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Outlook NowA big change in my life came when I met Na at age 47, with whom I eventually married at age 49. (She was age 39 when we got married.) My life with Na has been the most stabilizing and peaceful period in my life over the past 25 years. Na started as a good friend who I met at her workplace where she was a senior manager, a place I went often on business, starting around 2006. Na shared my values and interests, and I was impressed with her compassion for other people as well as her love of all living things. Na is a conservative, mainstream, and traditional Thai lady, but is also very intelligent and full of Goodness. I fell in love with Na's personality and became extremely attracted to her. Na was also very smart and experienced as a manager of people, and I knew that I could be successful and go far in life with Na. Na and I work very well and harmoniously together, and we are inseparable, going everywhere and doing everything together. I've never felt so compatible with a friend and lover in all my life. I am happier than I've ever been before in a relationship, and I can't imagine life without Na at my side. This is not just an "in love", transient feeling. This is a real lifelong friendship and partnership, with a person who I trust 100% and who can trust me 100% in all ways, and the person who I want to live the rest of my life with. This has created a permanent stability in my life. The years of stress, and sometimes crazy and stupid events, is behind me. I look forward to a peaceful and stable future for the rest of our lives. I just love being at home with Na, at the office with Na, in transit with Na, and doing anything and everything out in the world with Na. And the feeling is very much mutual. We are inseparable. People tell us we are such a nice couple, and very good for each other. So many people have told me that my wife loves me so much, and told her that I love her so much. We know that already, of course, but it's remarkable how people tune into us as a couple. My life has changed in many ways over the past 4 years, as I've settled down, and I'm happier and feel more stable than I've ever been in the past 25 years. No more major frustrations, no more crazy life. I can see my lifelong future with my wife, and my mind has become more focused and sharper than I can remember it ever being before.
My main focus is PERMANENT, discussed below, but it doesn't make any money, only consumes money. So I must spend time making money ... In mid-2010, we decided to start an import-export business. Our property business wasn't doing so well, and we needed a second source of income. We already had a sideline of private investigations to supplement our income, but that line of business is risky at times, challenging so that it consumes our time and effort, and just too much stress to myself, my wife, and our team. Private investigations don't unfold like Hollywood movie scripts. It's actually not like that .... Besides, a big part is counseling the boyfriends and wives of cheating lovers. I especially try to keep families together despite a wayward husband, just getting the proof so that he cannot deny the relationship but must deal with the issues, and better sooner than later. You can't start to solve a problem in denial. Children and a loving family should come first. (Scamming girlfriends are another matter...) I feel so sorry for people and the situations they get themselves into, and sometimes I try to help people too much. I'm not at all "out to get" anyone. It's stressful getting involved in peoples' private affairs. Then I step back, take a look at the big picture, and see that I'm basically wasting my time and talents on human animal mating rituals to help make enough money for my family to get by, but need more time for what I should be doing:
PERMANENT -- saving Earth's unique life in the UniverseI have started to get back to updating the PERMANENT website, especially the database of quality papers and reports, crossreferenced with the authors database. These are the key people who would be needed once investment comes in. Actually, updating the website will be the last thing. I am first trying to catch up over the past 10 years and developing that database behind the scenes. Then, I want to start attending professional meetings again. The keys will be:
A key part of that plan will be presenting it to potential philanthropic investors. The book is still quite good enough, but we need to separately create and refine a new business plan. I have seen a tremendous amount of money be spent around this world. The issue is not lack of money, it's lack of commitment. I have itemized some of the PERMANENT first steps. For example, updating the database would cost just a few thousand dollars. I have a German programmer in Thailand who can do it. The old database is in outdated Lotus Notes format (1998), and Lotus Notes is dead, especially on the web. It has more than 500 records up to 1998. It needs to be ported to an SQL web database, and then updated with publications and authors since 1998. For so many things, we don't need to do actual research and development. We need to use research and development which has already been done by others, and is largely published. We need to take a look at all our human resources. I have a sizeable documents library in Thailand. Most documents are not on the web. They are sold on paper only, copyrighted by the publisher or institution. They must be bought and shipped. I would like to get key documents and get them into our Asia library here in Bangkok, and also read and incorporate their content into the longterm PERMANENT plan. I would like to fly to the USA to a good library and review a lot of documents there, incorporating many of them into my database and website, and others make notes to order a copy and ship to the Asia library. Based on all this technical literature, we can put together our best engineering plan to mine the asteroids and the moon, and have a list of the best engineers and scientists who we could bring in. We can come up with a budget for this project, and revenue streams. We can hire architects and artists for the important audiovisual presentations in our sales pitches on the web and general publicity, such as presentations to Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, etc., for global outreach in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner.
It's very frustrating to see PERMANENT needing a few thousand dollars here and there, but unable to get much except $50 donations and $30 book purchases. Then, in my life in Thailand, I see people coming over and blowing $50,000 or more on some jungle bunny bargirl girlfriend, or unnecessary ostentatious luxury items. For example, one "friend" argued with us endlessly over the cost of his company's website. I met this CEO while he was vacationing in Thailand, where he met a Thai lady. His big company is obviously making millions upon millions of dollars per year on mainly services, largely to the government sector. He was arguing over our price of $500 or so for a website, our lowest price, sometimes rudely. His ego just couldn't allow him to pay one cent more than the competition, and he pointed out that there were spam advertisements for cheaper websites, etc., etc. I pointed out that those guys will not produce a website anywhere near the quality of their alleged samples, and he will have headaches, etc., ... which he did. However, when his girlfriend became unreachable on her mobile phone, suddenly he wired $500 for quick surveillance. He bought her a car for $20,000. And the story goes on... And that guy is a low spender compared to a lot of others I see ostentatiously throwing money around! However, suggest something about helping life on this planet, and the response is disinterest. They're usually interested only in "what's in it for me?". That's how people are going down in history ... or rather how they are NOT going down in history, because they aren't contributing. "If you aren't part of the solution, then you are part of the problem."
It is extremely frustrating to me that after billions of years of evolution in life, survival of intelligent life from this planet is up to this ONE generation, OUR generation. But guess what? Amidst all the wealth on this planet, I'm having to spend my time in menial work, wasting my talents, experience, and limited time by surviving monetarily instead of working on PERMANENT. It is not a lack of money. It is a selfish lack of commitment by people.
I am 47 right now, and hopefully I will live a lot longer, goodness forbid I get cancer or heart problems or something like that. I don't know what my energy levels will be like in the future as I age, but I think I've got another 20 good years to make a difference, probably more. I've gained a lot of good business experience, especially over the past 10 years, and a lot of key experience over the last 22 years. Now that my business is going well, I think that I will be able to spend more time on PERMANENT, hopefully to the point of finding a good philanthropic investor, at which time things will really take off. That will be a very personal effort. Actually, I think that I have about another 1 or 2 years of ramping up my business before I will be able to invest much money and time into PERMANENT or travel to conferences, because I'm really only a couple of months ahead of bills and overhead. The company has constant income, but I do think it needs to build up a little bit more. I don't want to return to the state of company failure 10 years ago after all these years of hard work. Nevertheless, at some time, I need to put time back into PERMANENT, and at this time, I am still the one and only person putting significant money and quality time into PERMANENT.
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Copyright by Mark Prado, 1995 to 2008, All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to contact me. |
