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 As the first blog entry got exhausted. My second book |
| Evolution of Love Part 2 |
| Spielberg thought he was too tall and too handsome for the role. Then he saw him on Broadway and changed his mind. Neeson gave the performance of his life. He didn't win the Oscar. For years, Steven Spielberg avoided making a film about the Holocaust. He was Jewish. The Holocaust was personal. It was his people's greatest tragedy. And Spielberg felt the subject was too important, too sacred, to risk getting wrong. In 1982, he acquired the rights to Thomas Keneally's novel "Schindler's Ark" (published in the U.S. as "Schindler's List"). It told the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi Party member who saved over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. Spielberg sat on the project for over a decade. He offered it to other directors—including Roman Polanski, whose mother died at Auschwitz. He didn't feel ready. He didn't feel worthy. By 1993, Spielberg knew he had to do it himself. No one else could tell this story the way it needed to be told. But he needed to cast Oskar Schindler—a complicated man who started as a profiteering opportunist and became a savior. An ordinary man who did extraordinary things. Spielberg considered major stars: Warren Beatty, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner. All were interested. But something didn't fit. Then Spielberg saw an Irish actor named Liam Neeson performing in "Anna Christie" on Broadway. Neeson was 40 years old. He'd been working in film for years—"Excalibur" (1981), "The Mission" (1986), "Darkman" (1990), "Husbands and Wives" (1992). He was respected but not a major star. On stage in "Anna Christie," Neeson commanded attention. He had presence, depth, gravitas. He could convey complexity without saying a word. Spielberg saw Schindler. But there was a problem: Neeson was 6'4". Tall, handsome, movie-star attractive. Spielberg wanted Schindler to be ordinary-looking, average, someone who could disappear into a crowd. Neeson was anything but ordinary-looking. Spielberg hesitated. But he kept thinking about that Broadway performance. The depth Neeson brought. The ability to show a man's inner transformation. Spielberg offered Neeson the role. Neeson accepted. Preparation for "Schindler's List" was intense. Spielberg decided to shoot in Poland, including at actual Holocaust sites. He'd film primarily in black and white, using handheld cameras for a documentary feel. Neeson immersed himself in Schindler's story. He read historical documents, survivor testimonies, everything available about the real Oskar Schindler. He met with Schindlerjuden—Jews Schindler had saved. He learned about a man who was flawed, complicated, contradictory. Schindler was a Nazi Party member, a womanizer, a drinker, initially motivated by profit. But something changed in him. He witnessed atrocity and couldn't look away. He used his factories to protect Jewish workers, spent his fortune bribing Nazi officials, ultimately saved over 1,100 lives. Neeson had to show that transformation. From selfish businessman to selfless savior. Filming began in March 1993. The shoot was emotionally brutal. They filmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, at the actual Kraków ghetto, at locations where the real events occurred. One scene became the film's emotional turning point: the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. In March 1943, Nazis forcibly evacuated the ghetto, murdering Jews in the streets, loading survivors onto trains to death camps. It was chaos, violence, mass murder. Spielberg recreated this horror in black and white—documentary-style, unflinching, brutal. In the scene, Schindler watches from a hillside as the liquidation unfolds below. He's there on business, watching dispassionately. Then his eye catches something: a little girl in a red coat. In the black-and-white film, the red coat is one of only a few color elements. It's striking, impossible to miss. The girl wanders through the chaos—alone, terrified, trying to hide. Schindler watches her. Just her. One individual life amid mass murder. The red coat represented something profound: this wasn't abstract. These weren't numbers. These were individual people—this specific child in this specific red coat—being murdered. Neeson played the scene with minimal dialogue. Just his face. Watching. Something shifting inside him. A man realizing he can't look away, can't pretend this isn't happening, can't remain uninvolved. Later in the film, the red coat appears again—in a pile of corpses being burned. The girl is dead. Schindler sees it. The transformation is complete. The scene is based on real survivor testimony. The red coat symbolized all the individual lives lost—each one a person, not a statistic. Neeson's performance throughout was extraordinary. He showed Schindler's complexity—the charm, the selfishness, the gradual awakening, the desperation as he