2010 ended in a frantic rush around the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Two taxis were weaving through traffic, desperately trying to make it to a club before the stroke of midnight. After a frantic twenty or so minutes we made it inside. I then proceeded to drop a full bottle of Johnny Walker onto the tiled floor.
As luck would have it, it didn’t break. Since that moment I have embarked on what many people would likely consider to be, a lucky streak.
Back in 2006, I met a couple of drunken Germans at a bar in Shanghai. One of them told me about an awesome film he just watched called Matchpoint. I ended up finding it a few months later and watching it out of curiosity. It one of those movies that makes you think. Essentially, it is all about luck. How it changes, what effects it and how important it is in our lives.
There are countless things that you can do to improve your chances of achieving something. Yet, sometimes, it really does all come down to pure, unadulterated luck. My Johnny Walker bottle surviving a tiled floor is one such example. Of all the ways it landed on the floor, it did so in such a way that the force of the impact was distributed below the shattering threshold. I could have been a bit more careful in picking up the bottle and avoided it completely. But I wasn’t and this was the result.
New Year came and went. Mike and Sandy went back to Hong Kong and I chilled in Kuala Lumpur for another week. I was somewhat behind on work so it was good to catch up properly. I mentioned that in 2010, a friend and I started a business doing SEO (a kind of online marketing). Well, at the start of January, we decided to make this work big time. One month later, my friend has quit his job, moved to Budapest and we’re killing it in more ways than you possibly imagine.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur. The question that everyone always asks you is “What kind of business do you want to have?”. That is not the question you need to ask yourself, however. You need to ask: “Who do I want to do this with?”. Having competent people around is crucial.
Luck continued as I was leaving Malaysia on the 9th January. KLM offered me an upgrade to World Business Class for just €200. I slept like a baby for 7 hours on that flight. Arriving back in Budapest was annoyingly cold. Thankfully a new bus service that started took me directly to my street with no changes.
My buddies Nate and Stefano came to visit the following weekend and we had a pretty crazy weekend. I actually did some tourist stuff, making it all the way to the top of the Hungarian Statue of Liberty. The view is great up there. After a really crazy weekend (where I think we agreed to go to Paraguay later this year and Nate told me literally the best story that anyone has ever told) we parted ways.
Over the next 3 weeks I caught Tonsillitis and some other throat infection so was sick for close to 3 weeks solid. I never, ever get sick. In Scotland we have a great way of dealing with illness. We simply ignore it, believing that it will clear up. To be fair, it usually does. In this time, I moved into a new apartment, went out every weekend, relaunched my business and continued my 2 freelance jobs as normal. It was a pretty busy time, and I made it out the other end without any scars.
So here I am, February 9th 2011. Am I lucky to be where I am today? Yes and no really. I’m not one of these people that would ever think I can site back and all manner of amazing things will happen to me. The world doesn’t work like that. That being said, I have tended to land on my feet in a surprising number of situations recently.
I really don’t know what 2011 has in store for me yet. I definitely want to plan some trips once the weather in Europe starts to heat up. For the mean time, it’s work hard/play hard in Budapest.
