A writers' forum: Use your words like an artist's brushstrokes to create a portrait-in-words of a real or fictional character.
Richard Branson
Have you ever heard the name Richard Branson? I want him to be known to more people, especially to young guys. He is in his fifties and he's from England. When I think of him, the words challenger, adventurer, explorer, and daredevil come to mind. The two words which define Richard Branson are prowess and frontier. He already holds two world records. First, he is the fastest to have crossed the Atlantic by boat. Second, a year and a half later, he became the first person to cross the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon. People were wondering why he was prepared to risk it all by being a daredevil. He loves personal challenges, which force him to see if he is capable of doing something he has never done before. This spirit helped to put "Virgin" on the map. In addition, he has an incredible dream to commercialize Space. His company (The Virgin Group) bought technology from Paul Allen for the purpose of building five spaceships, and they will be ready to go into Space in two and a half to three years time. Their goal is to one day, make space-travel affordable to millions of people. "Initially, space-travel is not going to be cheap, it's going to be around about $200,000 per head but we've had something like 12,000 people who say they want to fly at that sort of price. That would enable us, in years to come, to start bringing the price down and down and down," he explained. Hopefully, he will be able to build hotels in Space; maybe a hotel on the moon one day, and push the frontiers forward. He was asked "If you had to describe your life, what would you say?" Branson answered, "I lived life to the full." I thought that this was a wonderful answer. Who can dare to answer like this? Only a few can truly answer in this way. Sir Richard Branson, an entrepreneur who's pushing the envelope both professionally and personally 30 years ahead of his time.
by Min-Kyung Kim
