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by Wong, Allen

  When my father’s life was unexpectedly taken away from him, my mother’s stress level shot up through the roof. She had become stuck in a psychotic episode ever since. Now instead of having just a week of catatonia, my mother is lucky to have a week where she doesn’t have catatonia.

  Probably one of the saddest experiences I’ve ever had was when my mother tried to communicate with me, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Her lips would quiver and her hands would physically shake as she fought to express herself. But ultimately, she couldn’t, so she started crying. I couldn’t hold back my tears after witnessing this, and I started crying as well. It became common for me to spend close to six to ten hours with my mother, waiting for her to say what she had to say, or waiting for her to eat her food.

  Finally, she said something.

  “Maybe… maybe… I should stop being a burden to you,” she spoke softly to me in Chinese. I knew what that meant. She loved me enough that she wanted to end her life to save me from being depressed and stressed after seeing her like this and after taking care of her. Something had to be done to save her.

  I had tried to get her on anti-psychotic medication, but she would stop taking them after a while and would even secretly throw them away. I knew then that the only thing I could do was to institutionalize her and force her to take her medication, or to try to remove all the stresses from her life. I chose the latter.

  I quickly tried to hack away all the stressful events in her life. There was even a fire in the house that my mother rented out a little more than two years after my father passed away. The fire triggered a house inspection from the city. The inspection brought a court order to fix the housing violations. It was stressful for her to deal with, so I took care of all the paperwork for the violations and for the home insurance.

  The violations were unfounded. The tenants later told us that the inspector did not even look at the house. He just wrote up random violations that he assumed were there. For example, one of the violations claimed that there was a three-piece bathroom in the basement of the house (i.e. a bathroom with a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub). There was no such bathroom in the basement. There was only a toilet in the basement. The case was eventually dismissed.

  But I still had to wake up at six in the morning and take my catatonic mother with me to court to fight the case. I couldn’t just go alone, because I did not have the power of attorney at the time. I didn’t have it because it was in short notice, and because it was close to impossible to get my mother to sign anything when she was paranoid and catatonic. At the court, my mother kept trying to drag me out because she was paranoid and scared of the unfamiliar place. Luckily, someone else was there who spoke Chinese and helped calm my mother down. But that was only temporary. After the fire, she stayed in a psychotic episode for over half a year. It was the longest she went without ever returning back to normal. I had feared that I lost my normal mother forever.

  There were many more similarly stressful and unfortunate events that happened to our family. Each time, I had to stay strong to keep my mother sane and alive. My brother was (and still is) stuck in London with his wife, so I was the only one left to take care of my mother.

  Finally, after months of dealing with her long-term psychotic episode, she snapped out of it. I had removed all stressors in her life. I even went out to buy her groceries with her on a weekly basis. On the days when she was too paranoid to leave the house, I would go out and buy the groceries for her. She only wanted Chinese groceries, so I had to venture out further to get them for her. During the days when she wasn’t psychotic, I went down to Florida to buy a large luxurious house. By living in Florida, I reduced my income taxes. In New York City, state and city income tax added up to around 13%. In Florida, there was no state income tax at all. The other reason why I bought a big house was because I wanted to get my mother to live in a more comfortable and relaxing home. We had been living in our small New York suburban home for decades, and it was time for me to spend some money to save my mother.

  I finally convinced my mother to come down to Florida recently, and it was one of the greatest moves I had ever made for my mother’s mental health. Her eyes lit up when she saw how beautiful my house was, and she was extremely relaxed and unstressed. She liked the people in Florida better than the people in New York. In New York, the people were ruder and more jaded. Here, in my small town in Orlando, FL, the people were much more polite, and she no longer felt paranoid around strangers.

  I took her to Disney World and many other places. It’s been over two decades since she had been to Disney World. She vaguely remembered pieces of Disney World from her past, and it helped bring out the playful and cheerful child in her. I even went on Splash Mountain with her, and she had a blast.

  Because of the many amenities in my Florida house, my mother was able to stay more active than when she was in her small house in New York. She used my pool almost daily, even though she didn’t know how to swim. I tried teaching her, and she was willing to learn. She took up interest in billiards and ping pong. I tried teaching her those as well, and she was willing to learn.

  Because my mother was feeling lonely after the loss of my father, I adopted a small poodle from the Florida Poodle Rescue organization to help keep her company. My poodle, who I named Lambo, was originally a stray dog from Miami full of fleas. He also had an eye ulcer on his right eye, which would permanently leave him partially blinded. I had nursed him back to health, and now he’s as happy as he could be.

