Meeting a Billionaire
It was 4pm several weeks back when the email arrived. A quick glance sent most of the new messages flying to the trash. Then it was headphones on, and back to more HTML/CSS coding. And so begins the story of how I missed out on meeting a billionaire.
Fast forward a couple of days, and my colleagues pop the question. There's this Thai seaweed billionaire in town; he's giving a private talk, and we're all invited. Am I going, they ask. No, was the answer. There was still had a ton of HTML to code, CSS to validate in browsers and PHP to test. It's just seaweed afterall, how does that even relate to the web?
So they go to the talk. And they came back. And they said it was truly inspiring. With pictures taken together with the guy himself. Mmm, good for them. Glad they got inspired. Besides, the dude's kinda short anyway. No biggie (no pun intended). Plenty more lines of code to write anyway. But wait, because they mention there's a Thai movie featuring this dude and his story!
Ok, will schedule to watch it in a few weeks time, when there's less work. So 2 weeks later, with popcorn and coke in hand, we sit down in a theatre and the film starts playing. Well that's actually a lie because it had already begun playing; we walked in a little late. And as the scenes appear, one after another, I think to myself: Holy Smokes!
Here, being depicted in front of me, was the inspiring story of Aitthipat "Top" Kulapongvanich. About how he started something and failed. Again and again, until he got it. There were scenes where I could totally relate to what he was going through. The failures, the perseverance, and the hard work. As the movie ended and the lights came on, I recalled the events of the past few weeks, back to the very first day when the invite to his talk arrived in my inbox. And I asked myself, how could I have missed out on an opportunity this great?
It's embarassing looking back. I'm sharing this account in hopes that you, dear reader, will be able to learn from it. It dawned upon me that being so caught up at the micro-level of things, I'd forgotten to look at things at a macro-level. I realized I've been ignoring a number of things whenever I focused on my work. And that has to change. Think about how much I could've learnt if I had gone for the talk. If I had asked him a question or three. If I had just bothered Googling his name and learning more about him.
Perhaps someday I will have the honor of meeting Top and sharing this account with him. Until then, never discredit any nugget of information that flows past you. Only when you are absolutely certain that it adds no value to your value, then let it go.