Better to ask for forgiveness than permission

 

To make this blog interesting and exciting for you to read, I think I might end up telling you some inside information that I shouldn’t. As a boss of mine told me long ago, sometimes it is “better to ask for forgiveness than permission“. So I might as well ask for forgiveness from the CBC big bosses now. (smile) Will you forgive me please?

So dear readers, here is my advice. Come over and read this blog as often as you have time. (smile) It is likely that you will have a small window of time to read some inside information about Dragons’ Den that I shouldn’t blog about. And that window will close once the big bosses found about these information and ask me to remove those “oh, Kempton, may be you shouldn’t have blogged about that” information. (bigger smile)

Of course, I will never blog about information that I judge will reduce your fun in watching Dragons’ Den — so no information about who gets funded or not, etc.

Will see how far this blogger can match a dragonfly’s speed, vision, and camouflage ability in order to bring you some interesting report from the CBC Dragons’ Den set next week. Stay tune.

Going ‘home’ to Toronto – and a million dollar question

So I am flying into Toronto this Saturday. It got me thinking a little.

Toronto is the first Canadian city that I lived in. I enjoyed the five years I spent in Toronto. And U. of Toronto remains one of the best University in the world and definitely in my heart. Being a UT CompSci grad, our treasured Professor Stephen A. Cook (his personal page) is still doing active research and may still have a chance to close up the field that he started in 1971 by providing a solution to it.

Currently, the open problem Prof. Cook created in 1971 has a US $1 million prize attached to it. Who would think one can win a million dollars by analyzing the computer game — Minesweeper? And trust me, it is much harder than you think. (smile)

Now, after all these nice Toronto related thoughts and me being excited to be part of Dragons’ Den taping. I just hate Toronto’s impossible traffic jam on 401. As the caption said, “Smog Alert Day #32 in Toronto: It took 1 hour to travel 10 kilometers.” Traffic jam in T.O. sucks big time. I think I am going to take the Go train instead of driving.

Thanks for the Dragonfly

BennyPix@Flickr, thank you very much. I was so lucky to come across your lovely Dragonfly. I love it enough that I am now using your photo in my blog logo/banner to add a bit of magical touch to my blog. (smile)

I really appreciate you sharing the photo in the Creative Commons so that I can use it under license for free as long as I meet the terms you set. And I meet that requirement since I also share my blog using a license from Creative Commons Canada.

Thanks BennyPix. Your lovely dragonfly has made my blog look really nice even when my blog entries may occasionally suck. (big smile)

Calgary and other Connections

This Calgary based honorary “General of the ArmChair Dragon Army” will always have a special place in my heart for the 70+ Calgary-based entrepreneurs that I met during the three days of auditions (see more on day one, two, and three). So if we have met in Calgary, make sure you say hi when we see each other in Toronto. And please kindly remind me of your names as I am no good in remembering names. (smile)

Now, when this Dragonfly is reporting, I will try to get to know some of the entrepreneurs from all around Canada. I love to meet entrepreneurs with great and/or interesting products or those with a great story to tell. As I said in my first post here, I am going to be a Dragonfly on the wall and write some interesting and inside stuff to share with you. It should be fun. Stay tune.

P.S. I was going to work the clothing brand “French Connection” into my post but I couldn’t quite get it to work. Ah, … FC has a “catchy” brand name that used to work for me. (smile)

Dragonfly on the wall

(note: This blog entry is cross-posted on both Kempton’s blog and Dragonfly on the wall (here))

First of all, I am very happy to share with you the news that I’ve been invited by the CBC Dragons’ Den team to fly out to Toronto to attend and blog about the round 3 of taping for season 2 from June 5th to June 9th. Did I say I am really happy?

Now, I was asked to create a catchy name for this blog. So in this first post, let me tell you the story behind the naming of this blog – Dragonfly on the wall.

With the incredible access that I am given, I felt like I can blog like a fly on the wall observing all the happenings and less known but interesting sides of Dragons’ Den to share with you. Of course, just so you have fun watching the show, I can’t and won’t tell you everything I know or I will have to kill you. (big smile) But I will push some boundaries and you will have some inside fun with me.

Now, I want to use the word Dragon in the blog so Dragonfly is just a natural step to take to turn a fly into a beautiful Dragonfly. And according to Wikipedia, “Dragonflies are the world’s fastest insects and, although estimates of their speed vary wildly, most credible authorities say they are capable of reaching speeds of between 30 and 60 km/h“. And what impressed me even more is their tremendous vision, “Dragonflies have excellent eyesight due to their eye structure. Their compound eyes have up to 30,000 facets, each of which is a separate light-sensing organ or ommatidium, arranged to give nearly a 360° field of vision“. With Dragonfly’s kind of vision, may be I can be “insightful” automatically. (smile)

Here is a Summer Dragonfly on YouTube.

P.S. To know more about me, you can read my blog or take a look of my bio.

P.P.S. By chance, dragonfly also happens to be the name of the Inn of one of my favourite TV show.