  My mother, too, was really happy. I finally got my normal, happy mother back, and I couldn’t be more relieved and glad. I took her to Sea World on her birthday in September 2012. She had never been there before. The day turned out really perfect, because she loved animals as much as I did. During the middle of the day, she kissed me on the cheek. Keep in mind that my mother is very conservative and not intimate at all. She even shies away when I try to hug her. So I cannot emphasize how extremely unexpected that expression of affection was to me. After she planted the kiss, she said to me in Chinese, “Thank you for taking care of me and taking me to Sea World on my birthday. I understand that you could be doing so many other things like working on your programs or your book, but you chose to stick around. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be sitting at home in New York alone on my birthday. Thank you.”

  The pleasure is all mine, mom. Thank you for raising me and giving me a chance at a fulfilling life. And thank you, brother, for lending your ear when I needed someone to talk to. And thank you, dad, for giving me the tools in life to be able to take care of others. And thank you, friends and readers, for listening to my family’s story and for supporting my family and me.

  Thank you all.

  “Real living is living for others. Be happy, but never satisfied.”

  – Bruce Lee

  In Memory of My Father

  SEPT. 7, 1946 – OCT. 5, 2007

  Frequently Asked APP Questions

  How do I go about learning how to code apps?

  If you have the money, then take an online course or hire a tutor. Otherwise, you'll have to find free tutorial material online to learn from or take a class if your public school offers it. Learning how to code apps on your own can be difficult, especially if you have not had prior coding experience. But if you have some experience in coding, then you can probably learn how to code apps by getting a book on it (either buying it or borrowing it from the library). The only problem with books is that if you have a question, the book might not have a clear answer for you.

  Once you know the basics, the best way to learn is to keep practicing. Try coding something simple at first. Something as simple as getting the screen to display the text, “Hello, World!” can be your first program. That should build up your confidence to learn more. If you try to code something difficult in the beginning, it'll be too daunting. As you code more and more programs, you’ll naturally want to see what else your code can do. And that’s when you’ll want to keep doin
g more and more advanced coding.

  And if you don’t have that urge to do more complex coding even though you know it’ll be difficult, then coding might not be for you. When I see a difficult coding task, I see it as a challenge. It’s a really rewarding feeling when you actually get something to do exactly as you want it to do. In a way, it’s like playing God. You created it, and now you get to see your creation thrive. Once you know how to code, there are limitless possibilities on what you can do with it.

  So if you’ve been meaning to learn how to code, give it a try. Don’t wait until next year. Don’t wait until next month. Just go on your favorite search engine and start looking for coding tutorials. There are plenty of free ones out there. The sooner you start learning, the sooner you can start selling your apps or programs for profit.

  Here’s how I motivate myself to not procrastinate on my apps: Since some of my apps make thousands of dollars a day, I ask myself, what if I delayed one of those apps by a day? I’d lose a day of sales. And I’d never be able to turn back the clock to get those thousands of dollars worth of sales. I basically lost a few thousands of dollars, because I delayed the release of my app by a day. If I delayed it by a week, I’d lose tens of thousands of dollars. If I delayed it by a month, I’d lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. By putting that into perspective, I get motivated to stay up all night to finish that app one day sooner or one week sooner or one month sooner.

  My mindset is so honed to success that I almost always feel guilty when I’m having fun and not working. I think to myself, “I could be working right now and making more money instead of watching this movie or playing this video game.” The only way I can stop myself from feeling guilty is by doing those fun things with someone I care about. Then it becomes a selfless act. For example, if I took my mother to Disney World for a week, then I could enjoy it and not feel guilty about not working as well. I still have my priorities straight, because I’m putting family before work, instead of fun before work.

  I have an idea for an app. Will you code it for me or recommend someone who can?

  The truth is that an idea for an app isn’t worth much. Anyone can come up with an idea for an app. The real difficult part is the coding, graphics, and marketing. So, unless you bring something to the table other than just an idea, then no app developer will want to work with you. You can bring money to the table, but keep in mind that apps can be expensive. There is a shortage of competent app developers for hire, because most of the large firms have picked them up or they’re working on their own projects. Also keep in mind that your app may not make back the money that you paid for it. If your app fails to take off, you’ll probably end up making only a few dollars on the app. And since most apps cost thousands of dollars to make, then you’re already starting from a deep hole.

  The projects I like to work on are with other competent people. I can do graphics, coding, and marketing all at the same time, so I work best as a consultant or someone who can fill in the gap for a missing team member. I have a proven track record on successful apps, so I don’t really come cheap either.