realized he couldn't save everyone, the breakdown at the end when he wishes he'd saved more. In the final scene, Schindler breaks down, looking at his gold Nazi pin: "I could have saved one more person. And I didn't." Neeson sobbed. It wasn't acting—it was genuine grief for the six million who died. Spielberg refused salary for the film. He considered any money from "Schindler's List" to be "blood money." He donated all his proceeds—millions of dollars—to Holocaust education. He also founded the USC Shoah Foundation to record video testimonies from Holocaust survivors. Over 55,000 testimonies have been recorded and preserved. "Schindler's List" premiered in December 1993. The response was overwhelming. Critics called it a masterpiece. Audiences were devastated, moved, educated. At the 1994 Academy Awards, "Schindler's List" was nominated for 12 Oscars. It won 7: Best Picture, Best Director (Spielberg), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Art Direction. Liam Neeson was nominated for Best Actor. He lost to Tom Hanks for "Philadelphia." Neeson gave one of the greatest performances in cinema history. But 1994 was a competitive year, and Hanks was playing another culturally significant role (a gay man dying of AIDS). Neeson didn't win. But his performance as Oskar Schindler remains his finest work and one of cinema's most acclaimed performances. The film's impact extended far beyond awards. "Schindler's List" became mandatory viewing in schools worldwide. It brought Holocaust education to mainstream audiences. It preserved survivor testimonies. It made the Holocaust personal—not six million faceless victims, but individuals with names, faces, stories. The real Oskar Schindler died in 1974, largely forgotten, financially struggling. The Jews he'd saved—the Schindlerjuden—had supported him financially after the war. He was buried in Jerusalem and honored as Righteous Among the Nations. After "Schindler's List," Liam Neeson became a major dramatic actor. He went on to star in "Michael Collins" (1996), "Kinsey" (2004), and eventually the "Taken" franchise (action films that made him a different kind of star). But "Schindler's List" remains his definitive performance. The role he was supposedly too tall and too handsome for. The role Spielberg hesitated to give him. One personal note: Liam Neeson met actress Natasha Richardson while performing in "Anna Christie"—the play that led to Spielberg casting him. They married in 1994, shortly after "Schindler's List" was released. They had two sons. In 2009, Natasha died from a skiing accident. She was 45. "Schindler's List" brought Neeson his greatest professional triumph and led him to the love of his life. Both are linked to that Broadway performance in "Anna Christie." The film endures 31 years later. It's studied in schools. It's preserved in the National Film Registry. It's shown to new generations learning about the Holocaust. And at its center is Liam Neeson's performance—showing how an ordinary, flawed man can choose courage over complicity, can risk everything to save lives, can become better than he was. Spielberg initially thought Neeson was too tall, too handsome, too much for Schindler. Instead, Neeson became Schindler. He inhabited the role so completely that we forget we're watching an actor. He showed us a Nazi Party member becoming a hero. A profiteer becoming a savior. An ordinary man doing extraordinary things. He gave the performance of his life. He was nominated for Best Actor. He didn't win the Oscar. Tom Hanks did, for another culturally significant role. But Neeson won something more important: he helped preserve the memory of 1,100 people Oskar Schindler saved. And the six million who died. He made the Holocaust personal. Individual. Real. That little girl in the red coat—one person among millions—symbolizes what "Schindler's List" achieved: making us see individuals, not statistics. Liam Neeson, at 6'4", supposedly too tall and too handsome, delivered that vision perfectly. Spielberg was wrong about the height. He was right about the depth. Neeson had both. And he gave us one of cinema's greatest performances. The Oscar went to someone else. The legacy is eternal. "Schindler's List": 1993, 7 Academy Awards, over 30 years of educating audiences about the Holocaust. At its center: Liam Neeson, showing us that ordinary people can choose to be extraordinary. That's more than an Oscar. That's immortality. |
| I know *"All Gurus are Teachers;* But all *teachers are not Gurus".* A teacher takes responsibility of your growth A *Guru makes you responsible* for your growth" A teacher sends you on the road to success A *Guru sends you on the road to freedom* A teacher explains the world and its nature to you A *Guru explains yourself and your nature to you* A teacher makes you understand how to move about in the world A *Guru shows you where you stand in relation to the world* A teacher instructs you A *Guru constructs you* A teacher reaches your mind A *Guru touches your soul" A teacher gives you maturity A *Guru returns you to innocence* A teacher is a systematic thinker A *Guru is a lateral thinker* A teacher is to pupil what a father is to son A *Guru is to pupil what mother is to her child* *One can always find a teacher* But Guru has to *find and accept you* |
