2007 was an unhappy year for me where I had no direction, no focus – lack of vision. I remember looking at Steve Jobs’s commencement speech to Stanford and it made all the difference.

Don’t live somebody else’s dogma. You can’t connect the dots forward, only backwards. Knowing you are going to die is the best thing to happen to you. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Passion.

All phenomenal takeaways that was delivered eloquently with poise.

Simple.

Engaging.

Incredibly provocative.

At first it is clearly without a doubt chasing vanity.  I’m only a regular human being, growing up in North America, I too have been subjected to the propaganda of the media and general fitness industry that I need to look absolutely jacked to get the ladies.  I heard it’s an extremely effective program to get ‘lean and toned’ – and hey, if the special forces are going about doing it… they’re doing something correct, right?

Later on I discovered I really like being exposed to the variety of skill, technicality and the plethora of exercises to become a competent Crossfitter.  For somebody who loves variety like me, this is the jackpot of the fitness world.  There is always something to learn and something always to get better at.

Time goes on, I’m looking way better, I’m getting more and more proficient at the training methodologies.  Cool.  I went to this Crossfit party the other night and caught up with a lot of my gym mates whom I haven’t seen in a long time.  I just realized I never knew any of them prior to Crossfit.  The community is another huge thing I realized I like.  Being surrounded by like minded people who are incredibly ambitious about their personal health and fitness to put themselves through a training regime as grueling as this.

I walked away from that world to go on exchange and travel for eight months – effectively severing myself from the world of elite fitness and nutrition and dived into a world of unregulated eating, drinking, partying in foreign lands.  The saying of “You are a product of your environment” rings extremely true.  Nothing was expected of me and I didn’t expect anything from myself.   As far as I was concerned, my only obligation was to have as much fun as possible .  It was incredibly apparent upon arriving back to Canada that I let myself go when stepping into the gym for the first time.  I’m the heaviest and most lethargic as I’ve ever been.  I had everything to show about my personal de-transformation.

I’m back into the swing of things again for the last couple weeks and finally adjusting to it.  This time around, I really enjoy the discipline that comes along with training to be great again.  I love the structure and the dedication that comes along with it.  I keep failing with my dietary needs to only sustain exercise, but at least I’m keeping it in check now and not indulging excessively.  I aim to keep all the ‘junk’ foods down to only one meal per week like old times.

As I walk into a world of no routines back home and semi-actively searching for a job as a post graduate, I’ve found myself to be incredibly lazy.  Resumes sent and no response.  Interviews and them being bad fits.  It’s discouraging.   And there’s no routines, and there’s nobody bossing me around.  It’s really just a haze.  Everyday is a weekend.  But, each time I Crossfit, it brings me back to a place of purpose of being a better person. Tt increases my mental fortitude to become a better athlete and human being as I attempt to blast through the daily WOD.

That’s probably the biggest takeaway.  That mental strength to go about daily life and asking more of yourself instead of being couch potato, being un-stoked on life and wandering around aimlessly.

Right now.  That is my reason of why I Crossfit.  To reach Potential.

Now if you excuse me, it’s time to research and line up some more coffee meetings to go about landing a career.

My latest discovery is the world of old school shaving.  Shaving, as all we men know it… is a chore.  It’s this annoying growth that creeps up on you without you knowing during the day and night.  No matter what you do, it comes back.  The remedy?  Grab that bottle of cheap aerosol foam, your 3/5 bladed razor and hack it away.  Or if you wish, an electric shaver.  Fortunately I’ve never met a guy yet who waxes, tweezes or use electrolysis on his face… yet.

That’s all I’ve ever known.  I’ve always sought as close a shave as possible and no matter what I used – it never came close.  Until I went to Prague with a friend of mine with the intent of getting an old world barber shave.  It is an experience I will never forget – the men’s only barber shop, the reclining chair, the young but experienced barber, the hot towel on your face, the icy cold lather, the feeling of helplessness and mortality as the straight razor blade is expertly and carefully removing the hair follicles along the contours of my face, the cocktails of balms with the deep icy cool sensation… and walking out of the barbershop feeling like a million bucks.

