Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

Almost every person I know complains about having a too sedentary life and not having enough time for practicing sports. Here I bring you an idea that solves this issue: A sport that can be practiced anywhere, without any accessories, with very simple rules and that can be played by two or more players.

This is the story:

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Last week at Harvard University they announced the 2008 Ig Nobel Awards, an interesting version of the Nobel Prizes to recognize research where the funny subject “first makes you laugh, then makes you think”, organized by the journal ‘Annals of Improbable Research’.

The name comes from a pun with the word “ignoble” but there is nothing ignoble about the winners! I would say they are shameless geniuses.

As an example, two of last year’s winners: in Medicine it was won by two scientists who wrote a paper on: “Sword swallowing and its side effects”. You can see above the pic of the moment when they accepted the award.

The Peace award was given to a US Air Force Lab that researched to develop a chemical weapon nicknamed  “the gay bomb” because it makes the enemy soldiers feel sexually irresistible to each other.

Let’s see some of this year’s winners, and then I will propose a contest:

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This is the fourth and last post on the series about paragliding and Entrepreneurship. On the three previous ones we covered the topics of preparing to startup, the startup phase itself and the growth period. Now it is time to discuss about how to deal with adversity.

A while after the pleasant flight of the previous post, large clouds started covering the horizon. As if Nature wanted to help me write this blog, it was a perfect metaphor of how in countries like Argentina, right when things start going well you get a storm threatening to cut your wings.

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The Bilinkis Top 20 is back with the 20 most popular songs for October. There is a new song at the top. And it made me remember that many times I thought if I had to choose only one artist to be the soundtrack of my life, it would be The Smiths/Morrissey.

What artist would be the soundtrack of yours?

Now, on to the rankings!

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The sensation of flying, even at low altitude, is like anything else. But the true challenge (and pleasure) is to be able to fly high.

The next morning after my first take-off, we went to a much higher mountain. It was no longer time for preparation or test take-offs: the time had come to really fly.

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Along the lines of comparing the learnings from paragliding with becoming an Entrepreneur, the first post covered the stage of preparation. Now is the time to focus on the start-up phase. And as Wes Harman, the author of this photo, graciously reminds us, no start-up is ever the first or last to die!

So back to Tucuman and my paragliding course. After two hours of suffering and being blown by the wind on the flat, the instructor said it was time to move on to the next stage: the first take off. We moved to a different location, where we could walk up a hill about 100 feet high. Naive, I asked: “We are going to fly in tandem, right?”. The professor laughed. With only two hours of practice, it was time for my first flight alone.

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Very few things in my life took me out of my comfort zone so much as when a few years back I traveled with a group of friends to learn to fly a paraglider. Trips with my friends are chosen by voting, and, needless to say, that year I lost.

So I travelled to Tafí del Valle in Tucuman, Argentina, pretty scared, but determined to start the course, which I knew started on a totally flat place.  I thought the next step was to fly in tandem with a professor and that I was willing to try. Then when the time came to fly on my own, I would see what I did.

The experience was very interesting and what I will do now is write a series of four posts connecting what I lived while learning to fly with the stages of founding and starting up a company.

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From the day about five years ago, when I started using an iPod I always thought someone had to solve the problem of the Shuffle inconsistency: whether you listen to your own predesigned playlists (and end up listening always the same old stuff) or you use Shuffle but have to deal with absurd combinations (like going non stop from Rage Against the Machine to Peter Cetera!).

Well, Apple finally did what I have been waiting all these years!

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The post I wrote last week about the future of Internet companies left me feeling a bit nostalgic. I remember my first time as it was only yesterday.

One of my best friends worked as an IT manager at a local Hospital. One Saturday night we were hanging around doing nothing and then he threw the fatal question: “Have you ever done it?”. And I, totally ashamed, answered with the truth: “No, never”. I was 24 back then.

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Here I am with the second edition of the Bilinkis Top 20 Songs! After the debate generated in the comments to the previous post (in Spanish), this month comes with an improved layout and some thoughts.

On one hand, for those who complained for the lack of music in Spanish, Catupecu enters one more song so that makes two of them!

And that has nothing to do with the fact that my brother Mariano has recorded and mixed this album and the last few from the band. The acoustic cover version of “Seguir viviendo sin tu amor” is fabulous and if you haven’t heard it yet I recommend you do it now.

On another hand, the strongest critic of all was that because of mp3 there were no two songs by the same band. Well, again, Catupecu has two!

Lastly, before we move on to the ranking, despite my own resistence please note that the songs ranked #10 and #14 reveal my 80’s side. In the end I believe that regardless when you were born, we all carry a little 80’s side inside of us… For those who want to comment: why do you think the 80’s were soooo good and there was not a decade like that before or after?

Now, the top 20:

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