I was waiting in line for a ride at the airport in Dubai. When a cab pulled up, the first thing I noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for me. He handed me a laminated card and said: 'I'm Abdul, your driver. While I'm loading your bags in the trunk I'd like you to read my mission statement.' Taken aback, I read the card. It said: Abdul's Mission Statement: To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment. This blew me away. Especially when I noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean! As he slid behind the wheel, Abdul said, 'Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.' I said jokingly, 'No, I'd prefer a soft drink.' Abdul smiled and said, 'No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, lassi, water and orange juice.' Almost stuttering, I said, 'I'll take a Lassi.' Handing me my drink, Abdul said, 'If you'd like something to read, I have The NST , Star and Sun Today.' As they were pulling away, Abdul handed me another laminated card, 'These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you'd like to listen to the radio.' And as if that weren't enough, Abdul told me that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for me. Then he advised me of the best route to my destination for that time of day. He also let me know that he'd be happy to chat and tell me about some of the sights or, if I preferred, to leave me with my own thoughts. 'Tell me, Abdul ,' I was amazed and asked him, 'have you always served customers like this?' Abdul smiled into the rear view mirror. "No, not always. In fact, it's only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard about POWER OF CHOICE one day." _Power of choice is that you can be a duck or an eagle._ 'If you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you'll rarely disappoint yourself. Stop complaining!' *'Don't be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.'* 'That hit me. really hard' said Abdul. 'It is about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes, slowly ... a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.' 'I take it that it has paid off for you,' I said. 'It sure has,' Abdul replied. 'My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I'll probably quadruple it. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on it.' Abdul made a different choice. He decided to stop quacking like a duck and start soaring like an eagle. _Start becoming an eagle today ... one small step every week..next week... And next...And...._ A great Thought.. *"You don't die if you fall in water, you die only if you don't swim.* Thats the Real Meaning of Life. Improve yourself and your skills in a different way. 🦅 *Be an eagle, not a Duck.* 🦆 |
| When the ancient Chinese decided to live in peace, they made the great wall of China. They thought no one could climb it due to its height. During the first 100 years of its existence, the Chinese were invaded thrice. And everytime, the hordes of enemy infantry had no need of penetrating or climbing over the wall... because each time they bribed the guards and came through the doors. The Chinese built the wall but forgot the character-building of the wall-guards. Thus, the building of human character comes BEFORE building of anything else.. Thats what our Students need today. Like one Orientalist said: If you want to destroy the civilization of a nation there are 3 ways: 1. Destroy family structure. 2. Destroy education. 3. Lower their role models and references. 1. In order to destroy the family: undermine the role of Mother, so that she feels ashamed of being a housewife. 2. To destroy education: you should give no importance to Teacher, and lower his place in society so that the students despise him. 3. To lower the role models: you should undermine the Scholars, doubt them untill no one listens to them or follows them. For when a conscious mother disappears, a dedicated teacher disappears and there's a downfall of role models, WHO will teach the youngsters VALUES? Have a thought! |
| *Medicine* is *not always Found* in *Bottles, Tablets or Vaccines:* 1. *Detoxification* is Medicine 2. *Quitting Junk Food* is Medicine 3. *Exercise* is Medicine. 4. *Fasting* is Medicine. 5. *Nature* is Medicine. 6. *Laughter* is Medicine. 7. *Vegetables and Fruits* are Medicine. 8. *Good Sleep* is Medicine. 9. *Sunlight* is Medicine. 10. *Gratitude and Love* are Medicine. 11. *Friends* are Medicine. 12. *Meditation* is Medicine. 13. *Being Fearless* is Medicine 14. *Postive attitude* is Medicine 15. All but not the least - *Unconditional love towards all living beings* is Medicine 16. ..*Most Imp - ACCEPTING & STAYING IN PRESENT MOMENT* .......... IS THE *BEST MEDICINE. 🙏🙏🙏 |