I’ve sought that for myself and found my answer in double edged safety razors.  I read the article on The Art of Manliness and read reviews on amazon and Badger and Blade.  I bought my Merkur HD, 3 different packs of blades (Feather, Merkur and Derby… they’re 10 – 25 cents a blade only!!) for under $55 including shipping from West Coast Shaving.  The moment I received it, I knew I had nothing but quality in my hands.

Casting away cheap Gillette aerosol foam, I armed myself with Body Shop Maca Root Shaving Cream for men, a newly acquired beginners shaving brush and read a tutorial on creating hot lather.  Stepping outside of my shower, I began the ritual of rinsing the brush and mixing lather.  I had been using the shaving cream for a while with just hand application and a regular razor – I had literally no idea how much stiff lather can result from a simple change in procedure.

Nervously, I held the weighted razor against my face and proceeded to shave.  It was exactly like using a regular razor.  To get the perfect shave, it requires a few passes.  Sure, it’s extra time… but I’m in such in a zen state – it is strangely calming.  And I can say neither my prior experience with electric shavers, twin bladed razors, mach 5′s, gillete fusion power (aka mach 5), and the barbershop has given me a baby butt smooth shave like I just gave myself.  It was simply incredible and amazing what the right tools can do.  I’ve sought this since growing facial hair.

But, because it is so close, there is a bit of irritation and razor burn.  There’s a fix!

To put the cherry on top of the entire experience…  Proraso pre/post shaving cream.  I splashed cold water on my my face and put just a tiny dab of the aftershave cream on my fingers and scrubbed it all over my face.  As the water dries, magic happens.  The exact, exact same sensation at the barbershop in Prague of that intoxicating cooling feeling.  I felt once again, like a million dollars.

I feel like I’ve been misled my entire life with the promises of closeness from multibladed razors.  It’s not remotely even close as a shave and it’s not cost effective with the expensive cartridges.  The tools your grandpa used holds the answers.  No wonder old folks always say “they sure don’t make them as they used to”.

This simple, but incredibly rewarding experience was humbling.  I actually look forward to waking up and doing this when I wake up.  Who doesn’t want to be in a calm zen state and then feel like they’re on top of the world every morning?

I stumbled across his commencement speech to Harvard in 2007 that I’ve never heard before on leadership, the future, racism, and humanity.

I’ll let his words speak of themselves (no pun intended).  It’s far more eloquent than what I have to say here.

Well worth your time.

- Anonymous

What a hauntingly powerful quote. My 25th is coming up. I have set more discipline for myself to achieve goals for myself. It’s far too easy being complacent.

After working on it for continuously a week, the third reiteration of felixchen.com is finally live up and running! Been blasting up the hypem site and chugging along. I’ve updated the domain and caused some serious problems with the nameservers and MX records point to Google Apps. But everything is fixed now. I forgot how annoying it is to be your own tech support. Fixed my Google Analytics to this site to start tracking as well.

I wish I had more higher resolution of pictures instead of just the facebook stuff – although it’s come along way with its high resolution downloads. The pictures before that are permanently stuck in low resolution land.

This site represents my professional online presence and the blog is for my business/interests musings. Its meant to supplement the resume to aid along my job hunt with a focus on diversity: the extra-curricular activities I’ve acquired through school, my professional experiences, my broad interests and my international experiences. I’m trying to break through the ultra-competitive management consulting world and using this to leverage myself and stand out more. I’m pretty happy with the results so far. Although – the copy and tone of the site fluctuates between professional and casual which may or may not be an issue.

I’m giving WordPress a shot this time after muddling around with SquareSpace for a bit. This was simply more cost effective – albeit like everything else, you trade it with time. It certainly took a LOT LONGER to set this up for more or less the same clean layout. However, the themes community of WordPress is quite expansive and you can bypass a lot of the design work yourself to find something cool. This particular one is called Striking.

Still, it took massive amounts of configuration, mucking through menus and sub-menus. I really miss the sliders, the drag and drop easy interface of SS. Too bad it’s just too expensive and I don’t quite need that level of robustness just yet for a personal site. I’d highly consider it for other ventures though.

Next to polish up: LinkedIn (wondering if I need a premium account), and make up my business cards.  Time to hit the world of business – hard.