeing. Ilker’s a Turk, so the two of us are relying on him not to get us too hopelessly lost.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days, send reinforcements.

Or I suppose “Barbarian Back Up” is more appropriate.

So much has changed (and all for the better) since my last posting, I don’t know where I would start or when I would stop. I’ll just let the info trickle out over the coming posts. (Yes, they are coming. I’ve been quite delinquent in my posting for the past few months, but that will change.)

For me the New Years Holidays are a time I sit down and write down my goals for the coming year, and look back at last years goals to see how I did. It’s amazing how things always work out.

They never work out like I expect them to, but they always work out.

I hope we all are going to have fantastic 2008!

Call off the search parties. I made it back alive. Found some nice clubs, met some cool people, got home at 4AM and am now in desperate need of some strong black coffee.

There are plenty of hot Bulgarian girls wandering about Sofia on a Saturday night, but they really need to smile more. A note to women of all nationalities. You are all much more beautiful when you smile. You don’t even need a reason. It’s OK to just be happy.
I’ve got to run. Housekeeping wants to make up the room, and I am off in search of caffeine.

Why is it that all the things women do to relax and look beautiful sound so painful? My female friends are always talking about things like hot-stone therapy, chemical peels, and my personal favorite the “lava bath”. What the hell is a lava bath?

I’ve long held held a theory that all little girls at one point in their lives dreamed of marrying a handsome prince and living in a castle. Most women will confirm this, although occasionally begrudgingly. The other day my friend surprised me by insisting that she never held such dreams.

“No. When I was a little girl I wanted to take over the world and make all the men worship me.”

Ah yes. Well your friends have always seen that in you.

Researchers in England have concluded that entrepreneurship is primaraly a genetic trait rather than a result of the environment a child grows up in or the kind of education he receives

I find this interesting on a rather personal level. I am a serial entrepreneur, a trait I share with neither of my brothers nor my parents. I was raised in a typical and traditional manner. My father was employed by the federal government for his entire career and my mother stayed at home and took care of us kids. Today both of my brothers have good, steady normal jobs.

I’m adopted, and last year I met my birth parents for the first time. It turns out both of them are entrepreneurs who have started their own companies.

Trying to get this blog working the way I want reminds me working on my old car — only without the broken knuckles. Try something, see if it works, try something else, see if it works, repeat until it works.

My back hurts.

I dead-lifted 110 kg for six reps this morning, and it seems that my body has decided that was too much. My mind considers this weight to be embarrassingly light, but my body has other ideas.

Now, I’m not one to chant the “no pain no gain” mantra, and it’s safe to say that you will never see me crushing a beer can on my forehead. However, as I sit here in my ergonomic chair waiting for my back to go into spasm, I have to conclude that if I didn’t injure myself slightly every once in a while, I would probably be doing something wrong.

It about limits. If you go beyond your limits, you injure yourself, but the only way to know what your limits are is to occasionally go beyond them. And, of course, once you go beyond your limits a few times, you discover that your limits aren’t where they used to be and the process begins anew.

This is true, not only in sports, but in business, relationships, new experiences, and just about everything that’s worth doing.

Had dinner with some of my old artist friends the other day. I don’t do it is often as I should. It’s always like stepping into a time capsule and revisiting part of my life. Little of importance seems to change. It always leaves me with mixed emotions.

I’m convinced that some people perceive the world differently in a real rather than a metaphorical sense. Everyone’s brain is wired a bit differently and some people have wiring that puts them outside what is generally considered normal.

A person a couple of standard deviations from the norm is creative and interesting. Someone three or four is eccentric and strange. People further out are generally unable to function in society. But it’s all a matter of degrees.

Some of the most interesting artists will look at a tree and see a hand or will hear a descending augmented arpeggio and see yellow. I don’t mean that they are reminded of a hand or they imagine the color yellow, but rather that is quite literally what they perceive. It doesn’t freak them out because that’s what always happens.

Most real artists are very aware that normal people don’t perceive things the way they do. However, people who are just deviant enough to be considered creative might not even know they perceive things differently. After all, if you and I perceived b-flat differently, how would we even know?

Still though, I have to say I am glad to be out of the game. Artists, even the most financially successful ones, are not often happy people.

I was recently interviewed for the Japan Entrepreneur Report. The transcript can be found here.

http://www.japanentrepreneur.com/200409.html#3

I had forgotten what a nice little town Winchester is. I went downtown
today to register for my absentee ballot. City Hall has a sign on the
door saying “Shirt and shoes required.”

Last night I went to my twenty-year high school reunion. I almost decided not to go because I expected it to be a night of men comparing cars and watches and women trying to determine who was best defying the ravages of time and gravity.

Fortunately it was nothing like that. Everyone was simply and genuinely happy to see each other and to catch up. It was a blast to see how old friends are doing. We have a bona-fide rock star, a state judge, most people leading perfectly normal and happy lives, and me kicking around Japan starting companies. I’m sure survivor bias comes into play to a degree. Someone living under a bridge in Southeast D.C. would not have made it to the reunion, but I prefer to think that everyone is doing well.

Even after 20-years of American fast food, most of the class has somehow avoided being super-sized. The only odd thing is that there were decidedly more blondes at the reunion than there were at graduation, but no matter. I was glad to see that many of the girls who were babes in high school are still babes, and a few that were geeks somehow managed to become babes along the way. And just like old times, these girls remain inaccessible. Now, of course, because they are married with children, and back then because I was a complete dork. It’s nice that some things never change.

We danced until the early hours to shamelessly out-of date music, and generally behaved like the “old” people we made fun of when we were in high school. Oh well, what did we know?

I got lucky!

The plane was over-booked, and I got bumped up to first class. Hot damn! Bigger seats, better food, cuter stewardesses, and a two-hour shorter flight time. Well, maybe not, but what a difference! Instead of having a shrink-wrapped, microwaved meal heaved across two other passengers in the general direction of my tray, I ate decent food with a linen tablecloth served on real china and silverware — except of course a plastic knife. ANA takes this counter-terrorism stuff seriously, you know. Come to think of it, I would wager that an enterprising individual could do a lot of damage with this metal fork.

The stewardess seemed genuinely disappointed when I declined her offer to try the chocolates and the brandy they were bringing out. “Oh, but you should try one. There’re really good.” she pouted.

I’m enjoying this while I can. No doubt I’ll be back in cattle class for the return trip.

I’m off to Washington DC, my old hometown, for a week or so. It’s been over two years since I’ve been there. Just a short little 14-hour shuttle hop and I’m there.

OK, I admit it. I’m not linked in, plugged in, wired in, or even clued in.

Joining one of these social networking sites is like going for a free personality test at your local Scientology office. It all seems like harmless fun at the time, but it can have unforeseen consequences.

At first LinkedIn was fun. I caught up with a lot of people I had not seen in years, and I had no problems forwarding on requests of one friend asking for an introduction to another.

The problem is when a friend of a friend asks me to forward contact information to a friend of some other friend. There is a good reason these four-places-removed introductions do not occur in real life. If I have no clue who two people are, it is hard to care deeply whether or not they ever get together.

You can’t ignore the request since the system will hound you incessantly. You can’t decline the request because not only would that be rude, but the system requires an explanation of your rudeness which is then archived forever. You can’t even pass on the request without adding some inane comment of your own.

Please, I don’t want to be one of the cool kids anymore. How can I make it stop?