| A Beautiful Story on the Power of Self-Control A young woman boarded a train and noticed a man sitting in her reserved seat. Very politely, she checked her ticket and said, “Sir, I think you are sitting on my seat.” The man angrily pulled out his ticket and shouted, “Look carefully! This is my seat! Are you blind or what?” The girl quietly examined his ticket, chose not to argue, and calmly stood beside him. A few minutes after the train started moving, she softly said, “Sir, you are not sitting on the wrong seat… but you are on the wrong train. This train is going to Kolkata, while your ticket is for Mumbai.” Some forms of self-control are so powerful that they leave people regretting their own behavior. True strength lies not in raising one’s voice, but in maintaining calm and dignity. Self-control exposes the truth more effectively than anger ever can. Sometimes,keeping silence is not weakness,it is strategic patience . |
| Coca-Cola refused to give one man a discount. That man bought their dead competitor and turned it into a global giant. But here’s the twist. He didn’t build it from scratch. He bought a brand that had already failed. Twice. And that’s what makes Pepsi’s story different from every other business origin story you’ve heard. Caleb Bradham was a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina. In 1893, he created a drink at his soda fountain. Called it “Brad’s Drink” at first. Then renamed it Pepsi-Cola. It took off. He built a company. Expanded across the country. Had hundreds of bottlers. Life was good. Then World War I ended. Sugar prices went crazy. Bradham speculated. Bet wrong. Lost everything. In 1923, Pepsi-Cola went bankrupt. Bradham didn’t pivot. Didn’t rebuild. Didn’t have a second act. He went back to running a pharmacy until he died. That should have been the end of the story. But someone bought the bankrupt brand for almost nothing. Tried to make it work. Failed. Pepsi went bankrupt again in 1931. Two bankruptcies. Two different owners. The brand was a punchline. No visionary founder steering the ship. No Steve Jobs. No Walt Disney. No one with a grand plan. Just a dead brand that kept getting passed around like a bad debt. Then Charles Guth bought it. He ran a candy company. Needed a cola for his stores. Coca-Cola wouldn’t give him a discount. So he bought the twice-dead Pepsi brand out of spite. Not vision. Spite. He reformulated it. Sold it cheap. “Twice as much for a nickel” became the pitch during the Depression. People were broke. They wanted more for less. Pepsi gave it to them. The company survived. Barely. For decades, Pepsi was the scrappy underdog. The cheap alternative. The brand your parents bought when Coke was too expensive. No mythology. No founder genius. Just survival. Then Donald Kendall changed everything. Kendall was a salesman who worked his way up through the company. Became CEO in 1963. And he understood something his predecessors didn’t. Pepsi couldn’t out-Coke Coca-Cola. Coke owned tradition. Owned Americana. Owned the past. So Kendall went after the future. The “Pepsi Generation” campaigns targeted youth. Made it about identity, not taste. Coke was your parents’ drink. Pepsi was yours. He launched the Pepsi Challenge. Blind taste tests in malls across America. Let people discover they actually preferred Pepsi. Made them question everything they thought they knew about cola. Then he made the move that transformed Pepsi from a soda company into something bigger. He merged Pepsi with Frito-Lay. Suddenly Pepsi wasn’t just competing in beverages. They owned snacks. Chips. The stuff people bought alongside their drinks. Kendall saw what others missed. People don’t just drink soda. They snack. Own both and you own the whole moment. That merger created PepsiCo. A company that could compete with Coca-Cola not by beating them at cola, but by playing a different game entirely. Kendall took a twice-bankrupt soda brand bought out of spite and turned it into one of the largest food and beverage companies on the planet. Not because he had a founder’s vision. Because he inherited a mess and refused to play by someone else’s rules. Each CEO after him added something. Fixed something. Expanded something. Not because of some master plan from 1893. Because they kept showing up. Kept adapting. Kept refusing to die. Today PepsiCo owns dozens of brands. Operates in over 200 countries. Employs hundreds of thousands of people. All from a brand that went bankrupt twice before it was 40 years old. Here’s what most people miss about Pepsi’s story. It didn’t have a visionary founder who saw the future. It had a founder who lost everything and never recovered. It didn’t have a perfect plan. It had a series of people who inherited a mess and made it slightly better. It didn’t have destiny on its side. It just refused to stay dead. That’s the part nobody talks about. Most business stories are about genius founders with perfect vision. Pepsi’s story is about ordinary people making the