It's the end of August and I'm too busy with real life to add much to the site, which is a pity because there's a lot going on and I really need to find time to write everything up.

I'm finally commiting to another PassionQuest month , over a month late, which means I should be adding at least a page a day to the site. And as my "development" goal for the month is to add one new idea a day at my ingeniousity site that's going to be a tall order!

So: the one month goal is to build at least one new website for a paying customer. I've done two (paid) for people I know recently, but now I have to actually market to people I don't know. (The best one is an all-Chinese site for a telemarketing company.)

I've committed to going from "couch potato" to being able to run 5km in six weeks. I've copied this training schedule from Runner's World , and will be reporting on how I'm doing regularly. Check back often to encourage me! 

I've had a bit of a depressing week, largely because a few projects didn't work out as planned and I lost enthusiasm for a while. But I've picked myself up with the help of my new friend Conrad, who can be heard running around my house at night. He's obviously having a great time, and - although the situation is very different - it reminded me of the famous story about Robert Bruce of Scotland.

Many people are scared of spiders, and there's no way I'm going to touch him, but in reality he's harmless. Having him in the house also reminds me that our ideas are usually our biggest problems. So, I'm focusing on one particular problem and making it the theme of PassionQuest month - I keep delaying starting because I'm not "inspired" enough, but really it's up to me to inspire myself. And I had a big reminder of this recently due to an event near to my house.

This temple is close to my home, and one night recently I was disturbed by fire engines screaming towards it. As you can see, it appeared to be on fire - although in fact the smoke came from a smaller building behind it. But whichever building was burning, it's an important reminder: things can change at ay time, you never know what's going to happen to you.

Whenever we get stuck or depressed we need to remember that we could be living our last few minutes. A fire, earthquake, war, typhoon, road accident, disease, or any one of a thousand other events could happen at any moment and totally destroy the lives we are leading. Of course, everyone says "it won't happen to me" but these things happen every day - and they have to happen to someone. That someone could be you! I've been reading about this a lot recently, and it seems that most people really have no understanding of what risks they face, and what is imaginary.

I was thinking about this a while ago, and again this morning in a restaurant. The story is kind of sad, and the end conclusion is that I'm a loser! The only way to change this is to force myself to face reality instead of worrying about the wrong things.

My friend April, she's hot, but not available

This was the original inspiration behind PassionQuest, and today I was reminded of this by seeing yet another lovely lady that I didn't dare talk to. So now I'm all fired up to begin my next PassionQuest month.... but I'm doing it a bit differently from the last time!

This time, I have to carry my camera with me at all times. Every day, instead of simply looking for thngs that make me happy, I will add one photograph every day to a new section of the site called "Who's Hot?" - I have to seek out and photograph the most attractive girls I see in Taipei. I also have to introduce myself and invite them to take a look at the site.

Hopefully, after a month of doing this I won't be so useless. And I'll also have a nice collection of  photographs to look at with Conrad.

Well, the new site is up and I finally managed to send a mail to everyone I've ever met. Ten hours later and I've already received a lot of replies, some of it offering advice and criticisms. (The new me welcomes criticism, just be polite as it's not easy.)

The big question is "what is this site for?" and I don't really have a good answer. So if you can think of a use for it then give it a try. One person wants to use it to host a group of people who work in the same profession as she does. Great! Go ahead. Just register and then click the button marked "groups".

Another person wants to publish articles here. Again, great! If you write something and want to publish it then send it to me. The theme should be anything to do with education or business in Taiwan: study tips, marketing advice, interview skills, how to negotiate with foreigners, how to negotiate with Taiwanese, etc. We're trying to build better businesses by building better employees, so anything that helps people be better at what they do is always welcome. Or if you're doing something cool and interesting then share that too. Cool and interesting is always good.

You can use this site to run a hobby club, find people to help you with a project, ask and answer questions, and lots lots more. If required I can add forums, project management tools, event calendars, all sorts of stuff. It really depends on what creative uses you have for a full-feature Web 2.0 facility

Let me have your suggestions for ways to improve or make better use of this site, and all the people that use it, and I'll do my best to help. Helping my friends is the best way to stay friends.

(The pictures are not relevant at all, but I kind of like them. The first one is from the annual 'ghost parade' in Jilong, and features an authentic Chinese dragon, for my friends overseas. The other, well, I can't think of an excuse to post it so I'll just post it without an excuse.)

Only 24 hours to go and I've done about 1/3 of what I set out to do on Monday. Disaster!

I have been trying to get this site finished for months, so that I can send a mail to everyone I know and tell them about it. But there always seems to be something preventing me from finishing.... so if you find something wrong or missing then it's because I decided to follow some good advice given to me by a friend a few years ago: "You don't have to get it perfect. You have to get it going!"

In other words, I can continue to try and do the impossible, or I can work with what I have and get started. If you're one of my students then there's a lesson in that for you. Instead of studying more vocabulary, you should focus on making better use of what you know now. The biggest barrier to success in Taiwan is that people always have reasons why they can't do anything yet, but they're just excuses.

Do it now! Use the feedback you get to improve your performance in future, don't wait until it's perfect, because it never will be.

It's a beautiful day today, so here's a pic of a Taiwan flag fluttering in the wind.

A great day today, with the latest in a series of development meetings at Enspyre.

We met with Gus, who has just started a business angels network . Business angels are people who invest in small companies to help them grow or just to get started. He's keen to work with Enspyre to help increase the range of services that we can offer to companies in Taiwan.

We can now provide customer service, training, finance, and we've also just added translation. From tomorrow we will be managing the Taiwan office of Star Translation, a global company with 47 offices worldwide. This gives us access to thousands of translators worldwide who are used to providing technical documentation and marketing material for exporting companies. Obviously, there is a big need for that in Taiwan, so it's a great additional service to have.

Perhaps equally importantly, it changes the way we do business. We will be merging two offices together and that means we need to move to somewhere a lot bigger. (Enspyre's old office has become too small anyway, due to the continued growth of the company.) So we have an opportunity to improve not only our image, but also the working environment. The importance of this was something we discussed a lot at the hiring seminar last week and I'm hoping to involve Jeremy in setting up the new place as a first step towards building The Lab.

So, full speed ahead! The future looks bright.

I've been working hard on my new site - ingeniousity.net - and it's pretty much finished! I'm very pleased, even though I don't expect to make money from it. It's a labour of love that needed to be done.

The reason for it is that I have a lot of ideas that are not very useful to me. They may be good ideas (although my friend Elias says they're not always very good!) but I don't have the time, money, skills, connections, human resources, etc to do anything with them. So I just keep them and never do anything with them, which is a terrible waste.

I decided to put them online so that anyone else who wants to can take a look and see what they think. They're not all very good ideas, and many are half-formed, but I hope that people will comment and build on what I suggest. Or maybe they will contribute their own original thoughts for me and others to expand on? By doing this, even bad ideas can lead us to new knowledge and solutions to problems. It's one of the principles of success, and the site is intended to be a place where people can exercise their creativity and pursue their own successes.

Please do take a look, and feel free to share your opinions.

I had a very interesting afternoon today. A group of us got together at the Chinese Culture University for a workshop organised by the ECCT to talk about Human Resource issues. There were a few hiring managers from big companies, some small business owners, a couple of people working in education, and representatives from 1111 Job Bank, the #2 job advertising website in Taiwan.

We had a really great, lively, discussion about a whole range of issues and I came out feeling very energised although not especially hopeful about the outlook for expanding the business. And I learned something quite amazing: