When my site and dedicated server got hacked about 14 months ago (actually my emails but “forgot password feature” was just bullshit), I chose to start my journey in a lot of things. I wouldn’t describe them in details but my life has generally improved thanks to you hackers

You made me understand how it feels and how important it is to run real business, you made me understand how important it is to not be naive, you made me understand how important anonymity is on internet marketing world, etc. Even my point of view on general life has changed a bit.

I learned a lot from my offline business partners as well as from my journeys in various areas as well. While I was in Sweden and Denmark last summer, I have also learned the differences between people and how you obviously can’t judge anyone based on their background and race. Our world is extremely amazing, from morons to geniuses, from nerds to party-goers, you can actually find all of them wherever you live. Maybe not in small towns but definitely yes in bigger cities.

Thinking outside of the box. Sometimes people keep telling you about this popular quote yet they fail to realize they don’t think outside of the box themselves. I was like everyone else, thinking that I was thinking outside of the box while actually I was still inside the box. I let everyone dictate what they wanted me to be. When I was in Malmo (Sweden), i ate in a turkish small pub near Malmohus Castle, and that teenager (not sure what’s his ethnicity because I actually don’t care) kept looking at me as if it’s absurd for a Chinese Indonesian like me to eat there. I saw his eyes sharply and I turned my eyes to my kebab and never looked back anymore. Now I am not a paranormal so obviously I didnt know what he was thinking but my prediction was that he felt unusual.

Unusual, what an uncomfortable word it is…how usual you are? Have you ever imagined? Amazing huh how we always stereotype everyone. People want to stand out individually yet they generalize others. As an example, if you are an arab, poor, and come from Iraq or Afghanistan or the likes, probably a lot of western dudes would always think negatively about you although they dont say it directly of course. Why don’t they? Because they know it’s discriminative thinking but deep inside they have that racial profiling thought. In the end, aren’t we all racist in nature?

I have met a lot of people from different background and thank god it really helped me to shape my point of view and differ me from this type of people. Sometimes I’m tired with people who keep complaining/degrading specific group of people, even sometimes their own group…You certainly don’t have brain if you consider yourself as “part of A” or “part of B” instead of being yourself and differ yourself from the rest of people in that “circle”.

Now talking about my past mistake….well, my self-appreciation was too high and it made me lazy. I was also extremely naive, thinking online business could make me feel invincible. Now I always try to keep it low profile as best as I can even after I’ve reached one or two successes in my life. Different from myself in previous years, now I try to keep it low..yeah right, I still write here sometimes, but it’s more like a journal for me. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want of course

The more mature I become, the more I understand how unimportant people’s view on you is. The more I learn from smarter people, the more I understand how newbie I am. It’s really interesting and I’m eagerly to wait what’s coming up for me

To be honest I can’t believe what has happened to me in the past seven months. My websites got hacked which left me to my real businesses. Of course I still have few sites and I have built several new others but everybody knows internet is not a stable income source. It’s a very fluctuating world (hence why I like it). That’s why I have been struggling so hard just to find a stable passive income source, a huge one, through trading business. I’m not someone who lives just for money but I have to admit money makes me feel secure.

Been introduced to a lot of interesting people, chineses, native indonesians, even foreigners…in Jakarta and also on the net. I must say special thanks to my partner which I won’t reveal his name here due to his privacy but without him it’s impossible that I could meet Indonesian super riches. He’s a very fair person, i have known him since 2008, and we have been through a lot of things together in my offline businesses.

Now I can officially say that I’m more of like “a broker”, “a mediator”, or in professional word..”a trader”. Been calling a lot of new contacts, even to India several times, been chatting and calling through Skype, YM-ing people, BBM-ing everyone, and travel to Jakarta just for meetings then go back to my hometown. At times I feel desperate because hopes come and go just in matter of weeks but we are building a very good bridge over here. When I look back what has happened in the past 7 months, I can say I’m now more mature and more proud of myself. I’m also able to speak English more fluently now because I don’t only use my keyboards to chat but also my mouth to call/talk

But seriously..I’ve been struggling a lot, not only with my businesses. I’ve struggled more with my personality and I think I’m a bit different compared to myself a year ago (not only in terms of maturity but in every aspect of me).

Updated Jan 2011: Good thing. Next week I’m about to register my own business license just so I can go to europe by this July. We have also officially secured one iron ore deal with a Chinese government company. A very good one, of course! Finally this is the financial stability i have been trying to find since years ago They are buying 50,000 tons per month. No bullshit :)….people say China will be the biggest buyer in few years to come. Well, they ARE already…in everything!

anyway, go click the link on the right bar and contact me there if you have a potential buyer for coal, iron ore, nickel, and mangan. We’ll do some good business

Not bullshit, just luck. This require tons of patience and approach but slowly but surely Im getting there. Real assets, real businesses. Thanks to those who have been “hating” and “trying to bring me down”, because of you guys I have motivation to make more money offline. God works here…Im still doing my things in online business but seriously, day by day i get more focused on my offline ventures.