best of a bad situation. Over and over. For a hundred years. Sometimes the company that wins isn’t the one with the best start. It’s the one that survives long enough to figure it out. What situation are you in that feels like a twice-bankrupt soda brand? What mess did you inherit that everyone says is beyond saving? What “cheap alternative” positioning are you embarrassed about when you should be leaning into it? Pepsi didn’t become a global giant because of where it started. It became one because it refused to accept where it was. No founder myth required. No perfect origin story. Just survival. Adaptation. And the willingness to find a lane when the obvious one was taken. Your business doesn’t need a legendary beginning. It needs you to keep showing up. Keep adapting. Keep refusing to stay down. The company that wins isn’t always the one that starts strongest. It’s the one that lasts longest. Think Big. |
| He had no medical training—so he speed-read a surgery textbook for 30 minutes, then operated on 16 dying soldiers with a scalpel—and saved every single one. The wounded arrived at dusk. A small Korean junk pulled alongside the HMCS Cayuga, a Canadian destroyer patrolling waters off Korea in 1951. Inside were South Korean guerrillas, casualties of a commando raid gone wrong. Some had shrapnel embedded in their flesh. One had a bullet lodged dangerously close to his heart. Another needed his foot amputated. All eyes turned to the ship's surgeon, a confident young doctor named Joseph Cyr. There was just one problem. Joseph Cyr wasn't Joseph Cyr. And he wasn't a doctor. The man wearing the naval surgeon's uniform was Ferdinand Waldo Demara—a high school dropout from Massachusetts who possessed no medical training whatsoever. He had stolen the real Dr. Cyr's credentials months earlier and bluffed his way into the Royal Canadian Navy. Now, with dying men sprawled before him, his elaborate deception had become a life-or-death gamble. Demara had two choices: confess and watch the soldiers die, or attempt surgeries he had never performed using skills he did not possess. He chose the impossible. The 30-Minute Medical Degree Ordering his crew to prepare the wounded for surgery, Demara retreated to his cabin. He pulled a medical textbook from his shelf and began speed-reading the sections on chest surgery, wound extraction, and amputation. His entire surgical education lasted perhaps thirty minutes. Then he walked into the operating room, picked up a scalpel, and began cutting. What happened next defied every reasonable expectation. Working with steady hands and an inexplicable calm, Demara performed surgery after surgery throughout the night. He extracted bullets. He stitched wounds. He amputated a foot. He removed a bullet from a man's chest, working within inches of the patient's heart. When dawn broke, every single patient was alive. The crew of the Cayuga believed they had witnessed a miracle. They began preparing paperwork to recommend their surgeon for a commendation. How does a man with no medical training save lives that real doctors might have lost? The Great Impostor Born in 1921, Ferdinand Waldo Demara grew up knowing both prosperity and poverty. His father had been a successful theater operator until the Great Depression stripped away everything. At sixteen, humiliated by his family's fall, Fred ran away to join a Trappist monastery. It was the first of many reinventions. For decades, Demara became whoever he needed to be: A Benedictine monk A doctor of psychology teaching at a Pennsylvania college An assistant prison warden in Texas A cancer researcher A civil engineer A lawyer Each role required convincing genuine experts that he belonged among them. And remarkably, he succeeded again and again. Demara possessed a photographic memory and extraordinary intelligence. He could speed-read textbooks and absorb complex information with uncanny efficiency. But his real genius lay in understanding human nature. He operated on two cardinal rules: The burden of proof lies with the accuser When in danger, attack He learned to project absolute confidence. He studied how professionals talked, walked, and carried themselves. He identified unspoken rules of institutional culture. Most importantly, he discovered that people rarely question someone who acts like they belong. The Boldest Deception In 1951, while serving with a religious order in Maine, Demara befriended a young Canadian physician named Joseph Cyr. When Demara decided to join the Royal Canadian Navy as a surgeon, he simply stole Cyr's credentials. Canada was desperate for medical officers. The Korean War was raging. The enlistment process that should have taken months was rushed through in days. No one verified his background. No one checked his medical school records. They simply handed him a uniform and assigned him to a warship. Demara found himself responsible for the health of over two hundred sailors. He had no idea how to diagnose illness, prescribe medication, or perform