  I don’t have recommendations on who to hire, since I’ve been doing all of my work myself, and never had to hire anyone. I would highly recommend looking at someone’s portfolio before you hire them. Also, you should make sure that the price is negotiated before you start the project. There are greedy coders out there who will low-ball the price of the project to get you to hire them. But then, they’ll say that the project is taking longer than they expected and expect you to pay more. And since you already paid for most of the project, then you’ll have no choice but to pay them more to finish the project. Don’t fall for this trap.

  How do I know if my app will be successful or not?

  You will not know until you actually release the app. If you have features that people are looking for and have little competition, then you probably have a successful app. Sometimes apps are only successful for a short period of time. For example, if you create an app about the U.S. Presidential election, then it will probably be popular around the time when there is an election.

  Once you release the app, you will know within the first week (even the first 2 days) whether your app is a success or not. If your app fails to get into the top charts of any category, then it will not be able to self-promote itself. You will be stuck trying to promote the app yourself (perhaps through forums or social media). However, I would suggest you figure out why nobody is downloading your app in the first place before you promote your app further. The only time you should be promoting app intensely is when you know your app is actually desirable. Otherwise, you'll be wasting your time promoting an app that nobody wants when you could be spending that time coding features into the app that would make people want to get that app.

  You’ll also know if your app is successful or not by looking at the user reviews. If you are constantly getting 5-star reviews (maybe one or two a day) with very few negative reviews, then you have a great app that’s worth promoting. But if you get more negative reviews than positive ones, then you should either scrap the idea or keep improving the app until it got to the point where people like using it.

  Would you rather improve upon popular apps or go with an original idea?

  Coming up with an original idea poses a greater risk, but bigger reward. There is a chance that the market doesn't want what your idea provides. And someone might steal your idea and compete against you. If you look at any of the current popular things, you’ll notice that they were all stolen ideas (e.g. Facebook was not the first to do social networking, Google was not the first search engine, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, and the iPod® was not the first mp3 player).

  It also worries me that if an idea hasn't been popular yet, then there might just be no demand for it. Necessity is the mother of all inventions as they say. But if you truly have an original idea that you think will be a big hit, then by all means, try it (and even patent it if you can). Even my 5-0 Radio has been emulated many times, and those competitors are making somewhat decent money by mooching off the popularity of my app. So I'd definitely say it is much safer to improve upon an existing popular app and compete. That's the basis of capitalism after all.

  But if you want to make the big money, then you’ll have to take the risk and release an app that nobody has made popular before. By this I mean that the idea can still be unoriginal, but it must be an idea that isn’t already popular. Most of the time, people will see your app as a knock-off and not download it. It’s very hard to get people to switch from what they’re used to.

  How do I get the initial reviews for my apps?

  If you read my book, you’ll already know how important it is to have a high average rating for your app. But the problem is that when first release an app, you will not have an average rating until you get at least five or so ratings. And without that average rating, people will not know how awesome your app is.

  Fear not. You can get your friends and family to download the app and leave reviews for your app. But keep in mind that if they use a promo code, there’s a high chance that they will not be able to leave a review. You might be better off making the app free for a day to get your friends to download the app for free at first and leave a review.

  If you do not have friends and family to help you, then you can leave reviews for your own app. I would highly suggest against this, because if Apple catches you doing this, then they will ban your app or even your account. But if you’re willing to take the risk, then you’re going to have to create a lot of iTunes accounts to get your ratings up. To create an iTunes account for free, you just need to have an email address. Try to download a free app while logged out and you’ll get a chance to create an iTunes account without entering your credit card information. Apple will then ask you to confirm your account information. You can only confirm up to three accounts per device (whether it’s an iPad, iPhone, or computer). The trick is that you can go to your local electronics store tha
t demo Apple devices. Validate your accounts through their test devices. Almost any device that can load iTunes can help you validate your account.

  Keep in mind that Apple changes their procedures frequently, so these methods may no longer work in the future. But at the time of this writing, they are verified as working.

  Frequently Asked LIFE Questions

  If I’m starting from scratch, what should I be doing to become wealthy?

  Your focus should not be on getting wealthy. I did not start any of my ventures because I expected to get wealthy. I did what I enjoyed and it bled into my work.

  In fact, I know more people who think their projects will make them millions, but end up with projects that make close to nothing. So, focus on getting a stable job first. This will ensure that you are paying rent and putting food on the table. This is something that wealthy kids can skip, because they have financial backing from their parents. They have that advantage over us, the ones with more humble beginnings. But don’t let that deter you from ever trying break out of your financial class.

  If you are starting from scratch, you should get yourself a good job first to pay the bills. Afterwards, use your spare time to pursue your side businesses. Find your strengths or create new ones. If people love what you do, then they will naturally want to pay for it. For example, if you are good at making websites, then eventually, people will want to pay you to create a website for them.