"Love Manifest": "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

Everyone online seems to be doing/ have done/ did their tribute to the creative genius, Steve Jobs. So here's mine.

It just so happens that it coincides with Graduation Day.

I got the news from friends in school, while typing out my speech on my iPad. Knowing them, I was a little skeptical, but then Pn Tan came in with the same news, so yeah.

The full impact of it all didn't settle in until later that night, when I went to check out the news online. Every tribute, every news bit, every timeline of his great life. By the time I was through, I know more about him than I do my own friends even...

The feelings subsisted over the next few days. I suppose it can't be helped when one is carrying around a device of the great Jobs' invention. I continued browsing articles and watching videos of the man online. My way of dealing with it, I suppose.

The guy's life story is amazing. Although at the beginning his story seems like the usual guy-does-something-great-and-gets-rich deal most famous guys have (college dropout part included), the difference is that where most everyone else basically enters a sort of cruise mode after their success, Steve Jobs was actually forced to a halt when he got kicked out of Apple.

Granted he was already rich when he got fired, but he never did it for the money. During this outcast period he would go on to buy the studio that would become that studio and make that era-defining, first of many, feature length fully animated movie about a bunch of toys come to life.

At the time, I thought the lamp was one of the characters too...

Of course, when he found his way back to a crumbling Apple, well, the rest is well-known history.

That's a life story that can contend with the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein...

I had typed out my graduation speech last week. At the time it felt a little long, but I thought I could manage it with the rate at which I speak (Which most know, can approach bullet train speeds at times).

I condensed it a little over the weekend, though it still felt bloated.. Then came this news. Somewhere between the articles and the videos, something inspired me to retype it one more time.

Taking a note from the great man himself, I made my speech "thinner, lighter, faster". Heh, and of course, by that I mean I reworked the whole thing, streamlining my points, removing unnecessary empty phrases and repetitions. I even managed to work in a line from his 2005 Stanford commencement speech.

Hmm... "Geek Nick"... Possibilities...

And hey, it was great. "Awesome", as someone put it. And taking yet another line from ol' Jobs, "It just works."

"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." - Steve Jobs, 2005

So here's to Steve Jobs. Even though I never met the guy, he's inspired me more than I know. Especially these past few days as I've read about his life, his drive, and his passion. And it's inspired me to pursue the things I love.

"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 better yet, his exile and return to Apple taught me what it truly means to come back from a defeat and emerge stronger than before.

"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."

My first ever experience with a computer was on a Mac. Although the details are fuzzy, I remember spending quite a bit of time playing one of those Richard Scarry education games on it. Though what I do remember clearly is the classic startup screen, the smiling face, the loading icons at the bottom, and the most iconic, the startup chime. The last one even made it as the boot-up sound for Wall-E...

Source : Wikipedia

When our family switched over to PC, I followed along because, well, I was still just a kid, probably in kindergarten at that time, and I didn't know better.

At long last, more than a decade later, with my iPad, I have returned to Apple once more. So has the family too, with at least one of either the iPod, iPhone or iPad between all of us.

"One more thing..." Quite fittingly, exactly one year ago on this weekend, I got my iPad...

And in honour of the man, I can do no less than read my graduation speech from it. On stage.

I found this little gem online; Apple fanboys and Adult Fans of LEGO have one thing in common: Both show love for their toys that help them express their creativity in noteworthy ways.