even basic procedures. So he improvised. Whenever a crew member came to him with a complaint, Demara would make an excuse to step away, sprint to his quarters, frantically consult his medical texts, then return with a confident diagnosis. He treated routine ailments by prescribing generous amounts of penicillin. When the ship's captain, Commander James Plomer, needed several teeth extracted, Demara performed the dental surgery despite having no idea how much anesthetic to use. The next morning, Plomer called it the nicest job of tooth-pulling he'd ever had. But nothing prepared Demara for those wounded guerrillas. His performance that night remains one of the most remarkable episodes in medical history. The Unraveling The crew was so impressed they wanted to recommend him for a medal. That recommendation proved to be his undoing. News of the heroic surgeon aboard the Cayuga reached Canadian newspapers. Reporters wrote glowing accounts of Dr. Joseph Cyr's steady hands and cool courage. One person reading those articles was the mother of the real Joseph Cyr—who was rather surprised to learn her son was performing surgeries in Korea when he was actually practicing medicine in New Brunswick. She contacted the Navy. An investigation began. When confronted, Demara cracked. He locked himself in his cabin for three days, sedated with barbiturates, before finally emerging to surrender. The man who had fooled an entire navy collapsed under the weight of his own success. The Cover-Up The Royal Canadian Navy faced an impossible dilemma. They had allowed an impostor to serve as a ship's surgeon during wartime. Prosecuting him would expose their failure. So they did what institutions often do when confronted with their own failures. They made the problem disappear. Demara was quietly discharged with full back pay. He was deported to the United States without facing charges. The Great Impostor was free to reinvent himself once again. Hollywood and Redemption In 1961, Hollywood released "The Great Impostor" with Tony Curtis playing Demara. Curtis would later say it was his favorite role—surpassing even Some Like It Hot. The film brought Demara more attention than ever, making future impersonations nearly impossible. But it also brought something unexpected: respect. In 1979, at a reunion of the HMCS Cayuga crew, an elderly Demara walked through the door. The sailors who had served with him welcomed him with open arms. Despite everything, they remembered him as the man who had saved lives when it mattered most. Impostor or not, he had done real good. The Final Identity Demara spent his final years as a hospital chaplain in California—this time using his real name and genuine ordination. He performed last rites for his friend, actor Steve McQueen, in 1980. He was beloved by patients and staff. He died on June 7, 1982, at age sixty, from heart failure and diabetes complications. The Great Impostor had finally become himself. The Question Was Ferdinand Demara a hero or a fraud? The answer, perhaps, is both. He was a con man who deceived everyone around him. He was also a man who, when the moment demanded it, rose to meet an impossible challenge and saved lives that might otherwise have been lost. Somewhere in that contradiction lies a question that still resonates: Does competence matter more than credentials? Does a diploma make a doctor, or does saving lives? Ferdinand Demara never answered that question. He just kept becoming whoever the world needed him to be. And for sixteen wounded soldiers on a ship off the coast of Korea, that was enough. No medical training. 30 minutes with a textbook. 16 dying soldiers. All survived. He was a fraud who saved lives. He was a con man who became a hero. And when they finally caught him, the sailors he'd served with welcomed him back decades later—because when it mattered most, he'd shown up. |
| At 9, his roommate showed him knife scars. He was cleaning toilets in a reform school. Today he's worth $152 billion and built the company powering ChatGPT. Jensen Huang was 9 years old. His parents had sold most of what they owned to send him and his brother from Taiwan to America. Their uncle in Washington found the school. Oneida Baptist Institute. Sounded prestigious as hell. It was a reform school for troubled Kentucky youth. Jensen's first night, his roommate pulled up his shirt. 