Also, for you who get redirected to this post through other sites, dont be upset. I only use it for bandwidth purposes. Anyway I’ve made a new site although i might not be able to work on it every week (maybe just once every 2 weeks or so!) :
Asian-Suppliers.com

Yo, bring me the huge companies :)

If everything goes well, I will go to Dubai by 2011 hehehehe…

Once we set up agreement with them, I’m 100% sure things will improve rapidly since at the moment we still have bugs, instability, unfinished scripts, etc. which we will finish them once we cooperate with this web development company (I won’t tell you who they are). I also have been teamed up with Martin Forssel from SuccessDoctor for improving landing pages and conversion for the site. It seems they will cooperate with us start from next week but I’m not sure. Just one lesson from all these, small freelancers might sounds cheaper but they are not capable of handling big projects. That’s why I start to cooperate with big names.

That’s what internet should be about. Lift your mask and shout anything you want. Nowadays it seems harder to “provide” the real freedom of speech policy. When you deny holocaust, no matter how good your argument is, people would criticize you until you delete that content. When you talk about a scam scheme of one big organization, you wouldn’t be heared either. In fact, once people start hearing about your problem, websites will try to filter your content.

Facebook nowadays often filter certain contents. If we were talking about adult contents, I can understand. Adult contents should be filtered because we don’t want children to see them. But Facebook (and lots of other sites) filter comments and articles that talk about important issues. It’s totally unfair to make negative arguments about one specific issue (especially when the writer had a very good point). Well, internet should be the place where everyone can talk anything they want. It’s good, actually. But when it gets bigger, dumbasses will try harder to protect something they care about (you know what I mean) by filtering your contents.

You know, lots of things have changed in the past 3 years. Things were looking good sometimes but I always remember the days when I had nothing, when I screamed at God and asked “how will you pay my hard work?”…These days, sometimes I feel that kind of situation haunts me back. I work hard, really. I plan hard, really. And I also try to diversify my attention by going to a language course and still try to refresh myself sometimes by playing with my friends. But it looks like things are going down for me. I know there’ll be a light at the end of tunnel but I just feel tired with the daily work circle that keeps distracting my attention in living my life.

Well, I have to admit..I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t prepared to become what I am today. I just wasn’t prepared enough. I do regret it but everyone has their own regrets. I learn so much lately and I know I still need to learn much more in order to be “prepared” in my own level.

I remember the day when I lost few hundred bucks in my saving account which left me only $10 with an old PC and a very poor internet connection. I cried. Nobody heard though ..Then I started to 100% focus on what I was doing and I know I had a big achievement. A very big jump, I must say. Well, now I feel the same pressure although it is for different reasons. I hope with this pressure, it’ll help me maximize my potential so I can achieve what I want and what I need. I live to win, not to not lose. By losing once or twice, it’ll pump my motivation to achieve even more in my life. Well anyway, thanks for reading.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs also do the same thing. They chase the same market, they don’t want to sacrifice their primary business model, and they only work in one niche simply because they know it’s where they good at. Even though one day they grow in terms of earning, but basically they don’t grow as a human being. They keep the same habits for years. They may be having a successful career but what’s the point if what they do is just go to the same place everyday to work, go back home at 5, have fun with family until 10, and make new plans for tomorrow’s work, and go to sleep?

Well, as an entrepreneur and investor in various sectors, I know what “lose” is. But I probably would never know what “win” is if I was only trying to not lose. I learn from my horror stories. I lost all of the money in my saving account back then in 2005 when I was only 18. But if I never lost the money, probably I would never had a thought to start an online business with $10. Same story with my investments. If I never lost a single cent in my first investment, probably I would stay investing in low or medium risk businesses and would never try to learn risk management. There are lots of ways to learn how to make money but in the end the most valuable lesson is experience. You learn from your good stories but  you learn and motivate yourself from the bad ones.

Unfortunately,things are not going smoothly, never were, and will never be. When you were 16-18, probably you have a dream to stop working before you get old and enjoy your life. I had a dream to stop working and made enormous amount of money before I turn 30. But things are not as simple as that. New problems will always come to your door everyday and it changes how you think about yourself. A regular employee probably had a dream to make $10,000 a month. But once he becomes a CEO, he would want to make $1,000,000 a month. And once his company grows much bigger than that, he would want to make a lot more.

This is normal but sometimes we don’t realize these things consume us and our time. In the end, it’s not about “I want safety” or “I want to make money passively” anymore. In the end, you are just trapped in that kind of life. The question is, do you live to not lose or to win? Well, I chose the second path since 2 years ago.

I just realize now things have changed. People give me more attention just because now I make money and some of them even try to be close to me just because they know about my profession. Everybody thought I was only a clown, now it’s just ugly to see some people try to think I’m an asset or something. Also, I was not circumcised and now I have been circumcised. Lol…and I still remember how I was not able to speak a single character of Mandarin language and now I can type pinyin.

Man, I was thinking that in just 4 years, things have changed. Now I’m not as brave as I was. I care about my image now, I care about how do I look, I care about what I own, and I feel I have more and more responsibility. One thing for sure, I’m also fatter now. Man, I think I need to go swimming 2 times a week and also do some gym stuffs. But above all, to be honest, I miss the old times. I miss how I could entertain people. I miss how friends were like family, not like now where everybody’s busy with their own schedules. But ok, this is life. So interesting. I can’t wait to see what will happen in 4 years from now. One thing for sure, I won’t get married when I’ll be 25 And if someone invent human clone technology by then, I would be happy to clone myself and kill that clone immediately.