17 years old. Covered in tattoos and knife scars. Showed Jensen every wound like a trophy collection. Jensen was the only Asian student in the entire school. Undersized. Long hair down his back. Broken English. Every morning, he cleaned toilets. His brother got shipped off to work on a tobacco farm. The other students made his life a living nightmare. Ethnic slurs. Knife threats. Daily reminders he didn't belong. Everyone said he'd never make it. "You don't belong here." "Go back to Taiwan." "You'll never be anything." He didn't listen. Here's what Jensen knew that everyone else missed: When you survive a reform school at 9, nothing in business can ever break you. So he cut a deal with his scarred-up roommate: "I'll teach you to read. You teach me to bench press." Two years of that. Then his parents finally made it to America. Found out what their sons had been enduring. Pulled them out immediately. Moved the family to Oregon. But by then, something had already calcified inside Jensen. His mother had taught him English back in Taiwan... despite not speaking a word of it herself. She told him over and over: "You are special." She left him with a belief that nothing could ever be that hard again. And after cleaning toilets in a reform school while dodging knife threats from illiterate teenagers... She was right. He got a job at Denny's. Started washing dishes. His work ethic became the stuff of legend. "I never left the station empty-handed. I never came back empty-handed." Promoted to busboy. Then waiter. Years later, he'd say Denny's shaped everything about how he handles pressure. His heart rate actually DROPS when stakes are high. He credits those dinner rush hours for that. Went to Oregon State. Met his future wife Lori in an electrical engineering lab. She was his lab partner. Worked nights and weekends to get his master's from Stanford. Took years because he had a full-time job and kids. Then he sat in a booth at Denny's in San Jose. Same chain where he washed dishes years earlier. Meeting with two friends. $40,000 between them. Zero business plan. Jensen tried reading a book about writing business plans. 450 pages. "By the time I finish this thing, I'll be out of business." So they just started. Founded the company right there in that Denny's booth. Called it NVIDIA. From the Latin "invidia." Meaning envy. They wanted competitors turning green with it. But the first years nearly killed them. Ran out of cash. First product flopped completely. Investors bailed. Jensen later said NVIDIA at founding had "approximately 0% chance of success." Most people would have quit. Jensen kept building. That's when everything changed. They pivoted. Found the graphics processing market. Started winning. First product: complete failure. First decade: barely surviving. 2024: $4.3 trillion. Most valuable company on Earth. But Jensen wasn't done. He still works from the second he wakes up until he passes out at night. Can't even watch a movie without his brain drifting back to the company. Wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, tells himself: "You suck." Has 50 direct reports. Most CEOs cap out at 10. His philosophy: "I don't like giving up on people. I'd rather torture them into greatness." Today, Jensen Huang is worth $152 billion. NVIDIA powers the entire AI revolution. Every major AI system runs on NVIDIA chips. ChatGPT? NVIDIA. Claude? NVIDIA. Midjourney? NVIDIA. All of it. And he donated $2 million to Oneida Baptist Institute. The reform school where he scrubbed toilets as a child. Built Jen-Hsun Huang Hall. New dormitory and classroom building for girls. The place that nearly broke him became the place he chose to honor. All because a 9-year-old kid cleaning toilets in a reform school refused to let that be his story. He turned a childhood nightmare into unbreakable mental armor. He proved that your hardest years might be your best training. What childhood trauma are you using as an excuse instead of fuel? What impossible situation are you treating as permanent instead of training? What are you quitting on that could become your trillion-dollar company? Jensen survived knife threats at 9. Washed dishes at Denny's. Started a company with $40K and "0% chance of success." His parents got scammed by a reform school and sold everything for nothing. He donated $2 million back to that same school decades later. Because he understood something most people don't. Your worst years might be your best training. The thing that nearly breaks you might be the thing that makes you unbreakable. Survival isn't a setback. It's preparation. Stop using your hardest years as an excuse. Start thinking like Jensen Huang. Take your trauma. Turn it into training. Build something that outlasts it. And never let anyone tell you that where you started determines where you end up. Sometimes the worst schools teach the best lessons. Because when you've cleaned toilets at 9 while dodging knife threats, trillion-dollar pressure feels like a vacation. Don't quit. |
| Katalin Karikó fled her country with $1,200 hidden in a teddy bear. She was thirty years old, had a PhD in biochemistry, and believed in an idea almost no one else did. Messenger RNA could teach human cells how to fight disease. She had no idea it would take forty years for the world to listen. In 1985, Karikó, her husband, and their two-year-old daughter escaped communist Hungary and boarded a plane to America. They sold their Russian-made Lada on the black market. That money—their entire savings—was sewn inside Susan's teddy bear because Hungary only allowed families to leave with $100. They arrived in Philadelphia with no safety net. Karikó had secured a postdoctoral position at Temple University, but the starting salary was $17,000 a year. Four people, including her mother who joined them later, lived on that amount. Then her career nearly ended before it began. After clashing with her supervisor, Robert Suhadolnik, she was reported to immigration authorities and had to hire a lawyer to avoid deportation. A promised job offer from Johns Hopkins disappeared. Suhadolnik "continued bad-mouthing Karikó, making it impossible for her to get a new position" at other institutions. Still, she persisted. At the University of Pennsylvania, where she started in 1989, she continued working on mRNA. No one wanted it. Grant applications were rejected again and again. In science, without grants, you effectively do not exist. RNA was considered unstable, unreliable, a dead end. When Karikó insisted the problem was technique, not the molecule, she was ignored. In January 1995, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Soon after, her husband was trapped in Hungary for six months because of visa complications. At the same time, the University of Pennsylvania gave her an ultimatum: Abandon mRNA or accept a demotion off the tenure track. She accepted the demotion. Her salary fell below that of the lab technicians she worked with. Over the next 18 years, as health insurance and parking costs rose, her salary barely changed. She was making less in real terms every year. She considered leaving science entirely. But something kept her going. Then, in 1997, she met Drew Weissman at a photocopier. They were both printing journal articles. Karikó told Weissman she could make any mRNA. He was intrigued. He'd been trying to develop an HIV vaccine and was frustrated with DNA-based approaches. They began collaborating in near invisibility. No prestige. No funding. Even Weissman struggled—it would take him 10 years to secure his first NIH grant for mRNA research. Anthony Fauci, his former mentor, asked him, "Why are you wasting your time? Why don't you do something with potential impact?" But they persisted. In 2005, they discovered how to modify mRNA so it would not trigger a destructive immune response. By substituting one nucleoside with another, they could slip mRNA past the body's defenses. It was the missing key that made mRNA therapeutics possible. They submitted their paper to Nature and Science, the most prestigious journals in science. Both rejected it. Nature dismissed it as an "incremental contribution." The paper was published quietly in the journal Immunity. Almost no one noticed. Karikó and Weissman kept working. They founded a small company, RNARx, and filed patents. The University of Pennsylvania sold the intellectual property license to a lab supply company. Weeks later, when Moderna's parent company tried to license the patent, Karikó had to tell them it was no longer available. Still, her work went unrecognized. In 2013, the University of Pennsylvania pushed Karikó out. "I was kicked out from UPenn, was forced to retire," she later told the Nobel Prize organization. UPenn told her she was "not of faculty quality." At fifty-eight, she took a job at a small German biotech company called BioNTech. Her colleagues at Penn laughed at her. "BioNTech doesn't even have a website," they said. She went anyway. Then came 2020. COVID-19 spread across the world. Within months, the technology that had been dismissed for decades became the foundation of the fastest vaccine development in history. BioNTech partnered with Pfizer. Moderna used Karikó and Weissman's modifications. By December 2020, mRNA vaccines were being administered to millions. The vaccines demonstrated over 90% efficacy. They saved millions of lives. On October 2, 2023, Karikó received a call at 3:40 a.m. No number showed on the screen. The person on the line told her she'd won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She thought it was a prank. It wasn't. She and Drew Weissman had been awarded the Nobel Prize "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19." The University of Pennsylvania immediately celebrated on social media, posting about "Penn's historic mRNA vaccine research team." Twitter marked the posts as "misleading" because Karikó hadn't been affiliated with UPenn for a decade—and had been forced out after being told she wasn't faculty quality. At the press conference, Karikó joked that Penn should invest in more copy machines "so researchers have the opportunity to stand around, chitchat, and share their ideas." Her daughter Susan, who crossed the Atlantic in 1985 clutching a teddy bear full of money, became a two-time Olympic gold medalist for the United States in rowing. Karikó still has the teddy bear. She was never promoted at Penn. Never celebrated early. Never believed in because she was praised. She believed because the science mattered. And forty years later, when the world needed it most, it was ready. |
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